Gil Duran was the first journalist to identify the strange right-wing beliefs being enthusiastically embraced by Bay Area tech leaders. The Network State, a scheme for tech elites to exit democracy and create their own sovereign states, served as a blueprint for their recent involvement in San Francisco elections. As former GrowSF board member Garry Tan publicly stated, “If we can do it here, we can do it anywhere.” Today, many of the same techies who used their extraordinary wealth to create an Astroturf Network designed to move San Francisco dangerously to the right have become enthusiastic supporters of President Donald Trump and his efforts to destroy American democracy.. 

Recently, the Phoenix Project sat down with Gil to talk about tech-fascism, a movement that began in San Francisco and has now shifted to Washington, D.C.

Phoenix: The Astroturf Network began in 2020, broke through in 2022 and nobody was covering it. Did that surprise you?

Gil: It’s amazing that the most important political story in the history of America of the 21st century, the tech-fascism that is trying to destroy the country and that incubated here and nobody saw it. The media missed it. If the tech-fascists win it will be largely because the press failed.

Phoenix: Some of these people seem to be ideologically driven, others, like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, seem less so. Would you agree?

Gil: In the case of someone like Zuckerberg, his ideology is his own self-interest. Fascism is often connected to technology. The Nazis had radios and rockets, and the tech-fascists have AI and crypto. The capitalists see technology as a way of gaining more power.

Phoenix: Could you have foreseen how quickly they surrounded [President Donald] Trump?

Gil: Money makes a lot of things possible. It’s the key to Trump’s heart; it’s why he’s willing to stand by and let them do what they want. There’s a line from Dylan, ‘You just wanna be on the side that’s winning.’ If there are people in tech who are against what’s happening, where are they? There are two kinds of fascists: Enthusiastic ones and unenthusiastic ones. But if you’re going along with this, you’re a fascist.

Phoenix: Their ideology seems to be based on the kinds of books adolescent boys read.

Gil: They cherry pick and they misinterpret. They don’t seem to realize that most of history is small groups of elites and wealthy people seizing tyrannical power until there’s a mass revolt by the majority. Our government was designed to avoid these patterns by having different dispersals of power and regular elections. They want to disrupt that. 

Phoenix: It started with local elections. Again, where was the press?

Gil: It’s a complex story and a lot of times in the newsroom people are pushed toward simple stories. This was covered in the fervor of the recalls with no attention paid to the underlying ideology and connections. It was a superficially told tale.

There’s an allergy in mainstream journalism to understanding how ideology works; what unites people behind certain beliefs. The thing that surprised me most about my work on the Nerd Reich is that this was not obtained from secret documents or recordings or anonymous sources. This is what they were writing and saying out loud. Garry Tan described his entire project in San Francisco as the Network State. Now Garry Tan says he will spend less time on San Francisco stuff and more time in Washington as if Democrats are all rushing to be a part of Trump’s Washington. Garry Tan never has a harsh word about Trump or Musk, he only has harsh words about progressives.

Phoenix: They paint a narrative that if you remove this mayor or that progressive policy, then life will be wonderful. 

Gil: Every time there’s a problem, the right has a scapegoating mechanism. I saw a poll [during the recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin] that voters supported criminal justice reform, but also wanted Boudin to be recalled. That told me that with enough money and enough will, they can push, push, push a narrative and you can take someone out through the recall system. In fact, crime was declining under Boudin. 

And the amazing part is that all these problems existed or were worse under the kind of leaders they claim we need. Look at Dianne Feinstein, who is remembered as a great mayor: The crime rates were worse in the 70s, and she tried to clean up the Tenderloin and did not. Today, the overdose crisis is worse in red states and crime is higher in red states. There are no right-wing solutions to those problems. Not only do they erase history, they erase fact. 

There is no reasoning with these folks. Theirs’ is a propaganda strategy to spread falsehoods. If you look at what they want, it's a hierarchical society where the wealthy, the male and the largely white are on top.

Phoenix: What do you make of the results in the recent local election?

Gil: They didn’t get what they wanted from the San Francisco election. Unfortunately, they got a big win in Washington. They have succeeded in driving narratives on crime, on homelessness and drug use. What happened here is that they have used the media to drive a narrative to scapegoat certain people.

People need to wake up to who these guys are and what they want because I don’t think they’re done trying.

This interview was lightly edited for clarity and brevity.