Mark Zuckerberg has sent a friend request to conservatives; we should accept

Did Mark Zuckerberg finally choose the red pill? According to Business Insider, he has “entered his libertarian era.” The Sweet Baby Ray lizard man may even have joined the Republican caste.

And I say let him join us in the basement.

The man seems weary. Which is reasonable. He’s finally seeing the media’s hideous face. His company played a role in America’s current dislocation.

Sure, Zuck may be a member of the $200 billion club, an informal designation for the world’s four richest men, but recently, he's claiming to be one of us.

First came the physical transformation — the Everyman persona, the haircut, the kickboxing. Next came whispers about a phone call with Trump, whom he has admired in public and prayed for in private.

Then there was his letter to Congress, which included what could almost pass for an apology to Republican voters for Meta’s anti-conservative bias during the 2020 election.

Request accepted?

In public, “neutrality” is his mantra. But privately, according to the New York Times, he’s leaning into free markets, globalism, and individual liberty and rejecting far-left progressivism. He even hired Republican strategist Brian Baker to help him mend relationships with right-wing media and high-profile Republicans, including Trump.

And we should take him at his word and embrace him with open arms, even if only as an act of self-preservation. Conservatives must engage with new technology on all fronts, not shy away. Big Tech bias is real, and while censorship-free apps may be a fantasy, the commitment to liberty isn’t.

Awareness and participation in social media could help prevent America from a collapse into totalitarianism.

What happens when the third-richest man and the richest man, Elon Musk, who both own social media platforms, get red-pilled? While not quite as based as Elon, Zuckerberg’s shift could spark a reorientation within a culture gasping for change.

Zuckerberg’s former political ilk tend to monopolize this process of transformation. But in the name of America, they should never wind up with full control.

Conservatives, after all, need to advance culture, as long as the path is steady and the duty remains sacred.

But what about his past?

Sure, for about a decade, Zuck’s activist politics often scapegoated anyone politically to the right of Obama. And some of his actions have reshaped the ideological landscape and muddied the “free and fair” part of elections. He presumably played a major role in the spread of mass surveillance and the public’s full-scale addiction to the slot machine gameplay embedded in social media platforms.

But even if he’s entirely responsible for all of these violations, his transformation should cheer us up.

First Musk bought Twitter. Now Zuckerberg is channeling Ron Paul? In the battle against digital totalitarianism, this is a win. It’s a sign the machinery of social networks can be dismantled — or at least exposed.

Is it real?

Another concern: Maybe he’s faking. But I think it’s legit, and here’s why: Leftist defection comes with a cost. For someone like Zuckerberg to criticize Democrats is both risky and embarrassing — so if he’s doing it, he probably means it. He hasn’t shouted his new identity from the rooftops yet, but give him time.

In his letter to Congress, he vowed not to repeat his 2020 electoral donations, which compromised his claim to neutrality. As he put it: “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or even appear to.”

CNN mocked this as an “election-season gift to Republicans.”

The New York Times report claimed that Zuckerberg has become cynical about politics. But it appears to be far more than that. On the surface it looks like burnout.

The man seems weary. Which is reasonable. He’s finally seeing the media’s hideous face. His company played a role in America’s current dislocation. At this point, both parties loathe Big Tech, and his political engagements have only brought Meta more scrutiny.

So he’s pulled back from partisan philanthropy and dialed down Meta’s internal activism. His biggest beef seems to be with the activist class — those who attacked his philanthropic efforts for being “bipartisan” rather than sufficiently left-wing. Like many Millennials, his shift rightward is a reaction to the megalomania that’s overtaken the left.

Conservatives cannot stand the activist class’ rabid attacks. So why respond to a political refugee with the same vitriol?

Silicon mafia

According to the New York Times article, Zuckerberg’s shift reflects a larger trend in Silicon Valley in which executives are backing away from divisive social issues to focus on business.

As Business Insider put it, the political divide in Silicon Valley is now public, largely because activists have blurred the line between public life and private life — a distinction foundational to Western politics since the Greeks.

It was arguably Peter Thiel's outing by Gawker that led him to his eventual public embrace of conservatism. Now he’s joined by a roster of wealthy tech elites, including David Sacks, PayPal’s founding COO. And Elon Musk has donned the MAGA hat.

Of course, the backlash against Zuckerberg has already begun. Mother Jones went full NPR cat lady: “There’s no such thing as an apolitical oligarch.” Then the author claims that Zuckerberg’s fortune “came from a monopolistic enterprise that’s been used to foment ethnic cleansing and collectively unlearn a century-and-a-half [sic] of germ theory.”

Meanwhile, bro is just trying to engage with some new ideas and hopefully shed some toxic well-funded political movements along the way.

The New Left, obsessed with control, has twisted libertarianism into something sinister. Former CIA Director John Brennan even lumped libertarians in with fascists and bigots, simply for rejecting state overreach. But the libertarians I know are too busy bickering about the role of police and the availability of hard drugs.

In reality, libertarianism — foundational to the internet itself — champions individual rights and minimal state interference.

Donald Trump saw the threat Big Tech posed when he pushed for Section 230 reform. He lost that battle, but the rise of Big Tech libertarians like Zuckerberg hints at a rematch. And this time, conservatives may not be fighting alone.