The Gods of Silicon Valley

[Editor:]  Recently, I have offered the work of The Nerd Reich, book and podcast, as a way to understand the underlying technical and economic structure of the political regime in Washington DC, with Donald Trump acting as the frontman for Techno-Fascism. But this fascist political movement is more than technical and financial: it has deep roots in particular forms of culture, spirituality, even religion, coming from San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. So I now recommend a companion to The Nerd Reich, the podcast Dystopia Now, hosted by Émile Torres, Ph.D. in Philosophy, who studied these cultural movements, and comedian Kate Willet, a long-time resident and journalist of San Francisco culture. What Torres and Willet attest is that this ideology, while unfamiliar to a large segment of the US population, is deeply ingrained and ubiquitous in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. 

As a sociologist, I have studied religions and their role in larger cultural processes. Politics is downstream of culture, and religion has a profound influence on the formation of culture. In the current US fascist regime, religion is explicitly directing its policy and actions.

Torres and Willet take a deep dive into the ideology and spiritual beliefs of the tech billionaires, beginning with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and other tech lords and their respective industries. They uncover this ‘new religious movement’ summarized as TESCREAL, (Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singultarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, and Effective Altruism). In the first couple of episodes, they discuss the ideological program of Silicon Valley, defined as transhumanism, long-termism, and accelerationism, how those ideologies shape and motivate the politics of venture capitalists and tech lords, and how they intersect with our current fascist regime, Trump, MAGA, white supremacy and eugenics. 

Once you understand the quasi-religious roots of this movement, you can begin to understand how they would find common cause with White Christian Nationalism, even though they are largely atheists and not aligned in terms of doctrine or religious authority (e.g. they don’t adhere to the Bible). Besides sharing a strongly authoritarian worldview, where they seem to converge is in their belief that they can institute a utopian civilization through AI and technological innovation, and “live forever” in this digitally created “heaven”. The history of religion has been one of syncretism, where seemingly disparate religions crossover, blend and develop new cultural forms. Once you understand the spirituality of Silicon Valley, it is not difficult to understand how it connects with certain millenarian strains of Christianity, Hinduism and Islam. 

It then becomes plausible that this form of spiritual ideology could easily blend with American Buddhism, which also has historical roots in the Bay Area and connections to Silicon Valley. I will say that at this moment, certain American Buddhists who are enamored with Trump and Musk and politically aligned with MAGA are already cooking up a Buddhist version of TESCREAL.*

I am concerned that as engaged Buddhists we understand that the fascist regime in Washington goes far beyond Trump and MAGA; that what is being imposed on us is an entirely new civilization, with its authoritarian gods, beliefs, and religious hierarchies, its technological and political projects. I hope that American Buddhists and scholars take this seriously and discuss the further implications of this new religious movement on US culture and politics.

*As these Trump-aligned Buddhists regularly broadcast their beliefs on YouTube channels, Buddhists who read this blog may already know who they are.