I’ve been mulling over Janus Rose’s recent 404 Media article, “You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism.”. In many ways, she’s not wrong. But once again people are ignoring an entirely other way of doing social media that can, in fact, fight fascism.
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What is to be done? Well, Rose argues that there is no antidote to Trumpian poison to be found in merely taking to social media and posting about his (or Elon Musk’s, or Pete Hesgeth’s, or any other Trumpist’s) bizarre or cruel statements. “If there’s one thing I’d hoped people had learned going into the next four years of Donald Trump as president,” she writes, “it’s that spending lots of time online posting about what people in power are saying and doing is not going to accomplish anything. If anything, it’s exactly what they want.”
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Can folks doomscroll on the fediverse? Yes. Can folks post on the fediverse? Yes. Might they post about the latest outrage of Trump? Yes, definitely.
Does that mean they are failing to fight incipient fascism? No.
In fact, I argue that the act of running, moderating, and participating in federated social media is precisely the sort of organizing that Rose calls for. It’s just taking place in a media environment, rather than, say, in an NGO’s offices in a city.
I wouldn’t place any high value on what we’re doing here. At best, you should view this as bitching about the news at the local college-kid frequented coffeeshop. Yes, there is an element of raising awareness and discussion - it’s not useless, but ultimately, it’s not going to play a major role in getting us out of this shitshow. We’re discussing matters because it brings us some relief to do so, first and foremost.
I think you are underestimating the effect. I’ve learned a whole lot in my year and a half here. Enough to develop a decent understanding of what’s going on and what concrete actions I could take in my corner of the world. I think we can’t expect action without understanding of why act and what action. I think discussions here help with that. For all the people who post and comment, there are many who read, learn go find out more, and so on. Some of those would take action that they wouldn’t have otherwise. If we don’t platform that do this, if all there is are corporate platforms that keep people unaware of even the basics of what’s happening beyond the reporting, then the number of people who’d act in some productive way would be even lower.
Nah you’re not going to post your way out of fascism. The whole point of Musk and Trump is they literally dgaf about what people say. Actions matter, and organizing on any social media that’s easily reachable by AI might as well just fax the FBI their plans.
Both of those people are SO FUCKING THIRSTY for constant approval.
Counterpoint: no amount of red scare great replacement free market nonsense is gonna make me not shut off whatever screen is showing it to me
Sure, moderating and creating places like the fediverse are good and useful. But 99% of the time people spend on the fediverse isn’t doing that
I feel like this article misses the essence of the original. It’s a strawman. Yes, being on the fediverse is better than being on twitter/facebook whatever corpo media. But it is equally susceptible to just endless scrolling without any action
Many Twitter refugees made a good choice in migrating from Musk’s X to Bluesky, carving out a new online space that is inhospitable to bigoted debate bros and time-wasting trolls. But in their enemies’ absence, many of these Left-leaning posters have just reverted to dunking on each other, preferring the catharsis of sectarian conflict over the hard work of organizing.
Yeah I’ve tried bluesky, this is entirely accurate. 90% of US political content on bluesky is basically a combination of r/whitepeopletwitter and r/clevercomebacks. Same people too, that reddit loves
Yeah but no one wants to write about the real solution. # See inglorious basterds for instructions.
