Date: Saturday 14 March
Time: 20:00 (drinks from 19:30)
Location: Arminius, Museumpark 3 Rotterdam
Admission: €12,50,- (regular), €7,- (reduced)
Language: English
On Saturday March 14 we welcome two of today’s most incisive thinkers on technology, capitalism, political imagination and the rise of the populist right: Quinn Slobodian (Crack-Up Capitalism, Hayek’s Bastards) and Ben Tarnoff (Internet for the People, Voices from the Valley).
Together, they will unpack their new book Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. In this highly anticipated work they examine Elon Musk not as an individual, but as a symptom and avatar of our postliberal age. Musk isn’t a glitch in the system—he is the system. His worldview promises sovereignty through technology: plug in, power up, and become self-reliant. But the more you connect, the more he owns you.
If Fordism defined the capitalism of the twentieth century, Muskism may define the twenty-first. Fordism helped build the welfare state. Musk undoes it. He thrives on dependence while preaching freedom. His rockets run on subsidies; his satellites run the battlefield; his social networks train the AI that trains us. Muskism sells itself as the future, but entrenches age-old hierarchies. It offers autonomy for some and exclusion for others. It’s libertarian but state-fed, pro-natalist but anti-immigrant, futurist but reactionary.
Join us for a discussion on how Muskism shapes our digital lives, our political culture, and our collective future.
‘Ben Tarnoff is a visionary of the best kind: astute, pragmatic and determined to reform a skewed and corrupt system.’
– Naomi Klein
‘Quinn Slobodian is the sharpest and most resourceful historian of the far-right movements that are rapidly taking over the Western world.’
– Pankaj Mishra
Participants
Quinn Slobodian
Quinn Slobodian is Professor of International History at Boston University. His previous books include ‘Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism’, ‘Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy’ and ‘Hayek’s Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right’. In 2024 he was named one of the world’s 25 top thinkers by Prospect Magazine.
Ben Tarnoff
Ben Tarnoff is a writer and technologist based in Massachusetts. He is the author of ‘Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future’ and co-author of ‘Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do – And How They Do It’.
Nuria Ribas Costa
Nuria Ribas Costa is a Spanish Journalist and Jurist based between Rotterdam and Ibiza, her homeland. Formerly at OMA, she currently works as an independent researcher and policy analyst in the fields of urbanism and culture. She is part of urbanism agency Humankind, research group Vigla, the Center for Music Ecosystems and De Dépendance. She is interested in the relationships rural-urban, the politics of space and land and intersectionality in urbanism.