Gilded Rage summary

Back in the days when X was still Twitter, Elon Musk was one of the platform’s most prolific, not to mention provocative, users. He used the platform to hype his electric car company Tesla, air his grievances, and even – according to the SEC, anyway – to manipulate Tesla’s stock price when he tweeted an announcement that he was taking the company private.

Musk had his grievances with the platform. He chafed at its policies on content moderation and hate speech policies. He wanted Twitter to be an absolutist "free speech" zone. In this, he aligned with another prolific Twitter user: Donald Trump.

Ever heard of the venture capitalist David Sacks?

Back in 1995, he co-wrote The Diversity Myth with Peter Thiel. The book dismissed affirmative action as reverse racism, mocked ethnic studies programs, and infamously argued that many date rape accusations were the result of "belated regret" after consensual encounters. Now, both authors later apologized for that specific claim. But they appeared to stand behind the book’s other arguments: that identity politics were destroying meritocracy, political correctness was tyranny, and universities were indoctrination factories.

Every year, tens of thousands descend on Nevada's Black Rock Desert for Burning Man, a week-long experiment in radical self-expression where giant art installations tower over the dust, and everything operates on a gift economy. Money's officially banned. 

Plot twist. This anti-capitalist, anarchic gathering has become a pilgrimage site for Silicon Valley's elite. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Larry Page have all attended. Why? 

For years, MAGA meant red. Red hats, red ties, Republican red. Then things took a darker turn. Literally. 

Dark MAGA emerged in 2022 as an edgier, more aggressive take on the MAGA movement, one filtered through internet culture and tech bro nihilism. Think black and white imagery and accelerationist memes. Early adopters included the Peter Thiel associate Curtis Yarvin, who advocates for replacing democracy with CEO-style governance, and various crypto entrepreneurs who hoped Trump would legitimate cryptocurrency. And, of course, there was Musk. Elon Musk didn't just endorse Trump. He went all in, appearing at rallies in his black MAGA hat and pouring over $100 million into the campaign through his super PAC.

In his farewell address to the nation, Joe Biden warned about the looming rise of an American oligarchy, a concentration of wealth and power strong enough to threaten democracy itself. But it wasn’t looming. It had arrived.

Big tech had gathered all its resources to secure a Trump presidency: money, influence, and algorithms were all on the Republican candidate’s side. And when Trump won, he secured the popular vote as well as election victory. Unlike in 2016, he was coming into office with a popular mandate.