Re: <nettime> At Doge, AI faith has fully fused with Christian Nationalism

[Felix Stalder via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

On 3/22/25 20:39, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
> JDV does not (yet) say AI is God.

On 3/23/25 06:28, Louis Rawlins via nettime-l wrote:

> Brian, totally with you on "not-yet-fused" but I'd say it's the
> power of what people are being convinced of that matters.
> Propaganda. Agit-prop. We're deep in that phase now.

I don't think this is Agitprop. Yes, there are the entertainers, like 
Trump and Musk, the incompetent loyalists at the top of many federal 
institutions, but this feeds well into a coordinated effort to dismantle 
the federal government. Bannon called for a long time for the 
destruction of the "administrative state". People are getting fired, and 
the rest demoralized.

Then, of course, it depends on what fully-fused means. I think on the 
ground, as a coalition of dismantlement, the difference is pretty 
minimal. They seem quite united in the face of a common enemy, which 
Adam Tooze recently identified as the "professional managerial class", 
who not only provided the core of the Democratic Party, but also the 
expertise within liberal institutions. From this perspective, the twin 
attacks on federal institutions and universities makes a lot of sense.

There are also a lot of ideological, or at least vibey, connections 
between right-wing tech-culture and Christian nationalism, ranging from 
nativism/family values, incel/patriarchy, sea-steadying/self-sufficient 
religious communities, social automation/authoritarianism, to 
singularity/rupture. The list could probably go on and would need to 
include white supremacy prominently.

There is a long argument about much of advanced technology being a form 
of secular religion -- like when people asked astronauts if they had 
seen god, or when tech-bros speak immortality through "hacking death". 
And even if people like JDV do not call AI good, the only cultural model 
we have for AGI is, well, god.

So, in terms of forming an agent capable of coherent destructive action, 
I think these two forces are pretty well-aligned.

Whether they are fused enough to agree on a vision of re-construction, I 
doubt, but perhaps this is not necessary, at least in the short- to 
media term. You can already see how different groups are getting their 
agendas satisfied in ways that seem to give each what they want (say, 
access to military budgets), while not being too much bothered by what 
the other gets (say, destruction of the Department of Education). Plus a 
hefty dose of symbolic cruelty for rest, say, destruction of USAID and 
deportation to El Salvador (these are, of course, not symbolic for the 
people affected, on the contrary, but for the people perpetrating it, in 
the sense that they are not affected by the consequences).


If that enough in the longer perspective, I doubt, but we don't know. 
The carcass of the American state is large enough to have a lot of red 
meat to keep the coalition together, and the filter bubbles are closed 
enough to explain away when the inevitable negative consequences reach 
the base, as you can already see with the outbreak of infectious 
diseases due to low rates of vaccinations.




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