How long is it going to take for the MAGA faithful to realise that those titans of Big Tech and venture capital sitting up close to Donald Trump this week are not their allies, but The Enemy? After all, the MAGA crowd are the angry victims left behind by the market forces of global capital. Well, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen etc happen to be the current embodiment of those very same forces.

This isn’t merely an irony. It goes to the contradictions that lie at the heart of the Trump presidency. His most fervent fans are white ethno-nationalists intent on turning America into a retro, pre-1960s theme park that celebrates their European heritage. They blame Wall St bankers and immigrants for all their current problems.

On the other hand, Trump’s biggest donors and Mar-a-Largo golfing buddies are the wealthy barons of global commerce. These people are intent on stripping away the last remnants of regulatory safeguards and constitutional protections. To that same end, they’re also intent on using the US visa system to recruit large numbers of the best and brightest tech immigrants, from all around the world.

Theoretically, these forces are not incompatible. Poor migrants and asylum seekers can continue to be shut out, while the top 1% of global tech talent from India for example, could conceivably be allowed in. There are some precedents in high places. Vice-President J.D. Vance for instance, is married to the daughter of migrants from India.

However, the hostility between the MAGA ethno-nationalists and the Big Tech globalisers is already evident. One of the key battlegrounds is proving to be the H-1B temporary work visas that have hitherto enabled very talented young Indian tech graduates to get around America’s green card system.

This outdated quota system caps the number of green cards issued annually to citizens of any one country. It does so by calculating the presence of that nationality historically, within the US population. Problem being, the current demand for India’s tech talent far outstrips the paltry presence of Indian people within America in years gone by. The importance of India’s tech diaspora to Silicon Valley is evident :

Companies such as Infosys Ltd. and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. dominate IT-enabled services, bringing home billions of dollars in profits. US technology giants including Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp., and International Business Machines Corp. have Indian-origin CEOs. India-trained engineers labour in the trenches of Silicon Valley and invisibly help Western companies adapt to the digital age.

This arrangement is now at risk of becoming a casualty of the MAGA crowd’s anti-immigrant fervour. At the end of the day, these bright young things are undocumented aliens. So send them packing! Just before Christmas, the conflict burst into the open when Trump selected Sriram Krishnan (an Indian-born venture capitalist) to work closely with David Sacks, Trump’s designated “crypto and A.I. czar.” As the New York Times reported, all hell then broke loose:

The MAGA influencer Laura Loomer quickly found a post in which Krishnan had called for removing caps on how many green cards can be awarded to applicants from individual countries, and for expanding “skilled immigration.” In a separate post on X, Loomer described it as an effort to welcome “third-world invaders from India,” said “our country was built by white Europeans,” and mocked Indians as defecating “in the water they bathe and drink from.”

Charming. Sacks has defended Krishnan, but one key Big Tech player – Elon Musk – is sitting on the fence, despite having argued strongly at first in support of what Krishnan had been advocating. Musk has since backed right off from making himself a target of MAGA ethno-fascist rage. Musk’s neo-Nazi salutes at the Trump inauguration, and his prior support for the leading far right party in Germany can be seen as pleas for acceptance, and proof that he really is a man of the true blood.

The future of the H-IB visa system – which reportedly employs some 85,000 foreign workers, most of them Indian, and most of them working in Silicon Valley- is a fight that’s unlikely to go away. Reportedly, Steve Bannon is lining up as a champion of the MAGA faithful, and he has been voicing his opposition to the influence being enjoyed by the Johnny-Come-Lately Big Tech bros. In slightly different form, the same battles will also be fought if Trump proceeds with the mass deportation of the un-documented cheap agricultural migrant labour (from Mexico in particular) on which the US food supply depends. Scapegoats will have to be found – Gavin Newsom! if food prices go up as a result.

The Insider

Life was simpler when Trump was the outsider, railing against the Deep State. Now he is the state, the ultimate insider. No doubt, his layer of billionaire Silicon Valley CEOs and venture capitalists want to root out the old Deep State, and replace it with themselves. Yet as mentioned, they can co-exist only for so long with the tens of millions of Trump cultists who have been impoverished by the same policies that are being promoted – in even more toxic formulations – by the US business elite. In essence, Trump’s ultra-wealthy tech buddies are peddling the fentanyl version of the neo-liberal drug. Unless very carefully ingested, that drug comes with a high mortality rate.

Somehow, the MAGA love for Trump gives him a special exemption. But there is no love for Elon Musk in the MAGA trenches.

The Real MAGA Moment

America wasn’t always so scared out of its wits by the very thought of immigration. It once took the caption on the Statue of Liberty seriously – bring me those tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free etc. (The country thrived and built its power on being a melting pot). Hard to imagine now, but the Chrysler car company built what was then the tallest skyscraper in the world to celebrate (a) its ability to create attractive, well-designed cars, and (b) its boundless optimism for the future. Recent migrants comprised much of the workforce that built it.

Arguably, the Chrysler building remains the most beautiful skyscraper in the world, and this architect does a terrific job in (briefly) explaining its intricate design features, and it's Art Deco inspirations:

Fittingly perhaps, the top of the Chrysler building was recently used by the masked death-metal band Imperial Triumphant as a site for a doomy music video. The future may now be dark, but the view is still amazing:

© Scoop Media