What is Technofascism?

Artwork by me.

I’m on sabbatical this spring and was studiously avoiding starting any new projects. But the siege of Minneapolis, the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti and Silverio Villeges González and Keith Porter Jr., the detentions of hundreds of Hispanic neighbors in my own Boston/Cambridge region, and all of the reports about ICE spending its war chest on tech to violently police and repress US cities and their residents got me onto thinking about technofascism.

Back in early 2025, when Elon Musk and Mr. Big Balls and the No-Clue Bro Crew were running roughshod over the federal government, I started seeing the word “technofascism” pop up across news articles and podcasts: “The Rise of Techno-Fascism,” “Technofascism comes to America”, “Headed for Technofascism”, “The Technofascist Mind: A Guide to Its Psychology and Philosophy” and even “AI and the Techno-Fascist Nightmare”. The DOGE debacle, Musk’s Nazi salute and the tech-bro dudes lined up dutifully at the presidential inauguration all appeared to be key triggers for pundits to rethink the relationship between Big Tech and government and start discussing technofascism as the word that names that relationship.

Yet, while these relatively recent and spectacular examples of collusion garnered headlines, once I started digging into technofascism as a concept, there is far more to it than simply what has happened since Jan 20, 2025. For example, communications scholar Becca Lew has an exciting forthcoming book on the nascent technofascism of Silicon Valley in the 1980s and 90s. And Janis Mimura has used the term to describe Japan’s distinct form of fascism in the 1930s: an authoritarian, technocratic state that fused its public and private spheres.

I’ve now started a hopefully not-too-ambitious project to research and write a basic explainer on technofascism. The idea is that it will be geared towards the tech community (broadly speaking) and especially young people getting their start in tech and tech-adjacent fields. At MIT, I teach students who are eager to understand how their work in computer science, AI, design, data science and tech can contribute to making the world a better place. They don’t typically come to college to build tools to surveil people, cage people or kill people. We might begin to think about technofascism as a negative design space — how do we avoid doing that?

But before we can design against technofascism, we need a working understanding of what technofascism might mean. Based on my reading and listening so far, I’ve developed the following long-ish definition of technofascism:

In its contemporary form, technofascism describes the collusion of large technology firms, right-wing billionaires, and tech culture with authoritarian and anti-democratic political agendas. This convergence of technological and financial power with fascist state inclinations leads to products that directly threaten multiracial democracy, human life, and the planet: AI and advanced technologies placed in the service of violence, war and military occupation; the surveilling and policing of citizens and residents; the systematic traumatization of public servants; the racialized deportation and internment of migrants; the censorship and silencing of free speech; the devaluing, deskilling, automation and pauperization of workers; and the elevation of misogyny, transphobia, hate speech and mob violence on out-of-control social media platforms.

Technofascism did not begin in 2025. Rather paradoxically, it has its roots in Western liberal democracy: colonial and imperialist systems that were always predicated on human rights for some and conquest and extraction for others. Such regimes regularly used their most advanced technologies to exploit nature, steal land, subjugate women, discipline gender-nonconforming people, and dehumanize racialized populations. Over history, various ideologies emerged to justify such adventures in resource-hoarding. Some of those are still with us: e.g. eugenics, the gender binary, scientism, and the cult of the male genius. Today’s technofascism is acute because it has been exacerbated by extreme wealth inequality, financialization, environmental destruction and billionaire delusion.

What do you think? Drop me a line with comments, readings and resources I should be reviewing as this moves forward.