The United States is in the middle of a soft coup. The country is reshaped and restructured under the second administration of Donald Trump. It is not Trump himself, but his special billionaire advisor, head of the Ministry of Government (DOGE), Elon Musk, who guides this change. And in Musk’s America, there is a demography that seems to have found itself at the center of the scene and quickly gain power: “Nerds”.
Indeed, Merry’s Musk’s lie, Young white and white acolytesincluding Gavin Kliger,, Edward CoristineAnd Marko ElezWho has taken control of government systems of several dollars of several dollars, easily adapts to the Nerd mold.
The age of information and the internet era they generated in the 1990s had already seen “Nerds” – clumsy and unattractive men with limited social skills but immense commitment and enthusiasm in technology and STEM – become billionaires and acquire generalized respect and admiration for the delivery of global technologies that change their life. It was, we recalled on several occasions, of the Nerds which first gave us PCs and imacs then iPhones and Androids.
In many articles in technological magazines and in films like Revenge of the Nerds (1984), Oppenheimer (2023), Steve Jobs (2015) and the Social Network (2010), the creatives have described Nerds like the developer of nuclear weapons J Robert Oppenheimer, Steve Jobs d’Apple and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg as subdogs. Popular media has long described such cheesy visionaries as complex people with a huge need to save the world and make a better place.
Three decades ago, Channel 4 of the United Kingdom and the United States Public Radio Service (PBS) broadcast the three-part documentary entitled Triumph of the Nerds. In reference to the computer revolution, the Nerd whole launched between 1975 and 1995, a long -standing technological journalist Robert X Cringly said“The most astonishing thing of all is that it occurred by accident because a group of private lives of their rights wanted to impress their friends.”
This perception of billionaires can now be a deep part of our culture, but the idea that the thieves’ barons of the end of the 20th century have accumulated immense wealth, almost by accident, while to save the world is a ridiculous lie. Especially given the iron fist ways where we know many “Nerd billionaires” – and above all Jobs And Bill Gates – Directed their capitalist companies.
In light of heavy censorship Jeff Bezos And Patrick Soon-Shiong have done the exercise with the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times in recent months, it is obvious that the warned billionaire class of technology also wants to control the flow of truth.
A much better description of the “Nerds” which came to govern America under Trump were given in a single line in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), when Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson), having entered extralegally into the South African consulate, to Arjen Rudd (Joss Ackland) and his Master Race group! ยป.
This quote is much more than a simple reference to doubt Path to American citizenship Through South Africa and Canada. This is the reality that, like the South African henchmen in Lethal Armer 2, the billionaires of technological Nerd such as Musk and the people he employed in Doge believes in apartheid, eugenics and other racist, misogynous and queerphobes paradigms. Of course, many Musc fanboys are engineers, can write and make contributions to Tesla, Spacex and Starlink who lead to important discoveries and inventions useful to humanity. Nevertheless, they also republish tweets on X and other social media platforms who call a woman like a “huzz” or declare “I just want a policy of eugenic immigration, is it too much to ask?”. These are not exactly major role models for a multicultural democracy or for any workforce. And, like white men in general, they do not seem to worry about making people a better place for anyone other than them. They would be too easily agree with Zuckerberg’s ridiculous complaint That the technological world needs more “male energy”, when in fact, white men remain the dominant demography which directs this economic sector.
I was once part of the crazy Nerd world of computer science in the 80s and 1990s. I learned Basic in eighth year, took Pascal in 11th year and passed my first three semesters at the University of Pittsburgh as an IT major before changing my way to become a writer and academic historian. As a work student, I worked in PitT’s computer laboratories for two years. I observed that my equally geek colleagues have made jokes on our classmates “IT IMPLEMENTS” (including the regular use of The word r). I looked at my male counterparts rubbing too close to women who needed them to solve computer problems. And during my last three months of staff, I have experienced sexual and racial harassment of an older white woman, a colleague who groped me twice during work.
Social awkwardness can easily be described as innocent and endearing in a film. But this rarely translates, if never, “gentle” in a world that makes racist, misogynist, queerphobic and xenophobic behaviors by default. Nerds or not, all white men from a white male supremacist society hold a metric ton of racial and gender privilege – a feeling of law which, when not controlled, does not make them different from “cool” white guys. Booger asking Gilbert“Why does she have a penis? – A transphobic reference to her friend who is not revenge for the Nerds – is not very different from Musk declaring that he “lost” his “son” – his separate transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson – to “the awakened virus of the mind”.
There is also the integrated hypothesis that the technologies created by the whole elite Nerd have always been good for the world. Not when Social media Drivered millions of young Americans depressed, anxious and isolated. Not with a New generation of American males Doxxing and commit sex -based sexual abuse against girls and women. Certainly not when the AI plagiarism machines (which is not a real artificial intelligence, anyway) are the tools of choice for people who do not want to develop critical thinking, media mastery and writing skills.
In this world of white male privilege, being a cool athlete and being a dictatorial, the socially clumsy pencil neck is really a distinction without difference. Nerds and their technological breakthroughs were not supposed to empower and enrich their individual worlds for the best. This is why no one in any other Nerd billionaire camp has used their skills to enter Apple or Amazon’s offshore accounts and redistribute billions of dollars to everyday Americans. Nor have they destroyed the student debt of each student in the country. Because in the end, these Nerds also want wealth and power over marginalized people.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.