#rp25 speaker Christopher Coenen: Super Humans from Silicon Valley?

Wether the oligarchic attack on democracies in the USA and elsewhere will be successful ultimately depends on those who aim to prevent it. At re:publica 25, the political scientist Christopher Coenen will discuss how oligarchs and their ideologies are linked to ideas on transhumanism – and how this thinking promotes the dismantling of democracy.

The ideologies that unite today's global oligarchs were already popularised by computer scientist Timnit Gebru and philosopher Émile P. Torres in 2023 under the term ‘TESCREAL’. The acronym includes Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, (modern) Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism. In his talk, Christopher will describe these terms using key figures such as JD Vance, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.

What insights can these ideologies provide to develop opposing strategies for action? For Christopher Coenen, revolutionary action is all the more necessary now – from the workplace, school or neighbourhood all the way to transnational political organisation. Because the ‘digital capitalist shift’ to the right is accelerating. In this context, the digital sphere not only plays a role as an arena, but is also becoming a central object of conflict itself.

Christopher Coenen is a political scientist. Since 2003, he has been working as a research associate at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) in Karlsruhe. There, he also heads the research group ‘Life, Innovation, Health, and Technology’. His research is centred around information and communication technologies, neurotechnologies, transhumanism, ‘human enhancement’ and the increasingly dissolving demarcation between humans and technology. Furthermore, Christopher Coenen is the managing editor of the journal ‘NanoEthics: Studies of New and Emerging Technologies’ and has been advising the German Bundestag and the European Parliament since the 2000s.

The motto of re:publica 25 is ‘Generation XYZ’. What is your message for future generations with regard to the digital society?

Christopher Coenen: "Let's use digital communication and collaboration, also via our own media such as Fediverse, for transnational organising and against fortresses of wealth, nationalist sentiment and the capitalist destruction of democracy and nature!"