DOGE is going global. It needs to be stopped.
The extreme right is organizing for a new austerity campaign modeled on Elon Musk’s destructive efforts
“We need a DOGE right now.” Those words were retweeted by Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke in early February, alongside an image calling out an aid initiative funded by the Canadian government in Ghana. As the extreme right in the United States had begun pouring over government spending to pull out any program they deemed too “woke” or wasteful, that same spirit was being seized by fellow travelers beyond its borders.
By February, serious questions were already emerging about Elon Musk’s role in the US government and the consequences of the cuts being made by his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). President Donald Trump was also escalating rhetoric around annexing Canada and turning it into the 51st state, while threats of tariffs loomed. But that didn’t stop many in Canada’s tech industry from defending Musk’s actions and advocating for a DOGE of their own.
Canadian tech executives launched an initiative called Build Canada, aimed at advocating for policy positions they deemed to be in their interest. The memos listed on the group’s website included everything from building more oil pipelines and taking down internal trade barriers to firing over 100,000 federal government employees and restricting the entry of refugees in favor of “high skilled immigrants.” It wasn’t just about promoting tech or innovation, but pushing a broader agenda typically associated with the political right.
In the media, those tech executives focused on promoting Build Canada and the policies it wanted government to adopt. But The Tyee reporter Jen St. Denis found that on their social media feeds, they were also directing their followers to second organization called Canada Spends. Its website aped that of DOGE.gov, claiming to show data about government spending and pointing to a series of tweets identifying programs and initiatives — often associated with foreign aid — they deemed beyond the pale.
Canadian tech executives have increasingly embraced the Conservative Party, especially since changes were proposed to increase capital gains taxes last year. Just like the US extreme right ignores the existence of the Government Accountability Office, which exists to audit government spending, Canadian tech leaders ignore how Canada has its own Auditor General and Parliamentary Budget Officer — because they don’t actually care about making government more efficient.
In the United States, Silicon Valley and right-wing groups like the Heritage Foundation have allied to remake the government to serve their collective interests and ensure they’re never held accountable for their actions. That alliance between conservatives and the tech industry is now going global as right-wing groups try to reframe austerity and privatization through the lens of innovation by calling to create their own versions of DOGE.
Global calls for austerity
Sitting on stage at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on March 3, Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges declared, “You know, what Europe needs is a DOGE.” He was on a panel of European telecom executives, who collectively criticized supposed overregulation and limits on further telecom consolidation. “We need an initiative to cut down this bureaucracy and this administration here, because there are tens of thousands of people sitting there and administrating our industries,” he continued.
It’s hard to get a more blatant example of corporate executives seizing on DOGE to try to advance their own interests. Höttges didn’t even try to hide how he only really wanted a European DOGE to serve his commercial ambition. But he had political support. Germany’s neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany party, which got Musk’s backing in the recent German election, called for a European DOGE to cut red tape and reduce migration, while other right-wing politicians are supporting similar efforts.
Meanwhile, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi praised Musk’s actions with DOGE, comparing them to some of his own efforts to reform welfare programs, while Argentina’s president Javier Milei has been lauded by the US extreme right as an example for DOGE to follow. After taking power, Milei began rolling back regulations, cutting state ministries, and fired 10% of government employees. It hasn’t stopped there though.
Down in Australia, tech leaders, the Murdoch-owned media, and right-wing politicians have also been trying to bring Musk’s ideas for deep austerity to their own country. Days after Trump was sworn in, officially creating DOGE, Adam Gilmour of Gilmour Space Technologies said, “I strongly believe we need to do something like that in Australia.” Gina Reinhart, the richest woman in the country, agreed with him.
Three days later, Australia’s right-wing Coalition created a shadow minister for government efficiency dedicated to cutting “wasteful spending,” despite already having a shadow assistant minister for government waste reduction. Australia is currently run by a Labor government, but the Coalition is leading in the polls ahead of an election that must be called by May. Yet the most worrying similarities to DOGE might be found across the ditch in New Zealand.
NZ’s libertarian power grab
In 2023, voters in New Zealand turned on the Labour Party. In its place, the right-wing National Party returned to power with the support of the populist NZ First and the extreme libertarian ACT Party. After the election, Musk congratulated National leader Christopher Luxon, writing on Twitter/X, “Congratulations and thank goodness!”
Luxon’s government is the most conservative to run New Zealand in decades, in part because of the outsized influence ACT leader David Seymour has played, despite his party holding only 11 seats. In February, Seymour was asked whether New Zealand needed a DOGE of its own. “We do have a Ministry for Regulation that is doing what some people in America are talking about,” he responded.
After taking power, Seymour formed the Ministry for Regulation with the goal of cutting regulations across government. He said that would be necessary to increase economic growth and productivity, and more recently scolded his fellow citizens to “get past their squeamishness about privatization.” But Seymour’s Ministry wasn’t just about pushing right-wing economic policy; it was also a power grab to ensure his goals can be realized.
Earlier this year, political reporter Henry Cook reported that the Ministry for Regulation had taken over responsibility for regulatory impact analyses from the Treasury and mandated that agencies across government get in contact with it as soon as they start developing new policy. That not only gives Seymour unprecedented insight into what’s happening across government, but also the ability to stifle unfavorable policy early in its development. It’s a major coup, despite ACT being only a minor coalition partner in the government, and is reminiscent of the access DOGE has received across government departments.
Elon Musk’s DOGE is somewhat unique to the United States’ presidential system. It would be more difficult to set up an organization with its exact structure and to enable a billionaire from outside government to direct it in a parliamentary system. For that reason, New Zealand’s Ministry for Regulation has long felt worthy of attention because it serves as an experiment for how the extreme right may try to seize more power within parliamentary political systems in the years to come, especially when it can be combined with the hype around DOGE.
Laundering right-wing policies
Watching the global extreme right rally around Elon Musk and DOGE brings to mind the global expansion of neoliberalism fifty years ago. Neoliberal ideas and policies existed before the tenures of US president Ronald Reagan and UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher, but they helped legitimize the ideology and ensure other countries around the world pursued tax cuts, deregulation, and privatization to try to keep up — regardless of the evidence of social harm those policies caused.
Decades later, neoliberal narratives persist. Right-wing politicians will still claim tax cuts lead to more government revenue, not less, or that cutting the taxes of the rich will trickle down to the poor. They also claim privatizing public services will result in better and more efficient delivery. It doesn’t matter that we have decades of experience showing otherwise; the political right and its powerful backers will pursue their goals at all costs and try to convince the public they’ll also benefit from a policy program thats serves the rich and powerful.
As we watch DOGE tear through the US government and leave disaster in its wake, we might imagine that no one would support creating a similar initiative in other countries around the world. But the truth is that work has already begun, and if explicit references to DOGE prove too controversial, its right-wing backers will find other ways to sell it to the public through claims about combatting waste to promote greater productivity and efficiency.
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In Canada, the Conservative Party seemed poised to claim victory in this year’s election. But after their inability to pivot in the face of Trump’s threats against Canada’s sovereignty, the Liberal Party under its new leader Mark Carney is up in the polls and may hold on to power. Right-wing tech leaders might seem out in the cold as a result, but that’s not necessarily the case.
Carney has embraced the framing of the UK’s Labour Party that government is spending too much, economic growth must be the core focus, and that AI must be thoroughly embraced. UK Labour’s austerity program has already been criticized as being in line with DOGE, while the leader of its Scottish wing has explicitly said he’ll set up his own “department of government efficiency” if his party wins regional elections next year.
The adoption of these ideas by centrist parties is when things get even more worrying. Margaret Thatcher once said her greatest achievement was Tony Blair. When elected in 1997, Blair had thoroughly remade the Labour Party as a force for neoliberal transformation, as Bill Clinton did with the US Democratic Party. The last thing we need now is for DOGE to get a similar endorsement.
Ugh. Scary but predictable.
These people are aided by a hapless media that repeats their claims this is about saving money, when it's really a politically motivated way of destroying and weakening political opponents. Funny how there's always plenty of money to spend on things that serve the DOGEish ideology.
Things only look grim from inside the Atlanticist bubble. Outside of it, in about 85% of the world, things are moving in a much better direction. I have often thought that the moment when these extreme libertarians get what they want, will be the moment of their collapse.