TikTok and Tariffs: Trump’s Technofascist Theater of Empire

Trump ain’t negotiating. He’s extorting. And this ain’t about TikTok. It’s about empire, clout, and control in a world slipping through Washington’s trembling fingers.

I. Theatrics of Empire on the Brink

So here comes Trump, posturing like a pit boss at a bankrupt casino, saying China “reached out” to talk tariffs. He flirts with easing trade pressure while holding TikTok hostage, reminding everyone that in technofascist America, social media platforms are just geopolitical pawns.

It’s not strategy—it’s spectacle. Trump ain’t governing. He’s performing the desperation of a crumbling empire for a crowd that confuses bullying with power.

II. TikTok Ain’t About Privacy. It’s About Power.

They say it’s about protecting Americans from Chinese surveillance. But that’s a joke. Facebook, Google, Amazon—they spy harder and sell deeper. The TikTok panic is about one thing: narrative control. A Chinese-owned app beat the U.S. at its own game, and empire don’t like competition on its propaganda playground.

So what does Trump do? He threatens to ban it, or force ByteDance to sell to an American buyer. That’s not regulation—that’s digital colonialism. It’s regime change for the algorithm age.

III. Tariffs as a Weapon of War

These aren’t trade policies. They’re siege tactics. Tariffs are the blunt instruments of empire when the dollar starts wobbling and the factories don’t hum like they used to.

Trump doesn’t want a deal. He wants capitulation. He doesn’t fear TikTok’s code. He fears the future where Washington doesn’t set the rules.

The real reason TikTok and tariffs are on the table? Because empire can’t compete anymore—so it sabotages. It throws sanctions, launches smear campaigns, and chokes rivals with legal warfare masked as “national security.”

IV. Technofascism in Full Color

This is the technofascist model in motion: a fusion of state and corporate power, backed by military threat, cultural war, and digital surveillance. The imperial logic goes like this: if we can’t own it, we’ll ban it. If we can’t dominate it, we’ll destroy it.

TikTok is just the opening act. The real plan is to hardwire U.S. supremacy into the infrastructure of the future. AI, chips, fiber optics, satellites—the empire’s digital dominion depends on kneecapping any competition before it rises.

V. The Empire Has No Clothes, Just Apps and Bombs

The TikTok fight is a microcosm of a larger truth: the U.S. empire can’t sell the dream anymore, so it’s selling fear. It can’t build global consent, so it builds walls and firewalls.

Trump’s performance is grotesque, but it’s not a glitch. It’s the system running exactly as designed. And if we want out of this digital dystopia, we need more than analysis.

We need action. We need organization. And we need a global working class that understands:

This isn’t a trade war. It’s class war in the cloud. And the empire’s trying to crash the system before we rewrite it.