For a long time, it was customary to pit authoritarianism against liberalism. At the very latest since the election of the self-declared anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei and Donald Trump’s second term in office, this distinction can no longer be maintained. The new libertarian authoritarianism forces apparent contradictions into a new unity that disorients us: it combines an emphasis on freedom with the demand for unconditional submission and allegiance; it seeks to defend unrestricted freedom of speech by sanctioning and canceling free speech; it combines hatred of the state with a celebration of unrestricted executive power. And it seeks to abolish government and bureaucracy by replacing them with the pinnacle of bureaucratic, administered power: AI. The perfect embodiment of all this is Elon Musk, who has evolved from a tech nerd and a skilled salesman of clean energy into a chainsaw-wielding icon of the new right and, as head of DOGE, was tasked to dismantle the American state. In their highly anticipated new book, Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff now trace how Musk became what he is, and from which sources “Muskism” could develop. They reveal Mukism as a new dispositif in which disruption and extreme consolidation of power, techno-optimism and reactionary ideology, transhumanist promises, and racist and conspiracy-theorist ideologies converge. Muskism is not only a Frankensteinian monster of contemporary capitalism, but, by its own claim, the blueprint for a new Leviathan for the 21st century. In the Red Salon, Christian Schmidt and Thomas Khurana discuss with Quinn Slobodian the sources from which Muskism arose, the new form of the dictatorship of capital that is emerging with it, and how we can resist the new alliances of power, machine, and capital.