By Cliff Potts
WPS.News

As the United States edges toward another realignment of political power, one possibility looms large: the Democratic neoliberals, having survived the Trump era, might once again seek “stability” through partnership with the same technology elites who helped finance and normalize authoritarian politics. The result could be a hybrid system that wears a democratic face but operates like a managed oligarchy—a merger of Silicon Valley efficiency and neoliberal complacency.

Such an alliance would promise order but deliver entrenchment. It would stabilize the markets while hollowing out democracy. For a nation already fractured by inequality and disinformation, it would be the equivalent of pouring concrete over a crack in the foundation—clean on the surface, crumbling beneath.

The Illusion of Restoration

Democratic centrists have always positioned themselves as the “adults in the room,” a stabilizing force after conservative chaos. Following the collapse of Trump’s second-term movement, that instinct would intensify. Expect rhetoric about national healing, public-private cooperation, and restoring normalcy. In practice, this means inviting the same tech billionaires—Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and their networks—back into the policy process under the guise of modernization.

The pattern is familiar. After the 2008 financial crash, neoliberal Democrats rebuilt the system using the same Wall Street figures who had just wrecked it (Stiglitz, 2019). In the 2020s, the pivot will be toward Silicon Valley and defense tech. “Innovation” will replace “reform” as the buzzword, while privacy, labor, and antitrust concerns are quietly shelved.

This is how American technocracy rehabilitates itself: it launders ideology through progress.

The New Technocratic Order

The tech elite’s pivot away from Trumpist politics will not be repentance—it will be rebranding. The neoreactionary “Dark Enlightenment” ideas of figures like Curtis Yarvin, who advocated corporate monarchy as a replacement for democracy, will be softened into “efficient governance” or “algorithmic rationality” (New Yorker, 2025). The goal is the same: remove public oversight from public power.

Neoliberal Democrats, eager for economic calm and campaign cash, will embrace this rhetoric. They will frame it as a “third way” between chaos and socialism. The result: a government-corporate complex that combines surveillance infrastructure, AI policy, and finance into a self-regulating ecosystem insulated from democratic challenge.

Critics such as Shoshana Zuboff have warned that surveillance capitalism creates “a new power structure defined by total knowledge and asymmetric control” (Zuboff, 2019). Under a neoliberal–tech alliance, that power becomes bipartisan—no longer the tool of a rogue right-wing movement, but the architecture of governance itself.

How Corporate Fascism Goes Blue

In this scenario, the language changes but the incentives don’t.

Under Trump, authoritarian power came wrapped in nationalism and chaos. Under a neoliberal restoration, it would come wrapped in competence and calm. Instead of mobs storming the Capitol, you’d see boards of directors rewriting the rules of citizenship. Instead of mass rallies, algorithmic nudging would shape public opinion.

This is how authoritarianism evolves in the digital age: it stops shouting and starts optimizing.

Corporate actors, facing the risk of populist backlash, will prefer a steady hand in Washington. Neoliberal policymakers—obsessed with stability and GDP growth—will welcome them. The fusion of state and tech is not accidental; it’s systemic. When both parties rely on the same billionaire class for campaign funding, deregulation becomes a bipartisan reflex.

That’s how Facebook became “essential communication infrastructure.” That’s how Palantir won defense contracts while facilitating surveillance of migrants and protesters. And that’s how data collection—initially sold as consumer convenience—becomes a political weapon.

The Squeeze on the American Middle

The casualties of this new order are predictable. When the cost of stability is collaboration with monopolies, the public pays in freedom, wages, and dignity.

Economically, the pattern is entrenched inequality. Automation and AI-driven logistics eliminate millions of mid-skill jobs. Wages stagnate while shareholder profits soar. The gig economy metastasizes into the norm. “Innovation” becomes an excuse for exploitation.

Politically, citizens lose representation. Campaigns become algorithmic psyops targeting behavioral data harvested by private corporations. Voter outreach turns into predictive manipulation. Policy priorities are determined not by need, but by what keeps the attention economy profitable.

Socially, the divide widens between a digital aristocracy that owns the platforms and a precariat that merely scrolls through them.

How Power Protects Itself

When elites consolidate power, the first casualty is accountability. A neoliberal–tech coalition would deploy the tools of intelligence and media control to insulate itself from scrutiny. Expect the following:

  1. Selective Enforcement: Legal systems will prosecute only fringe extremists while shielding corporate enablers.
  2. Regulatory Capture: Federal agencies will be staffed by former tech executives and venture-capital lawyers.
  3. Data Sovereignty: New “national security” laws will criminalize whistleblowing and encrypt financial secrecy.
  4. Deplatforming as Policy: Algorithms will quietly throttle dissenting voices while claiming neutrality.

By 2030, this could amount to what political theorist Sheldon Wolin once described as “inverted totalitarianism”—a system where democracy persists in form but vanishes in substance (Wolin, 2008).

Populism Will Mutate, Not Die

When both parties serve the same oligarchic base, political opposition evolves into something rawer—and more dangerous. The working-class populism that fueled Trumpism will not vanish; it will radicalize. Leftist labor movements and right-wing anti-establishment groups could converge around shared resentment of elite manipulation.

This “horseshoe effect” produces unpredictable alliances: socialists and libertarians protesting together against surveillance; anti-war veterans marching alongside climate activists; online collectives bypassing traditional media entirely. If the system fails to deliver economic justice, these movements will gain momentum—and the establishment will label them “domestic extremists.”

The irony is bitter: the more the neoliberal state merges with corporate power, the more it creates the conditions for genuine revolution.

The Global Domino Effect

America exports its ideology through capital. If neoliberal Democrats normalize a partnership with authoritarian tech, the world will follow suit. The European Union, eager to compete with U.S. innovation, will relax digital regulations. Authoritarian governments in Asia and the Gulf will adopt American-style “AI governance.” Emerging democracies will be pressured into signing data-sharing agreements that transfer control of their citizens’ information to U.S. and Chinese corporations.

This is the rise of market-based autocracy—a world system where elections exist, but power resides in code and capital.

The Progressive Dilemma

Progressives and anti-fascist organizers face a brutal choice: work within the neoliberal machine to mitigate harm, or build a parallel movement that risks marginalization.

The first path—collaboration—means being absorbed into the system. The second path—resistance—means surveillance, defunding, and ridicule. But it is also the only path that preserves democratic legitimacy.

Grassroots efforts like union organizing, digital-privacy activism, and anti-surveillance litigation will be the frontline defense against technocratic capture. These movements must stay decentralized, transparent, and disciplined. Non-violence is crucial; it robs the state of justification for repression.

What Comes Next

If neoliberal Democrats once again crawl into bed with the tech-fascist establishment, the outcome will not be fascism in jackboots—it will be fascism in loafers. Smooth, data-driven, polite. A system that smiles as it audits you.

The longer-term consequences are foreseeable:

  • Democratic Disillusionment: Voter participation collapses as citizens realize elections are performance art.
  • Economic Fragmentation: Local cooperatives, cryptocurrency, and community banks emerge as refuges from the corporate state.
  • Institutional Crisis: Courts and Congress lose moral authority as corporate money dictates outcomes.
  • Cultural Breakdown: A generation raised on surveillance and branding loses faith in truth itself.

And yet, history suggests that repression breeds resistance. When both parties betray the public, new movements arise from the margins. The question is whether they will be democratic or destructive.

The Hope That Survives

Amid the cynicism, there remains a path forward. It begins with redistributing power—digitally, economically, and politically. That means campaign-finance reform, breaking up monopolies, codifying data rights, and taxing capital gains like labor. It means building public-interest technology that serves citizens instead of manipulating them.

If the next Democratic administration truly wants to defend democracy, it must break its addiction to elite donors and corporate consultants. Otherwise, it will become what it once vowed to oppose: a polished mask for authoritarian capital.

In the end, democracy doesn’t die from coups. It dies from deals.

References

Chomsky, N. (2024). Neoliberalism and its Discontents. Monthly Review Press.
Giridharadas, A. (2023). The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy. Knopf.
New Yorker. (2025, June 9). The Rise of Curtis Yarvin and the Tech Reactionaries. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/curtis-yarvin-profile
Stiglitz, J. (2019). People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent. W.W. Norton.
Wolin, S. (2008). Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton University Press.
Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs.

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