{"id":15397,"date":"2024-08-03T15:38:13","date_gmt":"2024-08-03T13:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/03\/silicon-valleys-trump-supporters-are-dicing-with-the-death-of-democracy-john-naughton\/"},"modified":"2024-08-03T15:38:13","modified_gmt":"2024-08-03T13:38:13","slug":"silicon-valleys-trump-supporters-are-dicing-with-the-death-of-democracy-john-naughton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2024\/08\/03\/silicon-valleys-trump-supporters-are-dicing-with-the-death-of-democracy-john-naughton\/","title":{"rendered":"Silicon Valley\u2019s Trump supporters are dicing with the death of democracy | John Naughton"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2016, some said comparisons between the rises of Trump and Hitler were misguided. But as tech\u2019s titans donate millions, worrying new parallels emerge<\/p>\n

In How Democracy Ends<\/a><\/em>, his elegant book published after Trump\u2019s election in 2016, David Runciman made a startling point. It was that while the liberal democracy that we take for granted won\u2019t last for ever, it will not fail in ways familiar from the past: no revolutions, no military coups, no breakdowns of social order. It will fail forwards<\/em> in an unexpected manner. The implication was that people making comparisons to what happened in 1930s Germany were misguided.<\/p>\n

Until a few weeks ago, that seemed like sound advice. But then something changed. Significant sectors of Silicon Valley \u2013 which for decades had been a Democrat stronghold \u2013 started coming out for Trump. In 2016, Peter Thiel, the contrarian billionaire and co-founder of PayPal, had been the only prominent Valley figure to support Trump, which merely confirmed the fact that he was the region\u2019s statutory maverick. But in the past few weeks, quite a few of the Valley\u2019s big hitters (Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen and David Sacks, to name just three) have revealed themselves to be supporters of \u2013 and donors to \u2013 Trump. Musk has set up and donated to a Republican-aligned political action committee<\/a> (or Super Pac). On 6 June, the venture capitalist Sacks hosted a $300,000-a-plate fundraising dinner for Trump at his San Francisco mansion. And so on.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nIn 2016, some said comparisons between the rises of Trump and Hitler were misguided. But as tech\u2019s titans donate millions, worrying new parallels emerge
\nIn How Democracy Ends, his elegant book published after Trump\u2019s election in 2016, David Runciman made a startling point. It was that while the liberal democracy that we take for granted won\u2019t last for ever, it will not fail in ways familiar from the past: no revolutions, no military coups, no breakdowns of social order. It will fail forwards in an unexpected manner. The implication was that people making comparisons to what happened in 1930s Germany were misguided.
\nUntil a few weeks ago, that seemed like sound advice. But then something changed. Significant sectors of Silicon Valley \u2013 which for decades had been a Democrat stronghold \u2013 started coming out for Trump. In 2016, Peter Thiel, the contrarian billionaire and co-founder of PayPal, had been the only prominent Valley figure to support Trump, which merely confirmed the fact that he was the region\u2019s statutory maverick. But in the past few weeks, quite a few of the Valley\u2019s big hitters (Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen and David Sacks, to name just three) have revealed themselves to be supporters of \u2013 and donors to \u2013 Trump. Musk has set up and donated to a Republican-aligned political action committee (or Super Pac). On 6 June, the venture capitalist Sacks hosted a $300,000-a-plate fundraising dinner for Trump at his San Francisco mansion. And so on. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2016, some said comparisons between the rises of Trump and Hitler were misguided. But as tech\u2019s titans donate millions, worrying new parallels emerge In How Democracy Ends, his elegant book published after Trump\u2019s election in 2016, David Runciman made a startling point. It was that while the liberal democracy that we take for granted …<\/p>\n

Silicon Valley\u2019s Trump supporters are dicing with the death of democracy | John Naughton<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15397"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}