The Engine of Autocracy

Techno-Oligarchs and the Liturgy of Control

In a recent post, I named the ache and atmosphere of our cultural moment, what German thinkers call the zeitgeist, or as I framed it: Unmasking the Spirit of the Age – In the Grip of Faust. We traced the contours of a society teetering on the edge of collapse and craving a new order, one that promises safety, clarity, and control amid the chaos.

Walter Wink opens The Powers That Be with a vital insight, one that frames this entire conversation:

“All of us deal with the Powers That Be. They staff our hospitals, run City Hall, sit around tables in corporate boardrooms, collect our taxes, and head our families. But the Powers That Be are more than just the people who run things. They are the systems themselves, the institutions and structures that weave society into an intricate fabric of power and relationships. These Powers surround us on every side. They are necessary. They are useful. We could do nothing without them. But the Powers is also the source of unmitigated evils.”

- Walter Wink, The Powers That Be, p. 1.

This spirit of the age is not just an abstraction. It takes form in technologies, ideologies, and yes, in people. But our struggle is not against flesh and blood; it is against the principalities and powers. In our faithful resistance, we must not dehumanize those who dehumanize, or we lose the very humanity we seek to defend.

This post is an attempt at faithful discernment, an invitation to revelation and healing resistance, not reactive harm. A case study in how techno-oligarchy is not only rising, it is being actively evangelized.

Discernment and the Powers

Wink reminds us that the Powers are most dangerous when invisible. In our time, they take shape through technocratic elites who promise salvation through efficiency, scale, and control. The spiritual battle we face is not merely cultural; it is cosmic, cutting to the very heart of what it means to be human.

This is the work of discernment: naming figures like Musk, Yarvin, Vance, and Thiel as windows into the deeper forces forming our world, tracing the fingerprints of the Powers through the faces of our age. What we are confronting is not just the rise of autocrats; it is the emergence of a new architecture of control, built by oligarchs and cloaked in progress.

The Myth of the Benevolent Technocrat

Musk presents himself as a visionary, a savior of humanity, championing clean energy, interplanetary travel, and “free speech.” But beneath this compelling mythology lies a deeper consolidation of power:

• Twitter/X is now infrastructure for shaping ideology, not just facilitating conversation.

• Musk increasingly partners with governments, militaries, and surveillance contractors, blurring the line between corporate and state authority.

• His platforms reshape public discourse and embed narratives of dominance and influence in our cultural imagination.

Musk's consolidation of influence extends beyond platforms. His companies have absorbed an outsized share of government contracts, even as regulatory scrutiny has been gutted or neutralized. Under the banner of “slashing waste and fraud,” Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has aggressively cut vital programs, USAID, the Department of Education, Social Security offices, Meals on Wheels, while providing no transparent evidence of savings.

Investigations have shown these cuts often create greater costs and instability, not efficiencies, as agencies scramble to meet basic needs with skeletal staffing and diminished oversight.

Despite promises of transparency, Musk’s agency has made financial data increasingly opaque after journalists exposed major discrepancies, raising fresh alarms about accountability and public trust.

This is not just about ideology; it is about profit. Musk’s wealth has surged in tandem with his deepening ties to government contracts, military ventures, and deregulated markets.

Yet even as Musk’s government contracts have surged, signs of resistance are breaking through. Tesla, once a symbol of unchallenged innovation, has suffered significant losses as protests, boycotts, and public dissent have eroded consumer trust and investor confidence. His wealth is not invulnerable, and these cracks reveal that faithful resistance, when sustained, can disrupt even the most powerful liturgies of control.

As he advocates for mass firings of civil servants, those who often administer support for the most vulnerable, he positions himself to benefit from a gutted public sector and a privatized future. The more the social safety net is shredded, the more power accrues to those who own the platforms and control the data. The liturgy of control pays dividends.

The Ideologue Behind the Curtain

Yarvin, once known as “Mencius Moldbug,” is a former software engineer turned political theorist. His belief: liberal democracy is a façade masking true power. What we need, he argues, is monarchy, or at least a CEO-style regime that is elite, efficient, and unapologetic.

• He labels democratic institutions “The Cathedral,” a derogatory term for the unified influence of media, academia, and bureaucracy.

• He advocates dismantling these systems in favor of top-down rule.

• His philosophy offers a theology of power, one that sanctifies hierarchy and justifies domination for the sake of order.

This is not just fringe ideology. Yarvin’s ideas have found fertile ground among Silicon Valley elites, especially those funded or inspired by billionaire Peter Thiel. It is a spiritual architecture that baptizes domination in the language of destiny, trading the long road of justice for the shortcut of control.

René Girard’s insights are vital here. Yarvin’s system does not resolve mimetic rivalry through reconciliation; it suppresses it by enthroning a sovereign scapegoater, one who determines from above whose voice matters and whose silence is required.

Shared Vision: Control, Order, Destiny

Though Musk and Yarvin differ in tone and tactics, they share a common foundation:

• A deep distrust of democracy and collective wisdom

• A belief in elite rule: engineers, CEOs, philosopher-kings

• A vision of salvation by structure or technology

But beneath the ideology lies oligarchy. Peter Thiel funds the blueprint. Curtis Yarvin writes the script. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, invests his fortune to build the stage and cast the vision. And Donald Trump, now returned to power, presides like a chairman of the board, blessing the production and rallying the crowd.

This is not a new strategy. It is the old authoritarian playbook with a tech-savvy face: Manufacture a crisis. Discredit institutions. Scapegoat the vulnerable. Promise order through a strong hand. Centralize power. Repeat.

Authoritarianism does not always arrive in tanks. Sometimes it arrives in tweets, tech platforms, and venture capital. It does not need a uniform. It just needs enough people to believe that control is safer than freedom.

And in the theater of authoritarianism, even the builder of the stage may become its scapegoat. When the system demands a spectacle, no one, however powerful, is safe.

Walter Wink again brings this to light:

“The Powers That Be are not merely the people in power or the institutions they staff. Managers are more or less interchangeable. Their decisions are often made for them by the logic of the market, the pressures of competition, and the cost of labor... Greater forces are at work—unseen Powers—that shape the present and dictate the future.” - Walter Wink, The Powers That Be, pp. 2–3.

The Politician as Proxy

Now serving as Vice President under Donald Trump, JD Vance brings the techno-oligarchic vision into the heart of government. Funded by Thiel and shaped by Yarvin's New Right framework, Vance echoes their ideology with boldness.

“There’s this guy Curtis Yarvin who has written about these things” (Vox).

Vance said “I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’” (Spotify)

His rhetoric mirrors Yarvin’s spiritual blueprint: Order over consensus. Hierarchy over participation. Masculine strength over mutuality and humility.

In Vance, the Powers take on political flesh, not merely as ideas, but as governance.

The Way of Jesus as Resistance

Jesus does not seize power; he surrenders it. He does not dominate; he serves. He does not escape suffering; he enters into it, for the sake of love.

In an age where salvation is promised through control, the cross remains our clearest contrast.

The vision advanced by Thiel, Yarvin, Vance, and Musk is not just political; it is a liturgy. It preaches that only the exceptional should rule. That technology can fix what love cannot. That domination is the cost of order.

But this is not the gospel. It is empire in digital form.

As followers of Jesus, we are called not to demonize people but to unmask the powers that take them captive, and that try to take hold of us. That is why we name them: to resist their spell over our imagination.

Let us reject the Faustian bargain and the oligarchic imagination it serves.

Let us embody a different kind of power: Shared, humble, grounded in presence and love. A power that flows not from wealth or control but from the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.

Because resurrection is not only our hope; it is our resistance.

Looking Ahead

As we look ahead, I sense an invitation to move into a season shaped by prophetic imagination, the building of alternative communities, and a Jesus Movement of hope—woven with faith on the frontlines, contemplative resistance, and the deep promise of eschatological hope. The road ahead may shift as the world around us changes, but the calling remains: to walk faithfully in the Way of Jesus, whatever may come.

Faithful Unto Death: Óscar Romero’s Witness Against the Alliance of Wealth and Power

Through the life and martyrdom of Óscar Romero, we will explore what it means to follow Jesus in the face of state violence and elite control. Romero offers more than inspiration, he embodies a vision of resistance grounded in divine love and the dignity of the poor. His footsteps mark a path we are invited to follow, with courage, tenderness, and hope.

A Prayer for Our Time

God of the Cross and the Empty Tomb,
You see through the illusions of power,
and you call us to follow the One who chose the towel over the throne.
We confess how easily we are drawn to visions of control,
to saviors who promise strength without sacrifice,
to systems that offer order but demand our souls.

Free us from the liturgies of dominance.
Cleanse our imagination from the myth of the exceptional man.
Give us eyes to see the unseen Powers
and the courage to name them in love.

Shape in us the way of Jesus,
a way of humility, of presence, of resurrection life.
May we be communities of resistance rooted in hope,
refusing to trade the truth for technique,
or our neighbor for convenience.

Holy Spirit, disarm the Powers that seek to dominate us.
Fill us with the fierce gentleness of Christ,
that we may bear witness in the ruins
and build something new in love.
Amen.

We will not trade our birthright for bandwidth.
We walk not by algorithm, but by the Spirit.
We build what cannot be bought or sold.