“The Rise of Techno-Authoritarianism”
Special issue of the Journal of Right-Wing Studies
Call for Proposals
Submission deadline: January 15, 2026
This special issue of the Journal of Right-Wing Studies will explore the intersection of technology, politics, power, and space in the twenty-first century. We aim to better understand the contemporary resurgence of the (far) right via its connections with cyberlibertarianism, venture-capital extremism, secessionism, and techno-authoritarianism. We ask how the internet’s early promises of leftist counterculture, democratization, and utopian freedom were absorbed by Silicon Valley capitalist development and refashioned into a right-libertarian ethos. And we question why some tech venture capitalists—with roots in Silicon Valley’s “build fast and break things” culture—now see democracy as an outdated technology to be replaced with algorithmic decision-making and private technological governance. These accelerationist logics are poised to concentrate power for venture capitalists and tech elites, threatening the freedoms, lands, and lives of all, especially marginalized populations. In raising such issues, we draw from work on algorithmic radicalization, on technological accelerationism, and on the technological determinism of Peter Thiel’s and Curtis Yarvin’s neoreactionary and “Dark Enlightenment” ideologies.
The Journal of Right-Wing Studies is an internationally oriented multidisciplinary journal that seeks to publish research and commentary in clear and jargon-free language that is as accessible as possible to the general academic community and the public at large. This special issue thus welcomes contributors working in, or at the intersection of, fields in the humanities and nonquantitative social sciences, both in the United States and around the world.
We wish to encourage broad and novel thinking on the links between technology and right-wing ideology. Possible topics include but are not limited to the following:
The Journal of Right-Wing Studies is an internationally oriented multidisciplinary journal that seeks to publish research and commentary in clear and jargon-free language that is as accessible as possible to the general academic community and the public at large. This special issue thus welcomes contributors working in, or at the intersection of, fields in the humanities and nonquantitative social sciences, both in the United States and around the world.
We wish to encourage broad and novel thinking on the links between technology and right-wing ideology. Possible topics include but are not limited to the following:
- Historical trajectories that have laid the foundations for new forms of techno-authoritarianism or technological utopianism/solutionism.
- Histories of technological determinism, authoritarianism, or accelerationism (e/acc) relevant to the current moment.
- Alignments with efforts outside of the US, for instance with development projects in Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Africa, or with authoritarian regimes in Latin America.
- Cryptocurrency and economic development.
- The global, transnational, and transpolitical dimensions of techno-authoritarianism.
- Technological efforts to control media and flows of information via alt-media or AI.
- Attempts to make these ideologies concrete with technical infrastructures such as AI, blockchain, and cryptocurrency.
- The relationship between tech venture capitalism and crises of capitalism.
- Critiques of “technofeudalism.”
- The technopolitics of exit/secession/anti-statism.
- The political lobbying of tech venture capitalism and its relations with the state.
- The intersection of the tech and defense industries.
- Technology and governance experiments.
- The reactionary positions of tech elites (antifeminist, racist, classist, xenophobic, etc.).
- The intersection of anti-state and post-state projects/ideologies with far-right extremism; the movement of such projects/ideologies from the fringe to the mainstream.
Interested authors are invited to send an abstract of 250 to 500 words and their CV by January 15, 2026, to jrws.techright@gmail.com. We will notify those whose proposals are accepted by February 15, 2026, and invite them to submit full articles no later than August 2026.
For JRWS’s submission guidelines, see https://escholarship.org/uc/jrws/submissionGuidlines.
Please direct questions about the suitability of proposals to Jillian (Lee) Crandall at j.crandall@berkeley.edu.
General questions about publishing in JRWS can be sent to jrwseditors@gmail.com.
Lead guest editor: Jillian (Lee) Crandall (UC Berkeley)
Assistant guest editors: Chelsea Kai Roesch (UC Santa Barbara), Alexander Reid-Ross (Portland State University), Kat Fuller (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
For JRWS’s submission guidelines, see https://escholarship.org/uc/jrws/submissionGuidlines.
Please direct questions about the suitability of proposals to Jillian (Lee) Crandall at j.crandall@berkeley.edu.
General questions about publishing in JRWS can be sent to jrwseditors@gmail.com.
Lead guest editor: Jillian (Lee) Crandall (UC Berkeley)
Assistant guest editors: Chelsea Kai Roesch (UC Santa Barbara), Alexander Reid-Ross (Portland State University), Kat Fuller (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)