The article going around about how "you can't post your way out of fascism" is, well, imo as a researcher in this field, kinda bad. Connective action is actually quite important! Awareness raising matters! The piece frames "posting" in contrast to "real organizing," and emphasizes local irl... - ThreadSky

shadell.itch.io • 19 days ago

The article going around about how "you can't post your way out of fascism" is, well, imo as a researcher in this field, kinda bad.

Connective action is actually quite important! Awareness raising matters! The piece frames "posting" in contrast to "real organizing," and emphasizes local irl...

Comments

shadell.itch.io•19 days ago

Connection and community building, and those matter immensely.

But the truth is that a lot of fundraising, a lot of mutual aid, a lot of organizing isn't—and can't be—local. There's useless speech, sure, but there's also speech that does things and flattening that distinction mostly just...

shadell.itch.io•19 days ago

Caters to the moral panic around social media that we now have.

Speaking as a scholar of new media, the relationships pointed to are real, but they are also, generally, weak. They also elide a lot of very important counter-trends.

shadell.itch.io•19 days ago

What's more, the idea that local organizing is an option is one grounded in a very particular sense of place and organizing. It's very important, but it's also a very limited perspective at the end of the day.

shadell.itch.io•19 days ago

Like, yeah, I'm going to do some great local resistance living in the EU! That'll show Trump! Someone in rural Texas can't and shouldn't always be organizing marches (but they might! It's complicated and it depends on a lot!)

Meanwhile, the idea that Moms for Liberty et al are distinctly offline...

shadell.itch.io•19 days ago

Yes and no?

LibsOfTikTok exists and is tremendously influential. The fascist admin is named DOGE. Joe Rogan is a bellwether here. It all grew out of Gamergate. There are profoundly, incalculably online roots to a lot of contemporary American authoritarianism.

The Nazis are compulsive posters.

shadell.itch.io•19 days ago

I think a lot about Ewa Majewska's Feminist Antifascism, and how a major point it makes is how we tend to lionize the loudest, biggest, most martyry kinds of activism. But Majewska argues movements depend on building and maintaining connections, they depend on education and survival and promotion.

cybren.bsky.social•19 days ago

There's a lot of apparently leftist people invested in the idea that joe rogan isn't actually on the right, for some reason, too.

recombobulating.bsky.social•19 days ago

posting on the internet to try and change people's minds about the internet by telling them that nobody can change anything by posting on the internet 😭

phil-brighton.bsky.social•17 days ago

I understand the outpouring of grrrr and woe about #fuckTrump & #fuckMusk but, ultimately 100s of K's of reposts of 100s of v similar memes isn't going to get much done. Neither will hundreds of well-meaning, small, frequent, protests. The US needs coalitions to form, to unite again the right.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply