Suddenly, it’s the MAGA people preaching truths about Silicon Valley

Someone said recently that if you want to know what the American Right is thinking listen to Steve Bannon – not Donald Trump or Elon Musk. But what I didn’t expect was to hear the MAGA people bash the techies – and they’re not wrong.

Almost precisely a year ago, X banned a bunch of liberal journalists and commentators. There was outrage, of course, if not exactly surprise – already back then, the Elon Musk-owned platform looked more like a right-wing echo chamber than any sort of global town square.

Now, fast forward to the very end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, dear reader, and feel that sense of deja vu. That’s because Musk has hopped the censorship bandwagon again.

This time, though, it’s not the liberals that the richest Earthling – who in the meantime has helped Donald Trump to win the US presidential election and will now be co-leading the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency – is after.

No, according to NBC News, X has now been blocking Musk’s fellow right-wingers. Yeah, the MAGA people, most of whom have been relentlessly attacking the billionaire over his pro-immigration views.

The feud began right before the holidays when people between America’s two coasts, having propelled Trump to victory in November after he promised them mass deportations of migrants, realized that the incoming administration wasn’t actually planning to stop all immigration.

The issue to most red-hat Trump supporters is the relatively minuscule H-1B visa program, granting entry into the US to foreign workers with specialized skills.

Musk (Trump has supported his stance, too) wants to keep the program but the far-right, isolationist at its core, is essentially saying: that’s not what we voted for.

Even though the number of new H-1B visas issued has been capped at 85,000 per year since 2004, Bannon himself took to the airwaves this week to call for a “100% moratorium on all immigration until we get this thing sorted.”

Now, the MAGA crowd is, needless to say, very public and is, of course, most active on X, wooed there with promises of unrestricted speech. But since Musk is the one being attacked, he doesn’t like it. In fact, he told his critics just last week to “f**k themselves in the face.”

The most surprising aspect of all this drama, at least to me, is how pointed, grounded, and even logical some of the arguments deployed by the MAGA warriors – not so hapless, huh? – are. Not only privileged champagne socialists can see through the tech elites, it turns out.

Dunking on Musk is suddenly in fashion

Bannon, as wild as he sounds most of the time, is leading the way. This week, he actually demanded “reparations” from Musk and other tech leaders for cutting Americans out of jobs by overusing the H-1B visa program.

Steve Bannon: So, no, David Sacks, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Elon Musk…your complete collapse…’Oh, we just want to reform…’ — There’s no reformation. No reform. We want it gone. We demand that it’s gone. I’ve got another alternative. We want reparations for the tech workers that… pic.twitter.com/0TlAe7kbFn

undefined Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) December 30, 2024

To be fair, a lot around the program is being misinterpreted. The visas are temporary and are intended to help employers who cannot find the needed skills and abilities in the US workforce.

Plus, even though the scheme’s critics say it undercuts American workers and even guts the middle class, proponents – like the American Immigration Council – cite research showing that H-1B workers complement US workers, fill employment gaps, and expand job opportunities for all.

But the wider point the Bannonites are making is arguably spot on. The US tech elites want to extract the maximum profits for their companies, and if foreign professionals are better at aiding this goal – American workers be damned.

Take Musk alone. The Los Angeles Times reported already in 2015 that Musk’s Tesla empire benefited from about $4.9 billion in government subsidies, based on an estimate using a compilation of grants, tax breaks, factory construction, discounted loans, environmental credits, and Tesla buyer tax credits and rebates.

Musk’s companies have also collected some $20 billion in federal contracts over the past 16 years. And in 2024, Tesla obtained 724 H-1B visas.

The US tech elites want to extract the maximum profits for their companies, and if foreign professionals are better at aiding this goal – American workers be damned.

No wonder some are screaming about reparations even though they are obviously impossible in the literal sense, and despite the fact that quite a few of these high-skilled immigrants are outwhiting the white America the MAGA nationalist base cares so much about.

“What is it going to mean for the future of our country, our national security and the incoming Trump administration if we have a bunch of technocrats, who are also essentially welfare queens because their companies are receiving government subsidies, and they want to take over our defense industry?” Laura Loomer, a prominent far-right activist, said on Bannon’s podcast.

Further bashing Musk, Loomer called him a “Stage 5 clinger” orbiting around Trump, and, more broadly, a hypocrite. She added: “We are nauseated with big tech bros who think we are peasants and dumb.”

Even the worst people can make good points

It’s really amazing. Loomer is one of the worst online personalities – she’s got a knack for conspiracy theories, and even now used her 15 minutes of fame to attack Indian immigrants as “third world invaders” and praise “white Europeans” who she claims built America.

But we indeed live in interesting times, so even the most despicable people can make great points about the tech wizards and their overreach.

Now, Musk is still trying to appeal to America’s racists. These days, he spends his time praising the far-right parties across Europe and is now campaigning for the release of Tommy Robinson, a jailed British extremist, and attacking the UK’s Labor government as well.

Two Tier Keir

No justice for severe, violent crimes, but prison for social media posts pic.twitter.com/QcK4o74Yla

undefined Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 2, 2025

But even Loomer seems to see through Musk who is actually proving his critics’ point about double standards: he hates poor immigrants he doesn’t need and praises talented immigrants he wants to hire.

Obviously, that’s because the tech elites are tremendously selfish, Loomer says. The truth is that all of them just want to suck the government dry, make Washington eliminate all the bothersome regulations, and enjoy record profits every year.

You can be a hardcore Marxist or you can be an enraged hillbilly bigot – but you can’t help but feel disgust at the tech visionaries who build their fortunes on government subsidies and visa programs but then close themselves off in private jets, fenced mansions, and private schools.

Not that long ago, they used to stay away from DC – with Musk, that’s not the case anymore. Rich guys are bound to become even richer.

To her credit, Loomer gets it. On X, where she’s now restricted, she recently addressed Musk: “You bought your way into MAGA five minutes ago. We all know you only donated your money so you could influence immigration policy and protect your buddy Xi Jinping.”

On the face of it, the MAGA battle has no chance. Musk was born in South Africa. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang hails from Taiwan. Google, Microsoft, and IBM all boast CEOs born in India. They all have loads of cash to lobby Congress to the moon and back.

Still, it’s pretty miraculous when even Bernie Sanders agrees with people like Bannon and Loomer. On Thursday he said in a statement he didn’t agree with Musk.

“Elon Musk is wrong. The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire ‘the best and the brightest,’ but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad,” said Sanders.

“The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make.”