AI and the New Fascism

*Awarded the Political Book 2026 Prize by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung*

While tech CEOs like Sam Altman and Elon Musk market AI as the savior of humanity, the industry itself is built on exploitation and contempt for human dignity. Why do we allow ourselves to be distracted by speculations of AI salvation while ignoring the harm?

AI and the New Fascism is an autopsy of the digital coup currently reshaping our world. The convergence of Silicon Valley's disruption ethos and the far right's authoritarianism has birthed a new form of fascism that replaces the agonistic friction of democracy with the logic of algorithmic control.

Mühlhoff traces the history of modern AI, linking speculative phantasms like Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Longtermism to the eugenicist ideologies of the early 20th century. He discusses transhumanism, techno-libertarianism, and the 'Dark Enlightenment', showing how equality is reframed as an inefficient obstacle to be cleared away in the name of evolutionary progress supposedly driven by AI. This is an essential critique of how the tech elite are programming a post-democratic future, and an urgent call to reclaim the present.

Rainer Mühlhoff is a philosopher and mathematician, and Professor of Ethics and Critical Theories of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Osnabrück, Germany. Grounded in continental philosophy and critical theory, his work explores the political and social consequences of digital technologies. His book Künstliche Intelligenz und der neue Faschismus is a German bestseller.