JD Vance spoke this week at the American Dynamism Summit in Washington. He recalled a Silicon Valley dinner where he and his wife Usha attended. He became Vice President. There, there was talk of machines that replace people in the workforce. According to Vance, the unnamed CEO of one huge tech company said that future unemployment can still find purpose in a completely immersive digital game. “We have to get hell out of here. These people are crazy,” Usha texted him under the table.
Why Vance thought it was a good idea to tell this story, given that it contradicts the central theme of his speech, but at least he laughed. As Usha Vance colorfully implies, the worldview of techno-libertarians and ordinary workers looks hostile. However, her husband’s main message was against it. That means the technology sector and ordinary workers had a common interest in promoting the “great American industrial renaissance.”
Vance’s speech was a clear attempt to reconcile the two fighting wings of President Donald Trump’s political movement: the Olihead, the high-tech brothers led by Elon Musk, or the magazine nationalists animated by Broligarki and Steve Bannon. Bannon denounces globalist technical leaders as anti-Americans, describing Musk as “truly evil” and “parasitic illegal immigrants.”
Vance declared himself a “prideful member of both tribes.” He may be right that Musk and Bannon have many similarities despite their exciting differences. They are both elitist anti-elitists with a common mission to overturn the power of administrative states and mainstream press.
Historians once described three ancient power estates as clergy, nobles and common people. The fourth real estate – the media – was added later. And the fifth estate – social media – has emerged ever since. However, the fifth property can be seen as a software update for the third estate. They are common people armed with smartphones. In that view, Bannon may be the third real estate tribune, but Musk is the fifth champion. In the Trump movement, the two are fused together.
In his book The Fifth Estate, William Dutton argued that social media represents the power of a new positive form that allows individuals to access alternative sources and mobilize collective action. He sees Greta Samberg, a Swedish high school girl who emerged as a global environmental activist, as the child on the poster. “It’s the scale of technology that changes the role of individuals in politics and society,” he says.
Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg declared that the fifth property is the global public interest that gives voice to those who have never had a voice. “People who have the power to express themselves on a large scale are a new kind of force in the world,” he said in 2019.
It all sounds great in theory. However, the negative effects of social media have become increasingly impressive. Misinformation, incitement to hatred, and the emergence of a “anxious generation” of teenagers. Social media has been mutated from the technology of liberation into one of the manipulations. It corroded the political process and was hijacked by anti-establishment populists.
One survey of 840,537 individuals in 116 countries between 2008 and 2017 found that the global expansion of the mobile internet tends to reduce government approval. This trend was particularly prominent in Europe, undermining support for the incumbent government and boosting anti-establishment populists. “The spread of the mobile internet leads to a decline in trust in the government. When the government is corrupted, people are more likely to understand that it is corrupt,” one co-author of Sergei Griev, currently the dean of the London Business School, told me.
Populist politicians quickly leveraged voter complaints invoked by social media and used the same technology to mobilize support in an inexpensive and interactive way. “It’s normal for anti-elite politicians to use new technologies that are not yet accepted by elites,” says Guriev.
The fifth estate certainly rattles old gatekeepers of political and media information. But the new digital gatekeeper has revealed who controls what they see on the Internet. Trump’s “First Buddy” mask has now purchased the X. The free-thing absolutists who denounce moderation and government “censorship” often cover a more insidious form of algorithmic control.
Progressive campaigners acknowledge that they are behind on social media, but they have not given up hope. “Fighting for the future is more important than ever, and we need to use these tools as much as possible,” said Bert Wander, CEO of Avaaz, a crowdfunded global campaign platform. With 700,000 members in 194 countries, Avaaz is mobilizing actions against corruption and algorithmic accountability, as included in the EU’s Digital Services Act. “We need to communicate in technicolor all the emotions and resonances used by nationalist populists,” Wonder says.
For such a progressive person, three brave truths emerge from this argument. The fifth power of property is an indelible destructive force. Populists were particularly clever to use it. And to compete, progressives need to dramatically raise their game.
john.thornhill@ft.com
