Gen Z Tech Bros Have No History
Thoughts on the Silicon Valley pipeline to civilizational conflict
I published the following post almost exactly a year ago. At the time, I think it was likely received as stray thoughts, like, “Who cares about reactionary youth culture!? Pump foreign policy takes into my veins!” Well, now those right-wing youths are the corner boys of America’s tech oligarchy, capitalizing on a new permanent war economy and seizing the means of state administration. It’s worth revisiting their cultural composition since its influence is about to spread.
At least some of the kids may not be all right after all. And it’s not because of the “devil’s music” or too much weed—it’s because of a structurally broken economy and a lack of history.
Not long ago, the Washington Post had an excellent story about the changing culture of Silicon Valley. As much as I’ve always been a bit repulsed by tech-bro culture, what the piece reports is not a change for the better.
Contrary to the image of wealthy utopians sporting hoodies, All Birds, and introverts on the spectrum, a different kind of tech bro is becoming more common. One who:
sports a hipster mullet, Nike high-tops, and a casual swagger — an aesthetic he refers to as “Americana.”
The tech firms that have setup in El Segundo, the sleepy town of A Tribe Called Quest fame, have rendered it into:
a haven for a growing scene of deadlifting, nicotine gum-chewing, energy-drink chugging founders of space, energy, and drone start-ups seeking to bring cool back to American manufacturing.
And it’s not just an aesthetic thing.
The marriage of oligarchs and ethnonationalists that has been taking form the past decade or so is spawning a culture that supports it. The right-wing signifiers of the bro culture that dominates the world of mixed martial arts, gun ranges, and unironic camouflage are converging with an edgier tech culture that shares those sensibilities.
These cultural changes are downstream of a nationalist-oriented shift in patterns of capital accumulation. And a prerequisite for sustaining the culture that buoys economic nationalism is an ignorance—or romanticization—of history.
Let me explain.