Our eyes do not deceive us: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is going full MAGA.
After releasing a chilling video announcing that Facebook, Instagram and other Meta companies will unleash a firehose of fascist disinformation on their platforms, Zuckerberg went — where else? — on Joe Rogan's podcast to celebrate. Complete with his new frat daddy look, Zuckerberg raved about how he thinks the "corporate world" has been "culturally neutered" and complained about being "surrounded by girls and women." He praised "masculine energy" and said a culture that "celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive." He claimed he's not trying to exclude women, but then immediately pivoted to romanticizing his "masculine" martial arts training space, which is presumably segregated by gender.
There's been a lot of media discourse about the more gossipy aspects of Zuckerberg's MAGA makeover. He does seem to have undergone several personal changes, picking up mixed martial arts fighting, dressing like an obnoxious dudebro — complete with gold chains — and talking like a masculinity grifter. He's giving off so much "divorced guy" energy — think Ben Affleck or Kanye West — that social media platforms are abuzz with speculation that Zuckerberg's wife, who he met in college, has left him. Truly, the try-hard nature of Zuckerberg's posturing is so embarrassing it's hard to look away from.
But, as with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen and other tech billionaires, the pivot to MAGA isn't just about overgrown nerds trying (and failing) to compensate for high school insecurities. It also seems to be fueled by a deep loathing of the very people who have made these capitalists their money: the fleets of mostly desk workers who make the companies run.
Musk frequently rants on X about the "elites," a word he uses almost exclusively to describe college-educated professionals who draw middle-class or upper-middle-class incomes, i.e. the class of people doing the work that makes him rich. Yes, it's people who can often afford home ownership or summer vacations, but they still have to work for a living. Most make less in a year than Musk or Zuckerberg spend in a single trip to Mar-a-Lago. The war on "woke" is ultimately a war on workers.
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Like Musk before him, Zuckerberg appears to resent the people who work for him and make him rich. Zuckerberg's raving about how he wants more "masculine energy" and complaints that corporate culture is "neutered" are being celebrated by MAGA as a swipe at diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. These programs are dismissed by the right as "woke" and "virtue-signaling." The more mundane truth, however, is that DEI is part of a larger effort to attract talented employees by making workplaces welcoming and comfortable. A culture that "celebrates aggression," as Zuckerberg put it, sounds miserable for people who actually have to show up. Most adults just want to get their job done and aren't interested in chest-bumping, childish bullying, or feeling like they have to compare MMA stats to fit in.
It's playing into the hands of oligarchs to reject the needs of middle class workers.
That Trump's incoming administration is eager to downplay the importance of workers was revealed Thursday during the confirmation hearing for Scott Bessent, Trump's pick to head the Treasury Department. Citing Musk, Zuckerberg and other tech billionaires cozying up to Trump, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asked Bessent, "Would you agree with President Biden that an oligarchy is taking shape in America?"
Bessent replied, "The billionaires you listed make the money themselves." It was not only a non sequitur — where the money comes from is not the measure of whether rich people controlling government constitutes oligarchy — but it is also a flat-out lie. Thousands upon thousands of people work for these tech billionaires, churning out code, maintaining systems and running the business. Musk and Zuckerberg may not want to admit it, but they couldn't make a dime without those people.
Meanwhile the more authoritarian, anti-worker regime at Meta has already kicked off. As the New York Times reported earlier this week, "Meta typically" invites "employees, civic leaders and others to weigh in" before a big policy change, but not this time. The new policies allowing more disinformation and hate speech on the platform were sprung on "most of Meta’s 72,000 employees" during the public announcement. The unwillingness to involve employees in the decision-making process has resulted in policies that don't just degrade the platforms. Employees complained "training materials that Meta created for the new policies were confusing and contradictory." For instance, Facebook users still cannot say "white people have mental illness," but they can say "gay people have mental illness."
There's been a crackdown on free speech within Meta since the announcement. The company deleted messages on its internal communications system that criticized newly appointed board member Dana White, a Trump-loving professional fighter who was taped hitting his wife. The company locked down access to policies and training materials, to prevent workers from sharing them with the press. There have also been obnoxious moves that read as evident slights to employees, such as removing tampons from men's rooms, which serves no other purpose than to signal to trans people they aren't equal at Meta. Zuckerberg also announced he's moving the company's moderation teams from California to Texas, where, he argues, "there’s less concern about the bias of our teams." This means forcing people to leave a state that is friendly to human rights to move to one that bans abortion and restricts queer-inclusive health care. Even for those who don't move, the message is loud and clear: Zuckerberg is signaling his contempt for their professionalism and intelligence.
Zuckerberg may want to frame the "neutered" environment of his offices in gendered terms that resonate with the psychosexual hang-ups of Trump voters, but in truth, it's not really about sex at all. It's about a more boring but necessary goal: meeting the needs of everyday workers, regardless of gender, race, or sexual identity. Most people just want a peaceful place to do their job, plus a pay and benefits package that helps them meet their life goals outside of work. It's not "woke" that makes Silicon Valley workers spend their days wearing khakis, drinking coffee, and being generally pleasant to each other, instead of exhibiting "masculine energy" and "aggression." Basic common sense dictates that chill, congenial workplaces are better for morale and productivity. Everyday niceness may not be as exciting as beating people up at a martial arts gym, but it is what actually made Zuckerberg his money.
"Zuckerberg blamed his former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, for an inclusivity initiative at Facebook that encouraged employees’ self-expression in the workplace," the New York Times reported Thursday. "He said new guidelines and a series of layoffs amounted to a reset and that more changes were coming."
Zuckerberg's former COO Sheryl Sandberg got a lot of grief, much of it well-deserved, for her "Lean In" book and its watered-down, individualistic approach to feminism. But while she will never be considered a great feminist thinker, her strategy made her a success at her actual job: attracting top-level talent to Facebook and later Meta. Her "feminine" approach, which Zuckerberg seems so ashamed of now, focused on making employees feel valued and acknowledging that workers are full human beings, not just cogs. So the company provides healthy benefits and salaries, on-site gyms, food, wellness centers, and varied transportation options. I agree with the cynic's take that this is all so they get more work out of people. It's also fair to say that it's a sight better than many alternatives, which expect maximum work without helping employees minimize stressors at home.
Zuckerberg may now see those efforts to address work-life balance and inclusivity as emasculating and "woke," but it's not about gender. The stereotypical bachelor computer programmer also enjoys having free restaurants to eat at, rather than sadly microwaving a burrito at home for dinner. But pretending it's about masculinity is a good way to distract from the mundane fact that, like a stereotypical capitalist parasite, Zuckerberg has adopted a hostile posture towards his own workers. Perhaps, like so many of the hyper-rich before him, he doesn't like being reminded that, without his staff, he would be nothing.
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In his farewell speech to the nation Wednesday, President Joe Biden compared the "rise of a tech-industrial complex" to the robber barons of the 19th and 20th centuries. He warned that "the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people" threatens not just democracy, but the basic rights of workers "to earn their fair share." The increasingly ugly attitude that tech billionaires take towards their own employees is a troubling indicator of this.
We saw this already at X, formerly Twitter, where Musk, having stereotyped middle class workers as "elites" not deserving of respect, felt justified in stripping them of basic workers' rights. He demanded they work long overtime hours without pay or sleep, insisting they work 84 hours a week while he sits around and tweets. He disregarded their expertise, abused them verbally and made the situation so intolerable that many were forced to leave. He made them betray their basic values by catering to neo-Nazis and other scum that he let loose on Twitter. One reason he wants a carveout for H1B visas in the expected immigration crackdown is because he can use threats of deportation to extract high-intensity work for low pay from immigrant employees.
Because the desk workers of Silicon Valley are middle class, they don't rate much sympathy in the current political discourse, which is far more focused on the partisan tug-of-war for working-class voters. But it's playing into the hands of oligarchs to reject the needs of middle class workers. The real battle is between working people, whether college-educated or not, and the hyper-wealthy, who want to suck up all the money for themselves and leave the people who do the actual labor behind. People like Musk and Zuckerberg save their rhetorical fire for the middle class desk workers who staff their companies, but the efforts to redistribute money upwards will hurt everyone, the working class most of all. This was also demonstrated during Bessent's hearing, when he rejected a call to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at a paltry $7.25 an hour since 2009. The chatter about "woke" is an effort to distract Americans from a simple fact: the desk worker and the factory worker have way more in common with each other than they do with the capitalist leaders who make money on their backs. And the tech billionaires now cozying up to Donald Trump are not friends to any of us.
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