Democracy in Danger
The Creeping Entanglement of AI and Fascism
This article is the first publication of the Technoprogressive Policy Project
In recent years, the use and development of artificial intelligence (AI) and authoritarian tendencies in politics have been increasingly converging. Nowhere is this more visible than in the techno-political dynamics surrounding Trumpism, the rise and fall of Big Tech moguls like Elon Musk, and the systematic erosion of democratic institutions, including interferences in elections. The convergence is therefore not just a futuristic scenario – it is already unfolding in front of our eyes.
The use of AI for surveillance, propaganda, and manipulation is already well-documented. In Why AI Undermines Democracy and What To Do About It I already warned for the use of AI as a tool for political manipulation and totalitarian repression, and argued that AI threatens to undermine fundamental liberal-democratic and republican principles.
There is also increasing attention to the power of big tech, the result of which has been compared to feudal systems (Varoufakis) and empires (Hao). Marietje Schaake has called the current power imbalance a ‘tech coup’. Power is increasingly in the hands of a handful of unelected, unaccountable executives and technocapitalist owners. Power is privatized; the public space shrinks.
What’s new is that AI and other digital technologies are now wielded by right-wing populist movements in (former?) democracies such as the U.S. in order to actively undermine democracy and establish what increasingly looks like fascist regimes. Trumpism exemplifies this pattern: a movement that thrives on disinformation, emotional manipulation, and anti-democratic rhetoric. It uses bots, algorithmic amplification, and generative media to intensify a totalitarian dynamic, enabling the mass production and viral dissemination of lies at unprecedented scales.
In her work on totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt already warned that totalitarianism flourishes when reality is replaced with a fictional narrative, when facts are drowned in floods of misinformation, thus erasing the boundary between fact and fiction. In this context, AI becomes a tool not for truth or enlightenment, but for totalitarian oppression. Through echo chambers and targeted micro-propaganda, A helps sculpt ideologically engineered realities in which authoritarianism is masqueraded as patriotism.
Tech kings like Elon Musk, once heralded as visionary innovators, increasingly flirt with authoritarian leaning politics. Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now X) shows how well-known platforms can become playgrounds for far-right ideologies and – indeed - coups. Empowering and normalizing extremist voices, increasing polarization, and framing criticism as censorship, they promote fascist narratives cloaked in the language of liberty.
The role Musk played in the Trump administration also shows how Big Tech is increasingly bolstering a techno-authoritarian vision where corporate power merges with nationalist, fascist-leaning politics. Combined with control over critical infrastructure such as satellites and AI labs, Musk displays a classic fascist tactic: unifying state and corporate power to consolidate centralized ideological and political-economic control. Democracy, in turn, becomes not only undermined but systematically displaced by technocratic control and populist demagoguery.
What we are witnessing, then, is not simply a misuse of AI but the emergence of a new technopolitical regime where fascist tendencies and advanced technologies feed into each other to create the basis for authoritarian and totalitarian modes of governance. To counter this, democratic societies must reclaim control over AI and other advanced technologies and infrastructures, enforce transparency and accountability, and cultivate critical literacy.
The current AI policy does not meet this task. It is not enough to call for more regulation and oversight, or for the implementation of ethical principles. We need a significant decentralization and democratization of technological power and a reform of our political institutions and economic systems to decrease the risk that AI becomes a booster for fascist politics and politicians and a tool of oppression.
The point is not to stop AI. In principle, AI and other digital technologies can improve people’s lives and well-being. The point is to halt developments that are creating the conditions for a new, AI-driven form of technofascism, and to build and support democratic ways of creating and using digital technologies for the common good and a better future for all.
If we fail to develop such a technodemocratic vision and fail to act against those forces that undermine it, we may soon find that the algorithms we built to serve us have become tools of our own domination.