@memeorandum@universeodon.com2025-10-21 12:05:49
A rickety dictatorship -- Trump's hand of cards is weaker than it appears. (David R. Lurie/Public Notice)
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-dictatorship
http://www.memeorandum.com/251021/p13#a251021p13
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-11-21 10:25:31
It's also interesting that we're only tangentially making the connection between shit social media and fascism. What we are not saying is that control of social space *is* a form of governance. Humans have the right to free social spaces, both physical and digital.
When we think about social media as a system of control, as a government, we see that capitalist social media results in incredibly abusive dictatorships. These dictatorships exist solely to exploit their citizens, extracting both labor and attention, for the gain of a few. They manipulate their citizens to keep them locked in. It's not a coincidence that these systems algorithmically promote fascist ideology. They are themselves a type of fascist government that pushes fascism into the physical space.
@cdarwin@c.im2025-12-22 03:49:35
Tech journalist Gil Duran outlines a disturbing theory
that a growing number of Silicon Valley elites are pursuing a vision of power
not rooted in the common good,
but in profit, feudal hierarchy, and total control of the platforms that define daily life for hundreds of millions of people.
Duran dubs this emerging ideology the “Nerd Reich”
— a slurry of right-wing ideas championed by ruthless tech overlords like
Palantir founder Peter Thiel,
Tesla an…
@ubuntourist@mastodon.social2025-09-23 08:09:41
@cdarwin@c.im2025-10-21 14:40:11
“How do we move forward in a way that everybody feels like they’re being engaged, they’re being heard and they’re understanding that elections have consequences?” she asks rhetorically.
“You have to come out and vote. You lose your voice if you don’t come out to vote.
One of the problems that’s happening right now is people are fearful and that’s how dictatorship begins. That’s how authoritarian regimes start.
They create this chaos and then this fear and we cannot be fe…
@markhburton@mstdn.social2025-11-18 09:43:53
One of our friends is the daughter of a Chilean refugee who came here as a young child after the fascist coup in 1973.
Under this Labour government she and her family would have been sent back, probably by 1980 when the dictatorship imposed a new constitution. It was still a highly repressive country. Refugees generally didn't deem it safe to return until the late 1980s. Most made lives here, contributing greatly to this country, as migrant communities always do.
@kurtsh@mastodon.social2025-11-19 08:19:38
@davidaugust@mastodon.online2025-10-17 05:03:10
“‘Sending armed soldiers to suppress peaceful protests is what kings and dictators do — and Greg Abbott just proved he’s one of them,’ Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu said in a statement.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/16/greg-abbott-…
@ingo@social.stuetzle.cc2025-10-17 19:31:22
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-10-16 08:24:42
Actually, I do want to come back to masculinity under patriarchy and whiteness under white supremacy because I think it's worth talking more about. The "man" under patriarchy (at least "Western" patriarchy) is represented as power and independence. The man needs nothing and thus owes nothing to anyone. The man controls and is not controlled, which is intimately related to independence as dependence can make someone vulnerable to control. The image of "man" projects power and invulnerability. At the same time "man" is a bumbling fool who can't be held accountable for his inability to control his sexual urges. He must be fed and cared for, as though another child. His worst behaviors must be dismissed with phrases such as "boys will be boys" and "locker room talk." The absurdity of the concept of human "independence" is impossible to understate.
Even if you go all Ted Kaczynski, you have still been raised and taught. This is, perhaps, why it is so much more useful to think in terms of obligations than rights. Rights can be claimed and protected with violence alone, but obligations reveal the true interdependence that sustains us. A "man" may assert his rights. Yet, on some level, we all know that the "man" of patriarchy acts as a child who is not mature enough to recognize his obligations.
White violence and white fragility reflect the same dichotomy. "The master race" somehow always needs brown folks to make all their shit and do all the reproductive labor for them. For those who fully embrace whiteness, the "safe space" is a joke. DEI shows weakness. Yet, when presented with an honest history adults become children who are incapable of differentiating between criticism and simple facts. *They* become the ones who must be kept safe. The expectation to be responsible for one's own words and actions, one of the very core definitions of being an adult, is far too much to expect. Their guilt needs room, needs tending, needs caring. White people cannot simply "grow the fuck up" or, as they may say of slavery, "fucking get over it."
And again, interestingly, it is *rights* that they reference: "Mah Freeze PEACH!" I find it hard to distinguish between such and my own child's assertion that anything she doesn't like is "not fair!" No, these assertions fail to recognize the fundamental fabric of adult society: the obligations we hold to each other.
At the intersection of all privilege is the sovereign, the ultimate god-man-baby. Again, referencing the essay (https://hexmhell.writeas.com/observations-on-domination-and-trump)
> This is where it becomes important to consider the ideology behind the sovereign ritual. Participation within the sovereign ritual denotes to the participants elements of the sovereign. That is, all agents of the sovereign are, essentially, micro dictators. By carrying out the will of the sovereign, these micro dictators can, by extension, act outside of the law.
While law enforcement is the ultimate representative of sovereign violence, privileges allow a gradated approximation of the sovereign. Those who are "closer" in privilege to the sovereign may, for example, be permitted to carry out violence against those who are father away. The gradation of privilege turns the whole society, except for the least privileged, into a cult that protects the privilege system on behalf of the most privileged. (And immediately Malcolm X pops to mind as having already talked about part of this relationship in 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo.)