What They Always Wanted: Zuckerberg, Trump, and the New Normal

They're not "obeying in advance." They're relieved. They're all-in.

This article is free for educational purposes, but unfortunately our media does not platform or support actual critiques of power or capitalism. Dispatches From A Collapsing State relies on your support. Become a subscriber today to keep this project going and to gain access to exclusive content, including the ongoing Audio From A Collapsing State series, which provides strategies for mobilization, organizing, and preparing for the incoming administration

---

Every damn day. Every damn day we are inundated and swamped with more and more absurdity and more and more indignities. This has been the case for a very long time, but it is only escalating and accelerating now.

This morning, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a video announcing that his platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, will be more or less dismantling their content moderation and fact-checking apparatuses. For those who haven’t seen it yet, you can view the statement below.

Zuckerberg has been on a speed-run of sorts lately. His rebranding, including a new, more obnoxious look, has been coupled with a sweaty obsession with mixed martial arts, including his recent naming of UFC CEO Dana White to Meta’s Board of Directors, and a “new” stance on Donald Trump, an effort that began with calling Trump “badass” following the assassination attempt in July.

Today’s statement included a slew of troubling developments. Rationalizing that Meta’s moderation had included “too many mistakes,” Zuckerberg announced an end to the company’s attempts to curb disinformation and hate, the moving of key components of content moderation to Texas, where Zuckerberg said there would be less concern of “bias.” In a telling moment, he referred to the results of the 2024 Election as a “cultural tipping point.”

Many are reacting to all of this by accusing Zuckerberg of obeying in advance or capitulating to Trump and Elon Musk. That phrasing has some merit, but also obscures a larger truth that we must recognize.

Zuckerberg and Facebook never wanted to moderate their content or curb disinformation. They prioritized it. Profited from it. It wasn’t until they became the focus of outrage following the 2016 Election and a whole host of other disastrous consequences of this strategy that they began embracing the veneer of actually moderating their platforms, an effort that was lackluster and just for show from the beginning.

Believing that Zuckerberg and his cohorts in the tech oligarchical class are showering Trump in millions of dollars or somehow changing their behaviors because they’re “afraid” of him keeps us from recognizing the larger truth: this is who they are.

The tech capture of the economy, culture, economy, and politics is almost complete, and it has been based on antidemocratic and destructive strategies. Any notion of reform or moderation was always a cover, a convenient thing to say when they were inevitably hauled in front of Congress for a showy dressing down that meant less than nothing. Because the government is fundamentally intertwined with Big Tech and relies on them to carry out everything from logistics to surveillance to military operations, there has never been a real challenge to their authority. Everything we see, from forceful questioning to statements denouncing the oligarchs, has been carefully carried out to avoid actual friction in favor of continued relationships. All the while, the oligarchs have been allowed to gobble up more and more of their competition, hoard more resources, and consolidate more power.

In other words, Zuckerberg put on a show and there’s no need for the show anymore.

Following Trump’s victory in 2016, and considering he lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College, there was a cultural reaction that prioritized resistance to patriarchal abuse and intentional inequality. It was a gesture with little in the way of actual political ramifications as the people who profited and benefited from these things continued on unabated with maybe a little discomfort. Corporations licked their fingers and checked the prevailing winds. They understood the vast majority of Americans were opposed to Trump and found him morally repellent. They marketed products and entertainments to those people, selling them a fantasy of an America that was progressing and becoming fairer. They armored themselves with diversity statements and press releases trumpeting principles they didn’t actually hold.

Zuckerberg followed suit. For a few years he hid behind carefully-worded statements and campaigns claiming he was taking the concern seriously. And, like many others in the wealth and oligarchical class, he was celebrated by people hoping that the powerful would change and the world would change. He never meant any of it, and we’ve seen as much from leaks and whistleblowers within the corporation. What happened this morning wasn’t a bending of the knee. It was a reading of the wind. It was the revealing of who Zuckerberg actually is.

This isn’t a threat. It’s an opportunity.

When we view everything through the lens of capitulation or obeying in advance, we obscure the actual nature of capitalism and authoritarianism. Many people are going to be intimidated into going along with the authoritarians. They’ll have pressure put on them, violence visited upon them, the weight of the state applied against them. Others will recognize the advantage of working with the authoritarians.

Here, and this is the same case as watching Jeff Bezos, Apple, and other tech oligarchs just blatantly handing Trump millions of dollars, is an example of how this oligarchical system works. Within the upper ranks, there is a solidarity among the wealth class. They’re fighting for the same things - deregulation, continued consolidation of resources and wealth, the destruction of the social safety net, the total takeover of representative government and the economy - and have incredible class solidarity. Because we do not have class consciousness in America, and because our news and media platforms are controlled by the wealth class, we are left to view all of this through the lens of “good actors” and “bad actors,” a type of court drama atmosphere in which we, so alienated from power, are left to view these powerful individuals as characters in a larger morality play.

Simply put, Zuckerberg didn’t bend the knee. He and the other tech oligarchs are relieved that Trump was elected because they did not want to function in an environment where regulation was necessary and they know that Musk, as one of their own, is now largely in charge of the federal government and one of the two major parties. There will be moments in which Trump and Musk force oligarchs to capitulate. We’ve seen this in Russia, where Vladimir Putin has imprisoned oligarchs who refused to play ball or simply had them eliminated altogether. But this is just a relieved sigh by Zuckerberg as he is freed to do what he wanted to do all along.

The Neoliberal Era, and particularly the last two decades, has been defined by a Democratic Party and liberal insistence that the tech world was “on our side.” This was rooted in the educated nature of their work and the need for their “new economy” to bolster Neoliberal projects and continued growth. This was never true. Silicon Valley’s ascent as the new industrialists was always grounded in antidemocratic ideology and a desire to break the old order and control the new one. Democrats saw what they wanted to see as they as they prepared to reap what they believed would be the benefits of the New Economy. They refused to regulate this industry in favor of “market solutions,” gifting these people all the power and all the support they would ever need in becoming a historically wealth class.

What they unleashed was a new era of aggrievement, danger, instability, and austerity. And then, instead of getting credit, the oligarchs turned on the Democratic Party and latched onto authoritarianism, because it was always in their benefit.

We’re now watching the next step in this obvious evolution. Moderate liberals who facilitated this transfer of wealth and power are being obliterated in elections and in political trends, and the authoritarian Right, under the full capture of the oligarchs, are sweeping in in order to carry out the agendas of this class. It isn’t something to be reformed. Zuckerberg and his ilk won’t suddenly become “allies” again if the tide turns. They were never allies. They were never on your side. They were always on their side. And this is the truth of class politics that constantly gets obscured and hidden from us.

You cannot rely on the rich and powerful to simply ally themselves with you or represent your interests because your interests are not their own. Their profit and their power relies on eliminating your interests while creating enough propaganda and controlling communications to the point of convincing you otherwise.

That’s it.

The entire game.

And until we recognize that and work to find our own power together, this cycle will continue on unabated.

Resources

• Beginning to Resist: Thoughts on how we, as individuals, should spend the months leading up to the second Trump presidency and preparing for the cruel austerity his wealth class donors are going to unleash.

• What the Hell is Going On: Here is an explainer regarding our present circumstances for anyone who has had a feeling that the traditional Democrat / Republican / Red / Blue narrative was hiding something. Here, we go through the problems in the United States and how the wealth class has effectively put itself in a position to totally takeover our government.

• The Oligarchical Order: A primer on how to give up conventional and failed political understandings in favor of seeing how capitalism directs the course of events and where it is leading and what to expect.

• Authoritarianism and the Crisis of Meaning: Here we get into how consumerism represents an addictive drug that has hollowed out our sense of purpose, leaving us to take this as a moment of self-reflection, recognize that we have effectively been made to hate and doubt ourselves, thereby keeping us from realizing we deserve better.

• Americans Should Learn From South Koreans: The attempted coup in South Korea serves as an incredible example for how popular mobilization among the population can change the political paradigm and undermine authoritarian power grabs. We should pay attention and take heed.

• A Thoroughly Confused Country: Americans have little in the way of class consciousness, which was an intentional state desired by the wealth class. This primer gets into the class makeup of the United States, including contradictions and motivations, that will be crucial in understanding as we do our work.

• Authoritarianism as Clarity: As authoritarians take power, the world becomes a lot clearer. We can see who we can trust and who we shouldn’t. This episode gets into the history of Vichy France and the lessons we can learn on how to operate as individuals within an authoritarian environment.

• Fostering Hope in Hard Times: Some thoughts on how to maintain hope as authoritarianism sweeps in.

• Preparing For the Storm: A few thoughts on what you should be doing here in the beginning of the year to prepare yourself mentally, emotionally, and in terms of security.

• Understanding the Enemy: A guide through the evolution of capitalism from free markets to its current evolving form - oligarchical authoritarianism, as well as insights into how our politics has made this change happen and moments in which the evolution has been curbed.