Rosa Luxemburg wrote that the world will turn red in one way or another. Either in socialism or in the barbarism of blood. In the midst of the First World War, she not only gave expression to the excesses of capitalism and a fundamental apocalyptic experience; she vehemently insisted on the alternative. Shortly after the inauguration of Donald Trump in the USA and the elections in Germany, we are inaugurating a special series of debates based on the patron saint of the Volksbühne, Rosa Luxemburg, which dares to outline an alternative in apocalyptic times.
The series begins with a reflection on a completely new quality of politics, which is initially coming to a head in the USA: the unification of political power and tech capital. President Donald Trump is not only acting like a globalised Medici. The acronym of the anti-regulatory agency (Department of Government Efficiency) founded by Elon Musk (rocket builder, operator of a digital world medium and billionaire) is certainly not an accident: DOGE.
The modern versions of the Medici family clan and the Doge are gathering currently around them the influential tech companies such as META, Google and Amazon. Just last year, the former head of the NSA was appointed to the board of OpenAI. Everyone knows: Big data not only means potential access to information about people, but also the ability to manipulate it. Tech in the hands of politics – currently: the global right – is an extremely effective instrument of power of unprecedented dimensions. Whoever has the means of communication potentially controls elections!
We talk to acclaimed specialists about the threat of Techno-Fascism, which has already found its way from Silicon Valley to Germany through the personal connection between Elon Musk and the AfD. What are already now possible technological scenarios? Has cognitive warfare against our own population already begun? Will the Neo-Medicis perhaps not even have to abolish elections in the future, as they can perform them technically and design them in a large-scale democracy simulation? What alternatives are there?