Elon Musk's DOGE Is Following A Familiar — And Horrifying — Playbook
Musk is shocking the U.S. government into a weakened state so it can be rebuilt in his image
Elon Musk and his army of broccoli-haired goose-steppers are conducting an all-out assault on American life. This is obvious to anyone who isn’t an Elon Musk cultist.
What may be less obvious is what Musk is trying to achieve. The argument that Musk and DOGE are searching for government waste, fraud, and abuse is absurd on its face. If they were, they’d start with the Department of Defense, which admits to “misplacing” billions of dollars annually—not the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which returns billions of dollars to consumers stolen by greedy financial institutions.
Framing DOGE as an anti-waste government apparatus is a heaping load of bad faith that leads to media and public discourse failing to accurately identify Musk's hackers as republic-destroying invaders stealing our information and nullifying the power of Congress.
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Musk’s true intentions become much clearer when viewed through the lens of a shock doctrine.
Naomi Klein wrote The Shock Doctrine almost twenty years ago. It perfectly encapsulates what Musk and billionaires like him are doing to our government and society. Similar to shock treatment, the shock doctrine operates through a series of traumatic shocks meant to break down a system to its most rudimentary level so it can be rebuilt in a preferred image; in this case, the image of techno-fascists. Neoliberal governments and corporations exploit disasters—both man-made and natural—to push through radical free-market reforms that the general public would never otherwise support.
What Klein calls “disaster capitalism” has its roots in the 1970s and Milton Friedman’s Chicago School of Economics. Friedman is one of history’s great villains—the champion of trickle-down economics, which Ronald Reagan unleashed upon American workers 45 years ago, destroying the relative prosperity of the postwar years and causing many of our current societal problems. In 1973, the United States supported a coup against democratically elected Chilean leader Salvador Allende—whose crime was trying to implement a New Deal for Chilean workers—replacing him with the murderous right-wing goon and longtime Republican hero Augusto Pinochet. While Chileans were still in shock, graduates of the Chicago School of Economics descended upon the country to use it as a testing ground for their radical capitalist ideology. They privatized public industries, laid off government employees en masse, slashed social spending, deregulated industry, and prioritized foreign investment.
The result? Skyrocketing inflation and rampant inequality. So unpopular were these far-right economic reforms that Pinochet orchestrated one of the most violent regimes of the 20th century to enforce them upon an unwilling public.
Chile was the first case of the shock doctrine in action, but far from the last. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Boris Yeltsin embraced economic shock therapy, heavily influenced by Western economists from Harvard’s Russian Project and the International Monetary Fund. We’re told the former Soviet Union made a natural transition from communism to capitalism, but in reality, it was subjected to a Western-backed neoliberal experiment.
Mass government layoffs ensued. State assets were sold for pennies to the men who would become the infamous Russian oligarchs. The result was economic devastation for ordinary Russians: Inflation soared to 2,500 percent in 1992. Life savings were wiped out. Essential goods became unaffordable. At the same time, the social safety net was gutted. By 1996, over 40 percent of Russians lived in poverty. This economic disaster laid the groundwork for an authoritarian strongman to take hold in a country already accustomed to autocracy. One of Putin’s first moves was to reverse some of the more extreme policies and put a stranglehold on the newly minted oligarchs. He has maintained a vice-like grip on power ever since and now leads the international fascist movement.
Denny Carter
Klein in her seminal book details how neoliberals use natural disasters to enact long-desired, deeply unpopular reforms. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Republicans exploited the public’s trauma to radically privatize the New Orleans public school system. Capitalists used the disaster to buy up and demolish public housing to build newly gentrified neighborhoods. This is particularly prescient in the age of climate change. Hedge funds and other capitalists today are using the L.A. wildfires as an opportunity to buy real estate at rock-bottom prices. Rather than rebuilding communities, they will rebuild L.A. to serve the interests of a small elite. The same is happening in communities across the country ravaged by natural disasters. This will only become more common as climate change accelerates.
So, what does this have to do with Elon Musk? More than anything, Musk is trying to terrorize the administrative state—to subject it to a series of shocks at such a rapid pace that the average citizen can’t keep up. The mass layoffs, the illegal withholding of congressionally approved funds—this is all designed to shock our government into a weakened state so it can be rebuilt in Musk’s horrid image. DOGE is simply carrying out a long-standing Republican project: Slashing government spending under the guise of a supposed debt crisis.
The goal is the enclosure of public goods for private industry—healthcare, education, even national defense. They want to dismantle Health and Human Services and eventually privatize Medicare and Medicaid. The executive order gutting the Department of Education is designed to shift educational responsibilities to the states, which can then lower standards and push charter schools—a Trojan horse for the destruction of public education.
If DOGE even looks at the Department of Defense, it won’t be to cut obvious fraud but to determine what can be contracted out to private mercenary groups like Palantir. The Trump regime has already made major strides in eliminating regulations that restrict corporate power. The elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which regulates financial institutions, while Musk wants to turn the X platform into a financial app, is particularly egregious. Musk wants us disoriented, unable to keep up, so that by the time we realize what’s happening, it’ll be too late. The ultimate goal is to transform the government into a mere contractor that funnels public money to private businesses—businesses that are entirely unaccountable to the public. Musk wants all the power without the accountability.
Musk’s shock therapy isn’t limited to the government. Since before the election, he has been openly stating his intention to drive us into a recession. On the surface, this might seem counterproductive. Why would billionaires want to implement policies that could wipe out vast sums of wealth? For small business owners or companies that run on thin profit margins, recessions are a disaster. Less economic activity means layoffs or even closures. But for people with Musk’s level of wealth, recessions are an opportunity—an opportunity to buy assets at depreciated valuations and consolidate economic power.
Denny Carter
A significant number of Trump’s appointees come from finance, not manufacturing or technology. They didn’t make their money providing real services; they made it by buying during the dips and plundering every last crevice of American life. The last major recession, in 2008, was devastating for ordinary Americans and the petty bourgeoisie. For billionaires, it was the greatest wealth accumulation opportunity in thirty years. This time, there won’t be a moderate Democratic president in charge to check their worst impulses. This time, they’ll be fully in control, free to buy up as much of the economy as they want, a feeding frenzy without end.
This is why the billionaire class went all in on Trump. They know his proposed economic policies will lead to another recession. In fact, they’re banking on it.
Musk may be the main villain of this story, but he’s far from the only one. This entire regime is hellbent on running the country into the ground. From its ashes, they will build something new. It’s up to us to weather the storm, remain clear-eyed about their hideous goals, reject their bad faith framing, resist the disorienting shocks coming our way, and fight to preserve a better America than whatever these motherfuckers want to turn us into.
Follow Anthony Reimer on Bluesky at @areimer.bsky.social.
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