You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism | Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them

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Sure you can. Fight online propaganda with online propaganda.

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It may be a good time to note that the constitution page on whitehouse.gov is still 404ing.

It's available on congress.gov and archived under bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov, but the current admin has yet to put it back.

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TLDR - We need more Luigis against the techbros

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I suspect the vast majority of people turning to social media as a pressure release valve feel disempowered, and honestly don't know what more they can reasonably do. How can a fly meaningfully change the orbit of a planet?

This article is insightful, but practically useless. I think it would be better if it also presented specific actions and achievable goals that would lead to shutting down encroaching fascism.

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Oh god, I haven't checked the White House website since it went full fascist. A big-ass picture of Dear Leader right at the top. North Korea, China, Russia...even those countries don't have anything so blatantly cult of personality on the front page of their websites.

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One of the problems with online forums for organizing is that it's hard to naturally build an organizational structure. It's possible, but I think it requires experienced organizers to start choosing collaborators from the userbase.

in online forums, people get upvoted based on how much users agree with the comment. They are rewarded for being popular, not for having a direct impact on the problem being discussed.
IRL people who commit effort to the cause get a certain amount of social capital, and the satisfaction of having an effect. They also form social bonds with other people in the group. Participants are rewarded for having an effect.

We haven't seen a lot of organizing boiling out of the existing forums (Reddit, Facebook, blogs) and microblogging (Twitter) platforms. There have been a bunch of leaderless movements, like #metoo and BLM, but those have had a moment and then faded out. If they were effective tools for organizing, I would expect to see more organizations come out of them and persist.

Conversely, volunteer community organizations form all the time - people are physically situated near people experiencing similar problems who are invested in solutions they think will work for their community. In-person organization is self perpetuating in the sense that there is an inherent reward for having an effect.

I think it's possible to use online tools to create a movement, but like the author of the article says, most of us spend our time posting and upvoting rather than doing something that will change policy.

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It did break down the barriers for those less technical by bringing the conversation to a web browser that was certainly more accessible as opposed to a terminal, for better or worse.

I beg your pardon, but what about web forums? I don't think anything technical was required with those.

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For anyone interested here is the CIA's publicly available field manual for simple sabotage. Dated, but mostly still relevant.

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Just because you have an easy time with something does not mean everyone does

That was the whole point of my answer.

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People need to know that posting doesn't actually do anything!

posts an article about it

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Posts comment about it.

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Plus, there are a lot of folks here (it seems like a majority sometimes in my personal experience) that are quick to advocate violence/sabotage in lieu of negotiation and debate. That reeks of puppeteering; there can’t be that many arseholes here, right?

That's because there are a lot of marginlized folks here - gay, trans, autistic, linux users - who have spent decades disucssing politely and negotiating.

Problem is the people throwing Nazi salutes and writing all these executive orders have, quite clearly, said they want us all either dead or in camps.

Now I wouldn't dream of speaking for everyone else, but I'm certainly not going to be attempting to politely debate myself out of a one-way train ride, if it comes to that.

So, yeah, while I don't encourage violence for the sake of violence, the neoliberal 'oh dear we must all be very polite at all times and let rationality solve all our issues!' is dead and worthless.

I've taken classes for and armed myself, and I have zero qualms with defending myself and friends and family by any means necessary if it comes down to a situation where it's us-or-them, regardless of who 'them' is.

If you told me even five years ago that I'd be carrying a gun and be fully prepared to use deadly force to defend myself I'd have called you goofy, and if you told me that I'd be willing to use it against agents of the state if they came after me, I'd think you have lost your damn mind.

But, well, it's been a long 5 years, and frankly, IMO, the rule of law and the trust in any governmental institutions have been eroded into nothing.

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Not a comment on the merit of the article, but a tangential thought:
Fediverse has presented the same amount of doom to scroll as the algorithms. I open my phone to get a break from work, life, etc, and any app I think to open for social or news, presents the same anxiety of "I just can't deal with that type of shit right now; where can I bury my head in the sand?"

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Hahahaha you said linux users in the same breath of marginalized folk.

The cloud is linux. I don't think social media is where we're marginalized.

I agree with everything else you've said.

https://socialistra.org

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What will matter in the end isn't what you put online.

It'll be how good your memory becomes when ICE comes knocking on your door asking about your neighbors.

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Luigi 1 didn't accomplish anything, though.

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The field manual was to cripple the nation (Nazi Germany) so it could be conquered by other nations.

The USA being conquered won't reduce fascism in the slightest.

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Organising to do what exactly? A majority of the US population wants this nightmare. The Trump administration is expected to destroy norms and institutions to bring about their bigot's utopia, they ran on that promise.

It's really that dire. It's beyond the reach of the checks and balances that have kept things somewhat on-track up until just after 9/11. Checks and balances are precisely what the voters want to delete from the courts.

If Trump wants a 3rd term, he will get it, and his voters will not be moved by marches or sit-ins or AOC exquisitely calling out the scum and villainy from the floor of the senate. Either talk Luigification, or let the people post their fucking memes in peace.

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Reminder that the USA has a nationwide strike at State Capital Buildings TODAY.

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You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism | Authoritarians and tech CEOs now share the same goal: to keep us locked in an eternal doomscroll instead of organizing against them