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COMMENT: There has been much commentary about anti-Asian racism in the U.S. following numerous, sometimes lethal attacks on Asian-Americans in the wake of the pandemic.
Aside from the full-court press against China that we have covered extensively–including and especially the disturbing evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic was deliberately engineered by the U.S.–this should come as no surprise.
Peter Thiel–lynchpin of power in the Trump administration, the top dog in Palantir (the alpha predator of the electronic surveillance milieu), a key player in Facebook–has disseminated anti-Chinese vitriol about the “yellow peril” in Silicon Valley.
He has been joined in that effort by Steve Bannon, a coordinator of anti-China activity in Washington D.C.
” . . . . The billionaire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “treason” and called for a law enforcement investigation of the search engine’s parent company. He speculated that the Chinese government has invaded its employee ranks. A German immigrant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeated assertions of the rabble rouser Steve Bannon that there are too many Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley. These claims, combined with similar charges of wrongdoing against students and professors of Chinese origin on campuses across the country, are as ominous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evidence, Bannon displays ample prejudice. They are inspiring paranoia about everyone of Chinese heritage. . . .”
Bannon’s statements and actions are particularly ironic in light of his cynical use of remnants of “the old China” in his “Gold Farming” business the first decade of this century.
“. . . . From 2007 to 2012, he had been the CEO of a multimillion-dollar video-game gold-farming scheme. “Gold farming” was a term for letting third-world laborers to do; the same repetitive tasks in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MORPGs) to acquire in-game currency. . . . . The self-proclaimed anti-globalist Bannon ran the scheme by subcontracting Chinese labor. According to Wired writer Julian Dibbel, who visited one of the Chinese business partners who employed miners for Bannon’s company in 2009, the digital laborers “slept upstairs on plywood bunks, day-shift workers sat in the hot, dimly-lit workshop.” They earned about four dollars a day with eighty-four-hour workweeks. . . .”
The billionaire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “treason” and called for a law enforcement investigation of the search engine’s parent company. He speculated that the Chinese government has invaded its employee ranks. A German immigrant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeated assertions of the rabble rouser Steve Bannon that there are too many Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley.
These claims, combined with similar charges of wrongdoing against students and professors of Chinese origin on campuses across the country, are as ominous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evidence, Bannon displays ample prejudice. They are inspiring paranoia about everyone of Chinese heritage.
At a Sunday appearance which opened the National Conservatism Conference in Washington DC followed by an appearance with the Fox TV host Tucker Carlson, Thiel, the founder of the PayPal financial service, relied on rhetorical questions. He asked Google who was working on artificial intelligence, whether “senior management considers itself to have been thoroughly infiltrated” and if the Chinese would steal the information anyway.
Google answered by reiterating that “we do not work with the Chinese military”.
Thiel left Silicon Valley last year in protest over its liberalism. He is also behind Palantir, the secretive surveillance firm, and has been a supporter of tariffs. Google had been reported to be developing a China-compatible search engine codenamed Dragonfly. They stopped due to employee objections.
The open hostility to Chinese people, as distinct from the Chinese government, violates norms integral to America itself. On the face of these utterances is the identification of a community, named by ancestry, as a problem. Last year, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, characterized it as a “whole of society” threat to American values.
Guilt by association is not what the American dream has promised to those who have sacrificed everything for that proverbial opportunity. Whatever the Chinese government may be up to, their policies should not compromise the status of Chinese people, almost all of whom are ordinary folks, not spies, “sleepers”, agents of influence or otherwise conspirators.
Although in this new Yellow Peril, a specific ethnicity is targeted as a group, no line is drawn between citizens and foreigners. The original Yellow Peril was the notion, promoted by Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II in the late 19th century and by the American author Jack London, that Asians might contend against Europeans and white Americans in a contest of racial superiority. Propagandists such as Lothrop Stoddard wrote titles that would summarize the thesis: The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy was a 1920 bestseller.
Nowadays as earlier, the people who fear an Asian takeover of Silicon Valley do not bother to add that Asians who become Americans are acceptable. They cannot distinguish by looking at a lineup of random Asians, whether the one is a visiting scholar “fresh off the boat” in that pejorative phrase being reappropriated, the other a sixth-generation Californian “banana” (yellow on the outside, white on the inside, in another derogatory term). If they did clarify that they meant no disparagement of those whose families came before their own, at least they would be pure nativists rather than also racists.
The confusion of Asians overseas and “Asian Americans” (a concept coined during the social justice movements circa 1968) has been a recurring theme throughout history. Demagogues succeeded in persuading Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. They argued the “Orientals” would outcompete Occidental rivals but remain loyal to a foreign empire. The prohibition was then expanded to an Asiatic Barred Zone intended to maintain ethnic proportions favoring white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in the American population (even Catholics, Jews and Europeans too southern and eastern were to be limited albeit not as strictly). Japanese Americans were locked up during the second world war no matter that they were bona fide United States citizens two generations removed from Tokyo and baseball-playing Christians.
…
Civil rights and national interest are compatible. For those who fear Chinese will help China in achieving global dominance, there is a remedy: turn those Chinese into Chinese Americans who will contribute to the United States, or who will embrace a conception of belonging that is cosmopolitan instead of nationalistic. There could be no greater gift for Shenzhen and Shanghai, the perceived usurpers of western centers of technology and finance, respectively, than to drive out Chinese who otherwise would be stakeholders on this side of the Pacific Ocean.
Google relies on Chinese, Chinese immigrants and Chinese American engineers, alongside numerous Indians and other Asians, as do other technology firms. Only a few of those experts are promoted to executives.
So it is true that there are many Chinese, Indians, other Asians and entrepreneurs from the world over who are attracted to these shores. That is to be celebrated. If they were to leave, however voluntary their departure, that would ruin the economy. Thiel and Bannon expose the real conflict: between those who value democracy and diversity and those who do not.
. . . . From 2007 to 2012, he had been the CEO of a multimillion-dollar video-game gold-farming scheme. “Gold farming” was a term for letting third-world laborers to do; the same repetitive tasks in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MORPGs) to acquire in-game currency. Eventually, the virtual gold, minerals, armor, real estate, or whatever it may be can be sold for real American dollars to gamers who don’t want to work to earn in-game items. The self-proclaimed anti-globalist Bannon ran the scheme by subcontracting Chinese labor. According to Wired writer Julian Dibbel, who visited one of the Chinese business partners who employed miners for Bannon’s company in 2009, the digital laborers “slept upstairs on plywood bunks, day-shift workers sat in the hot, dimly-lit workshop.” They earned about four dollars a day with eighty-four-hour workweeks. . . .
Ignoring Charles C. Johnson is generally a sound policy. And yet even trolls can sometimes have something important to say. Even if they’re only ultimately telling us for very trollish reasons. And here we are, faced with having to interpret Charles Johnson’s latest trollish behavior:
There’s a new Business Insider report about a rather bizarre story involving Johnson, long-time ally Peter Thiel, and the FBI. According to Johnson, Thiel became a confidential human source (CHS) for the FBI back in the summer of 2021. Johnson goes on to claim that it Johnson himself who put Thiel in contact with Johnathan Buma, an LA-based FBI agent who specializes in investigating political corruption and foreign-influence campaigns. Johnson himself was already a CHS for Buma at the time. This is good time to recall how Johnson reportedly worked with Thiel during the Trump transition period in putting together lists of potential White House recruits.
So what was Thiel helping the FBI with? Well, we’re told that it was explicitly NOT about Thiel’s ties to MAGA world. Instead, it was focused on foreign government influence operations in Silicon Valley. While it’s unclear which governments Thiel may have been informing the FBI about, this is good time to recall how Thiel and Steve Bannon have been fomenting fears in recent years around China’s influence in Silicon Valley.
Intriguingly, Johnson goes on to suggest that he was encouraging Thiel to start this CHS relationship with the FBI — and offer the FBI a window into his contacts with foreign governments — as part of an effort to prove his loyalty to the US. Johnson also described Thiel’s motivation as a kind of hedge in an environment where extravagant wealth no longer affords the safety it use to. Johnson went on to cite the ProPublica reporting on how Thiel unscrupulously used a Roth IRA to avoid billions in taxes...a story that hit the news in June of 2021. Johnson also cited the death of Jeffrey Epstein. So Epstein’s jailhouse ‘suicide’ apparently freaked Thiel out so much they he felt the need to prove his loyalty to the US government. At least that’s narrative Johnson is putting out there.
So why is Johnson coming forward with all this? Well, we get multiple explanations from Johnson. First, he claims that it was retribution for what Johnson perceives to be bad decision-making by Thiel’s Founders Fund. Johnson goes on to describe how he felt betrayed that Thiel didn’t support Johnson’s own startups. Johnson claims he felt like Thiel owed him support in Johnson’s startups in return for Johnson having introduced Thiel to Buma. Yes, becoming an FBI informant is portrayed by Johnson as something so beneficial to Thiel that Thiel owed Johnson a favor in return. What was Thiel so terrified of at this time? How treasonous was his behavior leading up to that point?
But then we get to the other part of Johnson’s explanations for why he’s going public with all this: Johnson claims he want to help agent Buma with his whistleblowing efforts. Yes, it turns out Agent Buma is now an FBI whistleblower and is no longer actively managing his confidential human sources. According to Buma, the FBI shut down his investigation into whether or not Rudy Giuliani was compromised by the Moscow. He even testified about it before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was ordered to cease contact with all his sources in late 2022. It’s not clear if Thiel has been put in contact with a new FBI agent at this point or what his current CHS status is at all.
But Buma’s investigation into Giuliani isn’t the only Trump-related investigation Buma was working on. He was also using a human source codenamed “genius” who was providing information on far-right figures involved with planning the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Yes, “genius” was Charles Johnson. So Johnson has been helping the FBI with the January 6 insurrection. But the FBI headquarters “closed his most valuable sources”, including “genius”, according to Buma.
So that’s the very bizarre story we’re now getting about Peter Thiel becoming an FBI asset in the summery of 2021. We only know about it because Charles Johnson decided to share it with the world for still confusing reasons. But it’s important to note that this story is entirely based on the claims of a known troll like Johnson. Two anonymous sources are confirming Johnson’s account, with one source suggesting that any assistance Thiel might have provided to the FBI should be understood as part of Thiel’s gradual distancing of himself from Trump and the broader MAGA movement. In other words, it’s all part of a rebranding effort. A rebranding effort seemingly intended to allow Peter Thiel to prove to the US government that he’s not a traitor, brought to us by his professional troll buddy who is also now a valued FBI asset:
“Another source close to Thiel told Insider that while they could not confirm that Thiel was a CHS, Thiel did speak to Buma occasionally. The source said that any assistance Thiel might have provided to the FBI should be understood as part of Thiel’s gradual distancing of himself from Trump and the broader MAGA movement, which has vigorously criticized the FBI and other federal law-enforcement agencies.”
Did Peter Thiel really turn himself into an FBI human source as part of some sort of gradual distancing from Trump and the broader MAGA movement? That’s the claim of one of the two anonymous sources corroborating this story. It’s interesting spin, especially given the circumstances of the FBI agent who ultimately served as Thiel’s point of contact: Johnathan Buma, an LA-based agent who specializes in investigating political corruption and foreign-influence campaigns. Thiel has apparently been tasked with feeding the FBI intel on foreign governments trying to wield influence in Silicon Valley. And it was none other than professional troll Charles Johnson who put Thiel in contact with Buma. It’s a bizarre story on many levels. Sure, Thiel has obviously been trying to build up a public reputation as a stalwart against Chinese influence in the US, but that doesn’t explain why he would somehow be in a position to inform the FBI about what are presumably covert Chinese Silicon Valley influence operations. What’s really going on here?
But when it comes to potentially valuable information that Thiel could pass along to the FBI, we don’t necessarily have to ask about Thiel’s personal contacts. The guy still owns 10% of Palantir, after all. Which presumably means he still has access to Palantir’s torrent of information. Could it be that Thiel is passing along to the FBI intel acquired through Palantir? Or maybe one of Thiel’s other tech firms like hacking firm Boldend? It’s part of what’s so puzzling about this story: Thiel’s value as an intelligence asset is obvious when you consider the companies he owns. It’s less obvious why he would be recruited as a human asset based on his interpersonal interactions, especially if this role was explicitly not at all related to MAGA world:
And then there’s the fact that it’s Charles Johnson who appears to be the initial source of this story. As we’ve seen, Johnson’s ties to Thiel goes back years and include their work on the Trump transition team. Recall how Johnson even claimed at one point that Thiel used him as a conduit to leak emails between Thiel and Reed Hastings, who criticized Thiel for backing Trump. Johnson already outed himself as an FBI informant in a lawsuit he filed in relation to Clearview. And yet we’re told that Johnson is outing Thiel as a FBI source both as a means of supporting Buma’s whistleblowing but ALSO as retribution for what Johnson perceives to be bad decision-making by the Founders Fund and a sense of betrayal over Thiel not supporting him enough in his own startups. But beyond that, Johnson claims that he expected Thiel’s startup support as some sort of pay back for introducing Thiel to Buma, at which point Thiel could offer the FBI a window into Thiel’s contacts with foreign governments and could demonstrate his loyalty to the US. Johnson went on to explain Thiel’s motivation as seeing working with Buma as a kind of ‘hedge’ in an environment where extravagant wealth no longer affords the safety it used to. That was apparently the motivation Thiel had for becoming an FBI asset in the summer of 2021. Cozying up to the US government to avoid some sort of prosecution. It’s the kind of explanation that raises a rather chilling question: was Thiel previously under suspicion of acting as some kind of treasonous scheming? Why the need to prove his loyalty? A major undisclosed Jan 6 role, perhaps? Is Thiel’s loyalty solely to himself so palpable that it endangers how companies’ precious government contracts? It’s not like Thiel’s fascist politics were a secret all these years and yet he still got these highly sensitive government contracts. Why the sudden need to prove his loyalty?
But then we get to the confusing mess around what it was that Buma was actually investigating: Buma came forward in August of this year as a whistleblower, alleging the FBI under Trump shut down his investigation into Rudy Giuliani’s ties to Russia. And while that was all pre-2021, Buma’s investigative work at the FBI has apparently already come to an end, with Buma telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was ordered to cease contact with all his human sources in late 2022:
And then we get this very juicy nugget in relation to Buma’s previous investigations: he was apparently using Johnson as an informant on far-right figures involved with planning the January 6 Capitol insurrection. But that investigation is had been closed down by the FBI headquarters:
And yet, despite Buma getting pulled from his work with his human assets, it doesn’t sound like being a confidential human source for the FBI is something you can just casually shirk off. Which raises the question as to whether or not Thiel was simply given a new FBI contact to continue his human source activities. At the same time, note one consequence of Johnson going public with this story: Thiel’s status as a CHS is more or less ruined at this point. Any foreign government assets stupid enough to trust Thiel with sensitive info before are presumably pulling back at this point:
So how much ‘distance’ will there be between Thiel and the rest of MAGA world after the publication of this article? That remains unclear. In part because this whole thing seems designed send the signal that Thiel is keen on working with the US government, and yet the actual message sent by the article is that Thiel was feeling so vulnerable over some sort of treasonous activities that he was involved in that he felt compelled to send the signals that he’s not actually a treasonous bastard who can’t be trusted with sensitive government contracts.
Either way, it appears that Thiel’s attempts to cozy up a little closer to the US government did indeed work. He became a CHS and presumably fed the FBI all sorts of juicy intel. Or at least enough intel to keep the US government satisfied with its fascist privatized spy-chief for the time being. Intel likely focused on amplifying the existing ‘yellow peril’ sentiments in the US government. Which is also a reminder that the very real ‘fascist peril’ looming over the world relies heavily on infiltrating governments with fascists intent on fomenting one witchhunt after another...as long as the witches aren’t fascist. The fascist witches get CHS status.
Is there trouble in paradise already? It seems so. Trouble is coming for MAGA world. And Elon Musk, in particular. At least, if Steven Bannon has his way. “I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,” according to Bannon in a recent interview with an Italian daily, adding, “He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down.” Those were just some of the warnings Bannon issued about the influence Musk has over Donald Trump. And while this ‘civil war’ between two MAGA leaders isn’t exclusively about the H‑1B visa controversy that erupted in the last week of December, that H‑1B issue is what is currently animating this fight.
Importantly, this recent H‑1B controversy isn’t just a fight with Bannon on one side and Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on the other side. Donald Trump has taken a side too, backing Musk and Ramswamy and coming out in favor of H‑1B worker visas. As we’re going to see, it’s not just that Trump took a side in this fight. He took a side that is the opposite of the stance he’s had on H‑1B worker visas for years including during his first term in office when he curtailed in temporary worker program. Trump’s embrace of H‑1B visas is arguably one of the biggest flip flops of his political career. And that’s how he’s starting off his second term. Showing deference to Elon Musk and enraging his base. This is a good time to recall how the MAGA ‘civil war’ over H‑1Bs may have been a factor in motivating the New Years Day Trump Hotel Cybertruck bombing when we closely examine the timeline of those events.
As we might expect, with India providing 70 percent of the H‑1B visa workers in 2023, this MAGA ‘civil war’ has already become a story in India too, partly driven by the fact that the Modi government views the export of Indian tech workers as an important national export and even personally brought up the issue of H‑1Bs with Joe Biden on multiple occasions.
And yet, as Tanul Thakur, a New Delhi-based independent journalist and author of a forthcoming book about the H‑1B program titled “Wild Wild East,” warns, it’s not like H‑1Bs are great for Indian workers either. Instead, Thakur sees it as a system that harms both US tech workers AND Indian immigrants who end up trapped in low wage jobs in the hopes of getting a green card. He also accused the mainstream Indian news media of abandoning its past criticisms of H‑1Bs — which used to be seen as a damaging brain drain until the late 2000s — and replacing that criticism with a nationalist stance. Which is a reminder that this isn’t simply an issue about US corporations and Indian workers screwing US tech workers out of a job. It’s more about a system that is jointly screwing over both US and Indian workers for the benefit of oligarchs like Musk. Which is part of what makes Bannon picking this fight at this point a major stress test of Donald Trump’s popular appeal. But also a test of Trump’s loyalty to his base. Will Trump choose to placate Musk, the wealthiest man alive? Or his MAGA base, who he doesn’t really need anymore?
And as we’re also going to be reminded of below, for all of Bannon’s complaints over Musk’s stances of H‑1Bs, it’s Musk’s deep ties to China that has Bannon seeing red. Will Trump choose friendly relations with China — presumably with all sorts of business kickbacks for him and his family — or will he stay true to the MAGA anti-China animosity? We’ll find out soon, but there’s no denying that a second Trump administration under Musk’s sway is likely to be much less aggressively opposed to China than it would be under Bannon’s influence.
The range of criticisms Bannon had for Musk in that Italian interview were also rather notable in that Bannon didn’t limit his criticism to Musk. He made a general statement about the number of influential white South Africans in Trump’s orbit. “Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk, are all white South Africans,” as Bannon put it. “He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?” It was an interesting choice of arguments on Bannon’s part. White South African racists presumably aren’t a huge boogeyman for MAGA world, but that’s the line of attack Bannon chose. Which is a reminder that, yes, Elon Musk really does appear to be a huge racist, whether we’re talking about his aggressive promotion of the far right anti-immigrant AfD party in Germany or his a history of pushing the Great Replacement Theory. This isn’t a fight between a racist Bannon-led wing of MAGA vs an anti-racist Musk-led wing. Both wings are routinely dripping with content for non-white populations. It’s more a fight over whether or not US corporations should retain access to that, mostly Indian, labor pool. And based on the time frame Bannon has picked for this fight — to be resolved by Inauguration Day — it sounds like we’re going to get an answer on which side Donald Trump ultimately chooses, sooner rather than later:
““I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,” Bannon told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera this week. “He will not have a blue pass to the White House, he will not have full access to the White House, he will be like any other person.””
Them’s fighting words. Steven Bannon has declared war on Elon Musk. Over Musk’s stance on H‑1B visas. Well, not just Musk’s stand. Trump appears to have the same stance too, after all. Bannon isn’t just upset about H‑1B visas. Instead, he’s framing the issue as emblematic of how “the entire immigration system is gamed by the tech overlords.” That’s part of the significance of this MAGA ‘civil war’ over H‑1B visa: it may have started as a fight over H‑1B visa, but it’s already turning into a fight over whether or not Elon Musk and his fellow billionaire tech bros have too much power and influence:
And then we get to this rather surprising comment by Bannon pointing out how three of the most influential people Trump’s orbit — Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk — are all white South Africans, going on to characterize white South Africans as “the most racist people on earth”. It’s a very interesting choice of words on Bannon’s part. On the one hand, Bannon’s audience probably isn’t super worried about white South African racists on the US government. On the other hand, as we’ve seen, Musk’s family background includes the fact that his grandfather moved the family from Canada to South Africa over a deep belief in the righteousness of the South African apartheid government and a conviction that white peoples needed to oppose the Protocols of the Elders of Zion-style global Jewish conspiracy. Bannon was basically dog-whistling around that still largely unknown part of Musk’s family history with these comments:
Keep in mind that this was Breitbart reporting on Bannon’s interview. MAGA world isn’t just going to roll over and suddenly embrace H‑1Bs, even if Trump gets behind them. And as the following article from November 7, just days after the 2024 election, reminds us, Donald Trump hasn’t just voiced opposition to H‑1B visas for years but he actively curtailed them during his first term. So when we see Trump suddenly come out in favor of H‑1Bs as a kind of defense of Musk of Ramaswamy, it’s important to keep in mind that he’s engaging in something that could easily be considered a major betrayal of his MAGA base. A betrayal few saw coming just months ago. All seemingly done for Elon:
“Over the years, Trump has often claimed to support legal immigration. But both Trump and his soon-to-be vice president JD Vance have argued that the H‑1B and other visa programs encourage employers to hire foreign workers at lower pay, thereby taking those opportunities away from American workers. While campaigning, Vance has echoed the idea that there should be a ceiling on immigration. ”
As we can see in this article written just days after the 2024 election, Trump has a very long track record of not just voicing opposition to the H‑1B visas but policies that curtailed in program in his first term. There was no expectation of a deviation from this history. Trump’s embrace of H‑1Bs really has been an enormous flip flop:
And then we get this fun fact that’s only going to make this a trickier political line for Trump to walk: it’s not just his MAGA base who oppose H‑1Bs. Project 2025, a product of the Christian Nationalist wing of the GOP mega-donor class, also includes some lines about the need to curb the visas. Keep in mind that, while Project 2025 was written as a handbook for the next Republican administration regardless of who that Republican may be, it was also written with Donald Trump’s second term in mind. There should be no surprise Project 2025 was opposed to more H‑1Bs. The surprising part is Trump’s recent embrace, seemingly at the behest of Elon Musk. It really is quite a remarkable political flip flop on an issue that cuts to one of the core MAGA reasons for being. Opposing immigration that seemed to harm US workers was supposed to be non-negotiable for MAGA. And then Trump just kind of casually agreed with Elon:
All signs were pointing towards further H‑1B visa restrictions following Trump’s election victory. That’s what he did before, after all. And yet here we are, before he’s even sworn into office, with a policy reversal that is potentially very significant for for the MAGA base. And as the following article notes, it’s not just Steven Bannon who has taken issue with this flip flop. Far right ‘QAnon’-friendly activist Laura Loomer has joined the fight. The same ‘9/11 Truth’ activist who Trump invited to attend the 9/11 ceremony with him last year.
And as the article also reminds us, this shouldn’t be viewed as some sort of ‘civil war’ between racist and non-racists wings of the MAGA movement. At the same time he was promoting H‑1Bs, Musk was aggressively promoting the far right anti-immigrant AfD party in Germany and has a history of pushing the Great Replacement Theory. This isn’t a fight over racism. It’s a much less principled fight between two wings of MAGA — both deeply uncomfortable with non-white immigration — over whether or not cheap, exploitable, largely non-white labor should be available to corporate America. Which makes this the kind of fight that could be deeply divisive to the MAGA movement:
“As my Nation colleague Joan Walsh noted, as repugnant as they are, anti-system agitators such as Loomer and Bannon have a point when they deride the H‑1B program as exploitative. For decades, progressive pro-labor activists have argued that the H‑1B is in effect a guest worker program, creating a reserve army of employees who work for lower wages and have fewer rights than American citizens or those with permanent residency status. The H‑1B visa is tied to employment, which means employees are especially vulnerable to exploitation.”
Just because Bannon and Loomer are bigots doesn’t mean they don’t have a point when it comes to the exploitative nature of the H‑1B system. They even have some common ground with Bernie Sanders on this issue:
And then there’s the fact that, for all of Musk’s apparent embrace of immigration, the guy has been steadily revealing himself to be a eugenicist and a big fan of the Great Replacement Theory and political parties like the AfD. It’s the kind of gross hypocrisy that underscores the reality that even bigoted billionaires can love immigrations, at least when they’re allowed to hire these immigrants in a systems that leaves them with lower pay and fewer rights:
And then there’s Vivek Ramaswamy’s attempts to frame the debate as one over ‘culture’. Which was effectively a means of declaring most Americans too stupid and lazy for technology jobs. It’s the kind of argument that obviously isn’t going to play well with much of the MAGA base. But it’s also a reminder that distilling these kinds of debates to debates over ‘culture’ easily lends itself to gross justifications for exploitation systems under the pretense of a cultural superiority and the idea that there are ‘those with the culture to be masters and those with the culture to be servants’:
But the controversy isn’t just limited to different wings of MAGA. India — which supplied over 70 percent of H‑1B visa workers in 2023 — has, unsurprisingly, taken notice. And it’s not just an issue for Indian’s at large. The Modi government has long viewed H‑1Bs as a positive export for India and a means of extending Indian influence. In fact, President Modi personally brought up the issue of H‑1Bs with Joe Biden on multiple occasions.
And yet, as Tanul Thakur, a New Delhi-based independent journalist and author of a forthcoming book about the H‑1B program titled “Wild Wild East,” warns, it’s not like H‑1Bs are great for Indian workers either. Instead, Thakur sees it as a system that harms both US tech workers AND Indian immigrants who end up trapped in low wage jobs in the hopes of getting a green card. He also accused the mainstream Indian news media of abandoning its past criticisms of H‑1Bs — which used to be seen as a damaging brain drain until the late 2000s — and replacing that criticism with a nationalist stance. Which is a reminder that this isn’t simply an issue about US corporations and Indian workers screwing US tech workers out of a job. Indian and US tech workers can both end up getting exploited, to the benefit of business owners like Trump and Musk:
“For decades, the H‑1B program has allowed hundreds of thousands of computer programmers and other high-skilled workers from India to work in the United States on a temporary basis. In 2023, Indians made up more than 70 percent of all H‑1B workers, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data.”
When the H‑1B fight erupted it may have technically been a fight over ‘immigration’. But with 70 percent of all H‑1B workers coming from India, this is largely a fight of Indian immigration. And as we can see, it’s a fight that hasn’t escape the attention of India. And that’s after Narendra Modi personally took up the cause of H‑1B workers in multiple meetings with Joe Biden. This is clearly an issue India takes very seriously. Now, with Donald Trump coming down on the side of H‑1B visas, this presumably won’t end up becoming a major diplomatic rift between the US and India. But that’s assuming this MAGA ‘civil war’ is somehow resolved in favor or H‑1B visas for good. And as Steven Bannon and Laura Loomer have been making clear, it’s far from resolved:
And yet, as New Delhi-based independent journalist and author Tanul Thakur explained, the problems with the H‑1B system aren’t just problems for American workers. Indians are being trapped in low-wage exploitative jobs for years too. And as Thakur points out, its a system of exploitation the Modi government has no interest in reforming either:
Finally, as the following article reminds us, Steven Bannon’s issues with Musk — and with Trump’s embrace of Musk — isn’t limited to H‑1Bs. In fact, that’s not really Bannon’s main critique of Musk. Instead, Bannon insists he disagrees with Musk on “just about everything”, and in particular Musk’s deepening relationship with China:
“The podcaster has previously called Musk a “stone cold liar” and said “his paymasters” are from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In a recent interview with Semafor, Bannon said that he and Musk disagree on “just about everything.””
It’s not just H‑1Bs. Bannon and Musk disagree on “just about everything,” according to Bannon. Especially when it comes to Musk’s relationship with China. A relationship that is absolutely critical to Tesla and Musk’s wealth. Musk may be a big fan of H‑1B visas, but he’s undoubtedly a bigger fan of the US maintaining friendly business relations with China:
Bannon has his declared mission. And yet, with Trump seemingly still enamored with Musk’s wealth and influence, it would seem that Bannon has his work cut out for him. Trump hasn’t really wavered in his support of Musk or his newfound support of H‑1Bs. At least not yet. Time will tell.
And yet, even if Trump does ‘break up’ with Musk as many are predicting, that doesn’t necessarily means he’ll break up with H‑1Bs too. Again, Trump doesn’t actually need his MAGA base anymore. What exactly that means in terms of policy remains to be seen. But he’s never going to have to run for reelection again and will never need to do another rally. Sure, he might love adoring crowds. But he loves adoring billionaires who can make him a ton of money too and Musk obviously isn’t the only billionaire who loves H‑1Bs. Which group does Trump value more now that he never has to run for reelection again? We’re all going to find out, including his still-adoring MAGA base. A still-adoring MAGA base that probably isn’t as adoring as it was a couple of months ago.