We might have the word of the year in record time. Broligarchy started out as a jocular term for the unelected power that the tech billionaires might wield at the White House. It’s no longer a joking matter.
In his farewell speech, Joe Biden warned that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy”. Just days later, Donald Trump’s inauguration was celebrated in a bro-fest of billionaire proportions with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman, Shou Zi Chew, Marc Andreessen and Tim Cook all showing their support.
The use of the word broligarchy for a ruling elite of tech billionaires quickly spiked online, implying a widespread sense that the new government was going to be controlled by a small group of tech titans rather than an elected leader working with Congress and the Senate.
Broligarchy is a blend of bro and oligarchy. For more than 100 years, bro, short for “brother”, has been used in African American English to refer to a fellow male member of the same social or cultural group. The word oligarchy (from the ancient Greek oligo- “having few” and -archy, “ruling”) has existed in English for more than half a millennium to refer to “a small group of (wealthy) people or families who govern a country”.
It was surfers who popularised bro in the 1990s, creating humorous blends such as ambrodextrous, “able to surf a wave and throw a shaka [hand gesture] with either hand”; and brocedure, “a surfer’s morning ritual”. What could that be? I wondered, before finding a windsurfing usenet from 2003: “Coffee, poo, stretch—that’s Josh’s brocedure every morning”.
Broligarchy appears in surfer language in the early 2000s “when a small group of bros run a break”—referring to locals controlling a surf spot. It was not a big jump from surfing to Silicon Valley. The “surfer bro” of the 1990s gave way to the “tech bro” in the 2000s who was college-educated, wore sneakers and a hoodie and was over-confident about his abilities.
Central to broligarchy is bromance, “a close, non-sexual, friendship between two men”, such as the relationship between Thiel and vice president JD Vance, or Musk and Trump. Surfers created the term “bromance” (bro plus romance) at the turn of the 21st century, and the film industry soon adopted it for a genre of male “buddy movies”. Such relationships are decidedly platonic. In case we weren’t sure, Musk recently tweeted: “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man.” Many raised an eyebrow when Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan the corporate world is “pretty culturally neutered” and in need of “more masculine energy”. It was a stark reminder that a return to the “manosphere” is at the heart of the broligarchy ethos.
