Elon Musk and the narratives of decadence that link all anti-democratic movements

“It’s the birthrates. It’s the birthrates. It’s the birthrates,” echoed the introduction line in the manifesto of the Christchurch shooter who killed 51 people in a mosque in 2019. His claim was that white people are being “replaced” by other races and won’t survive without action.

A few years later, the same obsession with birth rates has become a catchphrase of Elon Musk’s daily social media activism.

Don’t get me wrong, Elon Musk is neither a white supremacist nor a right-wing terrorist. Yet, like other people with extremist opinions, he promotes the view that society is in decline and that action is needed to prevent a related apocalypse. These rhetorical overlaps are hardly coincidental. They stem from a reactionary philosophy that has a long history of going viral.

Anxiety that low birthrates inevitably lead to population collapse has been haunting the west since mass consumption became its dominant lifestyle. This flips the older Malthusian fear of exponential population growth that will outpace our ability to produce food. Seen in the bigger picture, both are variations of a generic narrative known as decadence.

The idea of decadence – moral decline triggered by excessive indulgence – informs many parts of everyday sense-making, especially cultural criticism.

Ever read American historian Christopher Lasch’s famous bestseller about the contemporary culture of narcissism? Ever come across the popular meme that claims “weak men create hard times”? Ever followed the Cultural Tutor’s tweets about the loss of beauty in architecture? Ever doomscrolled through Jordan Peterson’s 1,293 YouTube videos? The detail varies, but the overarching theme of decadence is the same every time.

Decadence is a useful double-edged sword as a narrative. It frames the masses as sluggish and in need of discipline. The corrupt elites, meanwhile, simply need to be replaced. It bemoans the erosion of authority and draws on the premise that every society rests upon eternal hierarchies. Too much freedom, fun and flexibility, the story goes, jeopardises order and, thus, prosperity.

Hence, some rules for life: men must subordinate and obey for the sake of the greater good. Women must breed to secure the existence of our people and a future for our children. A new nobility shall replace the liberal elites and recreate culture. Otherwise, civilisation, or at least nations, are at stake. Does this sound familiar?

Ever since the biblical legends of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Hindu myth of Kali Yuga, adversaries of equality and the rule of law accused societies of being decadent.

From ancient populists in the Roman empire to Italian fascists, decadence is the transhistorical scaffolding that binds together the branches of anti-liberal philosophy.

Today, neoreactionary philosopher and advocate of a “dark enlightenment”, Curtis Yarvin, declares in the New York Times that democracy is “dead”. He longs to replace it with an American monarchy. Political scientist Patrick Deneen’s claim of a “nearly complete disassociation of the governing class and a citizenry without a cives” equally draws on a decadence narrative.

All these ideas rest on a cyclical perception of time. Rise and fall. Blossom and decay. Apocalypse and palingenesis, meaning a national or ethnic rebirth.

In my research, I’ve analysed hundreds of German and French neo-fascist magazines. In the end, the data was the same endless repetition of decadence and apocalypticism. I dubbed it conservative crisis narratives.

The politics of crisis

In most cases, there’s no need to worry. Decadence is just a cliché. But that is why everybody can so easily sell own versions of this story – as long as they recap the grand narrative. Facts don’t matter and the devil isn’t in the detail.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Donald Trump’s vice-president J.D. Vance frankly admitted during the 2024 campaign. His confession reveals a sociological truth about the function of crisis narratives.

According to American anthropologist Janet Roitman, who delved into what she calls the “politics of crisis”, such a narrative “cannot be taken as a description of a historical situation nor can it be taken to be a diagnosis of the status of history”. Instead, she elaborates, it is a “necessarily political denunciation”.

Every crisis narrative necessarily strengthens the call for redeemers. “The 2024 election is the last shot to save America,” claims Donald Trump. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” reposts Musk. It’s a scaleable story.

Elon Musk’s philosophy

In France, the far-right philosopher Guillaume Faye, who inspired the identitarian movement, invented a reactionary philosophy called “archeofuturism”. It aims to combine skyrocketing technical progress and a medieval morality of heroism and hierarchies. That’s not far from how Musk answers the decadence narrative with a call to radical long-termism.

The “digital town square” that X claims to be, for instance, is a signifier of the feudal public sphere. Musk’s digital reenactment of ancient Rome’s aesthetics reflects the far-right desire for an American Caesar. Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, the most influential book in pre-fascist Germany, promoted the very same idea.

Musk’s philosophy appears to be that men shall submit to the CEO-king’s long-term ambition. To conquer space, colonise Mars, and merge human brains into one singular artificial intelligence, the individual and its needs become negligible. And that’s what the decadence narrative is all about in the first place.

Felix Schilk received a scholarship from Hans Böckler Foundation.