Back to basics: Technofascism 101 with Emile Dirks from the Citizen Lab

About this episode

The episode explores the concept of technofascism and its historical context with Dr. Emile Dirks from the Citizen Lab.

After Trump was elected and tech oligarchs like Elon Musk, an unelected person, started to get power in decision making at the White House, the topic of technofascism got very popular. But this political trend of leveraging technology to empower fascist ideologies is nothing new. A lot has been written about technofascism in the 21st century, but I wanted to go back to the basics: what is fascism before technology? How do fascist movements use technology to take power and what kind of power dynamic is created? How can we resist the rise of technofascism? To answer these questions, I welcomed Dr Emile Dirks. Emile is a Senior Research Associate at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, where he explores Chinese politics and digital authoritarianism. Created, hosted and produced by Mélissa M'Raidi-Kechichian.

People in this episode

Host: Mélissa M'Raidi-Kechichian

Guest: Emile Dirks

Topics covered

• technofascism
• technology and politics
• digital authoritarianism
• fascism
• resistance movements

Keywords

• technofascism
• fascism
• technology
• digital authoritarianism
• resistance
• politics
• Elon Musk

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Citizen Lab

Places: United States

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