What is Technofeudalism?
A landing page for teachers, students, and scholars.
From the earliest stages of conceiving “A Tale of Today,” I knew both that I wanted to introduce listeners to a range of recent attempts to periodize our present, and that among the attempts I wanted to engage most extensively was technofeudalism, as it was described by Yanis Varoufakis in his book by that name published in September of 2023.
Even as late as when I began releasing episodes (and made my first mentions of technofeudalism) in September of 2024, the term had very minimal circulation, especially in North America. That clearly changed over the course of the year “A Tale of Today” was being distributed.
As far as I could tell, technofeudalism entered mainstream discourse when Steve Bannon started using the term in his attacks on Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg in the early weeks of 2025, and thus the term started appearing in legacy media outlets which remain enduringly fascinated by Bannon.
However, there is a case to be made that the American Vandal episodes played a role in bringing Varoufakis’s specific version of technofeudalism into greater circulation.
With the help of James Livingston, whose curiosity about technofeudalism parallels my own, I was able to arrange to record with Varoufakis himself in March, and that interview, as well as one with Livingston recorded a week earlier, makes up the spine of the “Technofeudal Trilogy” within “A Tale of Today” (episodes 15-17, released in April and May).
But my interest in technofeudalism (and deployment of the term) is evident from the beginning of the series, and continues after the trilogy episodes were released. In two supplementary essays - “Against Technofeudal Education” and “The Technofedual Text” - both of which I wrote in June of 2025, I attempt to build on the work of Varoufakis and McKenzie Wark to explicate technofeudalism specifically in the context of U.S. higher education and the discipline of literary studies.
I was clearly not alone in finding the technofeudal thesis compelling. “Against Technofeudal Education” is the most popular installment of this newsletter to date, with “The Technofeudal Text” not terribly far behind. The first appearance of Varoufakis on the podcast is the second most-downloaded episode in both this season and the entire history of The American Vandal.
My perception is that the arguments associated with technofeudalism are growing more urgent, not less, especially as we approach the end of a business cycle after which the attention economy may need to be propped up by force.
So, on this landing page, I have collected together “The Technofeudal Trilogy,” as well as both prequel and afterward episodes from “A Tale of Today” which engage technofeudalism. As with the “HBCUs & The Philanthropcapitalist Swindle” landing page I created earlier in the season, my hope here is to assist both listeners who might consume this arc of the series independently, and teachers who might want to plan curriculum around it.
To the latter end, I have paired with each episode some “recommended readings” which are both easy to access digitally, relatively digestible, and appropriate for (advanced) students.
The Technofeudal Trilogy:
Newspapers Worse Than Dead, But Print Is A Rent Strike (A Tale of Today, Episode #15)
Episode opens with journalism’s “race to the bottom,” described by a journalist who lived it, followed by what “The Facebook Files” revealed about social media’s relationship to news [8:00], the tactics of parallel journalism [27:00}, the difference between fake news and fake journalism [38:00], the fate worse than death for periodicals, but not books [48:00], what the acquisition of Twitter taught us about technofeudalism [65:00], and a call to return to institutional media [82:00].
Featured Scholars: Samuel Freedman, Matt Seybold, Jeff Horwitz, Gil Duran, Andie Tucher, Jeff Jarvis, Yanis Varoufakis, Tressie McMillan Cottom
Recommended Reading:
Keach Hagey & Jeff Horwitz, “Facebook Tried To Make Its Platform A Healthier Place. It Got Angrier Instead.” Wall Street Journal (September 15, 2021)
Gil Duran, “The Tech Baron Seeking To Purge San Francisco of ‘Blues’” New Republic (April 25, 2024)
Matt Seybold, “The Technofeudal Text” The American Vandal (August 25, 2025)
From Technostructure To Technofeudalism (A Tale of Today, Episode #16)
An exploration of the political economy of technofeudalism begins by defining the technostructure and introducing its personification, followed by testimony from a skeptic [26:00], competing periodizations of the present [48:00], and media praxis under the rein of the cloudalists [73:00].
Featured Scholars: Matt Seybold, Yanis Varoufakis, James Livingston, Astra Taylor
Recommended Reading:
Yanis Varoufakis, “Overthrowing Our Tech Overlords” Noema (June 25, 2024)
Morgan Meaker & Yanis Varoufakis, “Welcome To The Age of Technofeudalism” Wired (April 9, 2024)
James Livingston, "What Was Capitalism?" Project Syndicate (February 16, 2024)
James Livingston, "Steve Bannon Reads Christopher Lasch" Politics, Letters, Persons (July 4, 2025)
Tim Barker, "Dealignment" New Left Review (November 11, 2024)
Solidarity & Speculation (A Tale of Today, Episode #17)
The finale of our trilogy centered on Technofeudalism begins with the intersection of political economy with aesthetics and literary forms, followed by a synthesis of financial and fictive definitions of speculation [18:00], what can be done with the technofeudal thesis [27:30], the role of solidarity in the age of insecurity [33:00], the Panic of 1873 as a model [41:30], panics to come [53:00], and some final words from Yanis Varoufakis [72:00].
Featured Scholars: Matt Seybold, Yanis Varoufakis, Jordan S. Carroll, James Livingston, Astra Taylor, Leigh Claire La Berge
Recommended Reading:
Yanis Varoufakis, "Trump & The Triumph of The Technolords" Project Syndicate (April 30, 2025)
John Kenneth Galbraith, “The Prophets & Promise of Classical Capitalism” from The Age of Uncertainty (PBS, 1977)
John Kenneth Galbraith, “The Manners & Morals of High Capitalism” from The Age of Uncertainty (PBS, 1977)
Matt Seybold, "Authoritarianism Is The Bailout" The American Vandal (February 21, 2025)
The Prequels:
The Gilded Network (A Tale of Today, Episode #13)
Our 150th anniversary celebration of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today” turns to political economies of mass media, then and now, beginning with a close reading of the novel’s title. We are then introduced to the tech fascist fantasy of the Network State [21:00], theories of post-capitalism [47:00], ways of reading from the right [58:00], and a more optimistic technofuturism [77:00].
Featured Scholars: Matt Seybold, Jeffrey Insko, Anna Kornbluh, Jordan S. Carroll, Douglas Dowland, Jeff Jarvis
Recommended Reading:
Jodi Dean, “Feudalism By Design: On Quinn Slobodian’s Crack-Up Capitalism” Los Angeles Review of Books (April 10, 2023)
Gil Duran, “The People of Solano County Versus The Next Tech-Billionaire Dystopia” The New Republic (January 4, 2024)
Nicholas Kusnetz & Katie Surma, “A Lawsuit From Backers of a ‘Startup City’ Could Bankrupt Honduras” Wired (September 28, 2024)
The Facebook Files & The Gutenberg Parenthesis (A Tale of Today, Episode #14)
A two-part meditation on the history of journalism and the fate of investigative journalism under tech fascism begins with the model of Ida Tarbell, the epochal Wall Street Journal reporting on Facebook in 2021 [6:00], the professionalization of journalism during the Gilded Age and interbellum periods [38:00], the relationship between Silicon Valley and news organizations in the 21st century [54:00], the legacy of newspapers [63:00], and a periodization of print media [71:00].
Featured Scholars: Gil Duran, Matt Seybold, Jeff Horwitz, Andie Tucher, Jacob Silverman, Jeff Jarvis
Recommended Reading:
Matthew Kirschenbaum, “Prepare For The Textpocalypse” The Atlantic (March 8, 2023)
Jeff Horwitz, “The Facebook Whistleblower, Frances Haugen, Says She Wants To Fix The Company, Not Harm It” Wall Street Journal (October 3, 2021)
Jeff Horwitz et al, “Facebook’s Pushback: Stem The Leaks, Spin The Politics, Don’t Say Sorry” Wall Street Journal (December 29, 2021)
Cruel Optimism & The Enclosure of The Commons (A Tale of Today, Episode #2)
A new episode of “A Tale of Today” begins with an explanation of the forest charter and the enclosure of the commons through a revisionist version of a familiar story. The enclosure of the commons is then traced into The Gilded Age [8:00], before two scholars of the novel discuss its affective registers, as well as Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s fraught attempts to periodize and historicize its contemporary political moment [21:00].
Featured Scholars: Astra Taylor, Matt Seybold, Nathan Wolff
Recommended Reading:
Astra Taylor, “Barons or Commoners” Massey Lectures (2024)
Nathan Wolff, “First As Farce: Structures of Feeling in The Gilded Age” Quarry Farm Symposium (October 11, 2024)
Slavoj Zizek, “Against The Populist Temptation” Critical Inquiry (Spring 2006)
The Afterwards:
The Mutational Romances of Silicon Valley Speculation (A Tale of Today, Episode #18)
Our ideology critique of contemporary tech fascist SciFi begins with the first selections from Fredric Jameson's 1977 seminar at the Institute On Culture & Society, followed by a journalists narration of the tech fascist turn in Silicon Valley [10:00], ideological analysis of Alt-Right speculative fiction [37:00], and technofeudal yearning to convert probability to prophecy [70:00].
Featured Scholars: Fredric Jameson, Matt Seybold, Jordan S. Carroll, Jacob Silverman
Recommended Reading:
Jordan S. Carroll, “Reactionary Futurism 2025” Los Angeles Review of Books (June 16, 2025)
Jacob Silverman, "Elon Musk Eyes A Shadow Presidency" The Nation (October 30, 2024)
Jacob Silverman, “Future Fail” Baffler (September 2017)
Jacob Silverman, “From Trump Convictions to Assassination Attempts: How Prediction Markets Have Turned American Politics Into A Casino” Vanity Fair (September 26, 2024)
Cruel Futurism (Finale Episode, A Tale of Today)
The finale of "A Tale of Today," the eleventh season of The American Vandal Podcast. Matt Seybold offers his journey of curiosity from the end of "Criticism LTD" to "The Technofeudal Text."
Featured Scholars: Matt Seybold, Nathan Wolff
Recommended Reading:
Tressie McMillan Cottom, “The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes” New York Times (March 29, 2025)
Jelani Favors, "The Second Curriculum" The Point (August 15, 2021)
Matt Seybold, “Against Technofeudal Education” The American Vandal (June 10, 2025)
Matt Seybold, “The Klepto-Keynesian Showdown” The American Vandal (November 15, 2024)
