JD Vance told a ridiculous story at the Dynamism American summit in Washington this week. He recalled a Silicon Valley dinner that he and his wife Usha attended, before he became vice president, where the conversation had been of cars replacing people in the workforce. According to Vance, an unnamed chief executive from a giant technology company said the unemployment of the future could still find a goal in digital diving games. “We have to remove the hell from here. These people are going crazy,” Usha tested him under the table.
Why Vance thought it was a good idea to tell this story is puzzled, given that it opposed the central theme of his speech – but at least she got a laugh. As Usha Vance meant in color, the worldview of techno-libertarians and ordinary workers looks antagonistic. But her husband’s main message was the opposite: that the technology sector and ordinary workers had a common interest in promoting the “big American industrial rebirth”.
Vance’s speech was a clear attempt to reconcile the two warring wings of President Donald Trump’s political movement: the Oligarchy of Bro -Technology – or Broligarchy – led by Elon Musk, and nationalists Maga animated by Steve Bannon. Bannon has denounced global technology leaders as anti-American and described Musk as a “truly bad person” and an “illegal parasitic immigrant”.
Vance declared himself a “proud member of both tribes”. He may be right for Musk and reshuffle to have much in common despite their meticulous differences. They are both elico antithesis with a common mission to overthrow the power of the administrative state and the main press.
Historians once described the three ancient assets of power as clergy, nobility and ordinary. A fourth asset – press – added later. And a fifth wealth – Social Media – has since appeared. But fifth wealth could be seen as a software update of third parties: ordinary armed with smartphones. According to this view, Bannon can be a third -estate tribune while Musk is a fifth champion. In the Trump movement, both have melted.
In his book Fifth wealth, William Dutton argued that social media represented a new and mostly positive form of power allowing individuals to use alternative sources of information and mobilize collective actions. He sees Greta Thunberg, a Swedish school student who came out as a global environmental campaign as a child poster. “The degree of technology that changes the role of the individual in politics and society,” he tells me.
Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, has also announced the fifth wealth to be a good global voice of giving a good person for one time without a doubt. “People who have the power to express themselves on the scale is a new type of strength in the world,” he said in 2019.
That sounds great in theory. But the negative effects of social media have become increasingly surprising: misinformation, incitement to hatred and the emergence of a “restless” “generation of teens. Social media has mutated from a liberation technology in a manipulation. She has eroded the political process and has been abducted by populists against the founding.
A study of 840,537 individuals in 116 countries from 2008 to 2017 found that global expansion of mobile internet tends to reduce government approval. This trend was particularly marked in Europe, undermining support for in office governments and increasing populists against the establishment. “The spread of the mobile internet leads to a decline in government confidence. When the government is corrupt people are more likely to realize that the government is corrupt,” one of Sergei Guriev’s co -authors tells me, now the dean of London Business School, he tells me.
Populist politicians have been quick to exploit the dissatisfaction of voters aroused by social media and use the same technology to mobilize support in free and interactive ways. “It is normal for anti-eelitarians to use new technologies that have not yet been embraced by elites,” Guriev says.
The fifth wealth has probably shocked the old goalkeepers of information in politics and the media. But young digital dealers have appeared to control who sees what online. Trump’s “Buddy” musk I bought twitter, now X, which promotes or demonstrates posts in impassable ways. Free speech absolutists who denounce the moderation and “censoring” of the government often offer cover for more secret forms of algorithm control.
Progressive campaigns admit they are on the back on social media, but they have not abandoned hope. “It is more important than ever to fight for the future. We have to use these tools as we can,” says Bert Wander, chief executive of Avaaz, a global global campaign platform. With 70MN members in 194 countries, Avaaz mobilizes anti -corruption and algorithmic responsibility campaigns, as included in the Law on EU Digital Services. “We have to communicate in Technicolor with all the emotion and resonance used by nationalist populists,” Wander says.
For such progressors, three coercive truths emerge from this debate. The power of the fifth wealth is a disruptive force that is not leaving. Populists have been particularly smart in their use. And to compete, progressors drastically need to increase their game.
john.thornhill@ft.com
