The Algorithm is Fascist ["For The People" version]
The Global Shift To Neo Fascism and A Case for Algorithmic Reparations
aka "That Time the Left Got Cooked by Podcasts" aka “I Saw Ya Boy Was Rawdoggin’ The Manosphere”
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ABSTRACT FOR THE PEOPLE
[For your convenience, you can download the full PDF here]
This piece argues that modern algorithmic systems have normalized a new form of fascism that spreads through feeds. Fueled by Silicon Valley ideology, meme culture, and unpaid data labor, this "algorithmic fascism" creates confusion, rewards chaos, and dissolves shared reality.
At the heart of this shift is the neoreactionary (NRx) movement, whose ideology fuses eugenics, tech utopianism, and corporate governance. This movement is Silicon Valley adjacent. Many of the intellectual roots of this movement originated in Nick Land’s “Dark Enlightenment” essay, which has been expanded by Curtis Yarvin and others. This movement is bankrolled by figures like Peter Thiel. These ideas flow into political initiatives like the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025, shaping global policy and strategically positioning candidates like J.D. Vance.
Unlike vintage fascism, this version spreads algorithmically—learning our impulses, exploiting identity discourse, and numbing us through repetition. It doesn’t entirely suppress dissent; but it overwhelms it. Young men are a key recruitment base. Tokenized figures of color provide cover. The attention we give its trolling and “flooding the zone” further fuels it.
This piece proposes new forms of resistance designed to starve the algorithm of behavioral data. It also calls for the creation of new, grounded systems: offline communities, indigenous-informed design, and disobedience at the level of interface.
Ultimately, the piece reframes today’s information landscape as a battlefield for the future. Reclaiming data, narrative, and signal are emergent strategies that center humankind. De-center the morbidly powerful who wish to create a new paradigm where they are the supreme rulers.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE, AND TO THE PEOPLE ONLY
0. The Intention
The intention here is to define the nature of a particular threat.
That definition is intended to empower those of us opposed to fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism and radical white supremacy. Especially as legitimized political platforms. We can begin to neutralize that threat by understanding how it works; it is designed to confuse, confound and overwhelm us to the point that we can’t agree on shared reality. All the confusion makes us ripe for radicalizing, and unable to effectively mobilize. That state of confusion has been manufactured to support a global shift towards neofascism, and to obscure other urgent challenges humankind faces. Many that would otherwise oppose these far right movements are perhaps too confused, misinformed or fatigued to do anything about them. Others have signed on to build power for the movements without even realizing it.
These movements are obsessed with consolidation of power in the hands of the few, and all of us are impacted by this obsession. The NRx movement is radically opposed to stewardship of ecology and ubiquitous human wellbeing. They champion eugenics disguised as men’s liberation, transhumanism and rebellion against conformity (the “anti-woke” portion of the movement). The philosophers of these movements (Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, etc) have no connection to the global south, or what everyday people are going through. Yet their thinking currently grips the keys of power worldwide, at a most crucial time. These movements have amassed power at a speed that a slow liberal establishment and your favorite political podcast can’t keep up with. This power pulls on emergent technology, mountains of accelerationist money, and expert disinformation campaigns. We can only begin to invalidate and dismantle this shift by understanding the basic mechanics, and our collective role in giving those mechanics life.
The counter to this movement may rely on understanding the value of our data and habits, and evolving how we communicate with each other. As you read, please read laterally and look up any terms you are unfamiliar with. We are linking out to resources in this version, but there is a more academic version of this paper with citations and whatnot.
Let’s get to work.
I. The Age of Algorithmic Fascism
It’s no secret that the past decade has seen the rapid rise of a radical, internet savvy global right. This movement has shaped conservative politics in the US, Europe, South Asia and Latin America. What makes this movement more dangerous than fascist movements of the past are three main characteristics. The first is that the world’s most powerful nation is now being led by a neo-fascist. The second is the unique precipice of ecological catastrophe that we currently face (that NRx publicly discredits, but secretly hordes for). The third characteristic is how this movement is powered, and the crazy reach it has. This reach is subsidized by powerful techno-oligarchs, the algorithms they have built and a massive network of platforms, media outlets, apps and cultural cache under their direct influence. Meta and X may come to mind. The algorithms that power this ecosystem are built on the backs of free human labor, yours included. It is this third characteristic that this piece leans into. This piece was inspired by the question “Why do so many people want to FAFO with fascism?” On the way to answers, what surfaced was a picture of this vast post-liberal, reactionary technopolitic that has far reaching tentacles into culture and policy. They are set on creating a very specific future. To seed that future they deploy meme warfare, confusion, manipulation. Way down the rabbit hole you will find occult concepts like “hyperstition” and the “numogram”, which are better left for another examination. But whether they are real or not, there are underlying chaos principles baked into the technology, and they are intended to attract those primed for radicalization. Intentions like this in powerful positions are how the scales tip towards widespread acceptance of wack shit.
If there is a headline here, it is that fascism needs consent to be normalized, and algorithms help manufacture that consent. Thus, the algorithm is fascist. It amplifies content, viral disinformation, and meme warfare that expertly recruits, radicalizes, confuses and mobilizes. It targets disaffected (mostly white) youth and the reaction-curious. “Reaction” in this context refers to a conservative “reaction” to progressives efforts to change things. This “neoreactionary” movement (abbreviated to NRx) has been winning recent elections and reshaping reality with recruitment pipelines that mimic community.
II. The Dark Enlightenment: An Intellectual Framework
If there is a heart of NRx thinking, it would be the “The Dark Enlightenment”. This ideology is an ultra-capitalist salad of fascism, tech accelerationism and necropolitics. The Dark Enlightenment leans chiefly on the thinking of Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land. In the shadow of The Dark Enlightenment is a rogue’s gallery of …. thinker dudes. The issue we address here is not so much their philosophies, but how the thinking has entrenched itself our global geopolitics and technology to a neo fascist and earth-be-damned effect.
Let’s start with Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug). He’s a former software engineer and blogger known for proposing the idea of “neocameralism” circa 2007. This model imagines democratic institutions being replaced by small corporate-monarchies. In these models, any form of collectivism (representative democracy, direct democracy, socialism, communism, take your pick) is replaced by a few “smart” ruling elites whose only accountability measures are market principles.
It’s important to note that there is no real pedagogy behind his musings. Just an adoration for corporate dynamics. The vision for freedom claims to liberate the people through business models, because democracy has failed. Corporate barons will have complete authority over their domain and the people who “subscribe” to their government “services”. There’s much more to it, but there is only so much space here for that. Suffice it to say, the already wealthy and resourced will be the only ones winning in that paradigm too.
Shortly after Curtis Yarvin introduced his ideas, philosopher Nick Land packaged them in a way that could be mainstreamed with his essay, The Dark Enlightenment. The thesis of the essay is that corporate models are naturally objective, agnostic, just, transparent and equitable… and thus the state should be run as a corporate startup. All the race science and eugenics feeling stuff in the essay is chalked up to “the numbers don’t lie”, and used to justify why we ultimately need to accelerate towards a tech utopian white ethnostate. Ultimately they dream of a future where we transcend our bodies into consciousness modalities that exist in fields they have created. The cyberpunk culture and jungle that inspired The Matrix also inspired Nick Land, the CCRU, their explorations of “Lemurian time sorcery”, and ultimately the Dark Enlightenment itself. The “Dark Enlightenment” as a phrase is a euphimism for “exit”, which sees the intellectually gifted, high IQ (which can only be white guys of course) and well-resourced taking their goods elsewhere so that this awful civilization can collapse. It inspired some wild ideas like the Seasteading Institute. It also inspired other more serious ideas that have taken political root.
Land and Yarvin’s writings helped birth the current widespread Neo-Reactionary (NRx) movement, which views liberal democracy as a failure. It also sees Enlightenment ideals like equality and freedom as carrots that the State dangles to expand its power, but never actually delivers on. Those of us with strong critiques for the State will find some of the strictly political thinking not entirely disagreeable. In fact, the mainstream media and “the Cathedral” (how NRx refers to the media-academic-establishment complex) typically cite Nick Land’s ideas that “democracy” and “liberty” are incompatible as the most despicable of his concepts. They miss the mark, as if there aren’t generations of proof that democracy has been a vector for modern imperialism and tyrannical capitalism. Where Dark Enlightenment, Yarvin and NRx thinking are truly problematic is not necessarily in their critique of representative democracy. The true problems are that the critiques are plagued by a selective grasp of both historical geopolitics and the transgenerational impacts of imperialism. They are big on various flavors of eugenics, and are amenable to white supremacy. They also fetishize cyberpunk, “trad life”, transhumanist supremacy and fascism.
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Meanwhile, Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley billionaire and political financier behind the murderous Palantir, is positioned as a funder and chief philosopher of the NRx movement. He is a Paypal co-founder and early Facebook investor. At least once upon a time, “Thiel Bucks” were a thing; the Silicon Valley neoreactionary equivalent of hitting the lotto. He is a champion of NRx and Dark Enlightenment thinking, and he has a ton of disciples in the tech sphere. Palantir is “a big data company that mines government and corporate databases for signs of international and domestic terrorist activity,” as cited by the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. Palantir has a long history of enabling the surveillance state, harmful data collection and predictive policing. The same intellect that architected this technology literally bought JD Vance’s Vice Presidential positioning. “Thiel Bucks” have also funded powerful right-wing think tanks, media outlets, and biotech firms that are very thirsty for transhumanist immortality. Just about everyone Thiel aligns with is about technocratic aristocracy. He is an important piece of understanding how fringe thinking got mainstreamed.
Yoram Hazony’s “National Conservatism” (NatCon) rounds out the cast that helped normalize what our algorithms celebrate. His framework pushes religious traditionalism, authoritarian state power, and identity politics through an Israeli ethno-nationalist lens. His thinking helped Yarvin and Land’s musings become policy frameworks. The most famous of which would be Project 2025; an output of the Heritage Foundation, which is directly shaped by Hazony’s NatCon frameworks. Here we have a lynchpin in understanding where MAGA, NRx and the Israeli neocon wave are all connected and harmonizing.
If the algorithm was oxen, these people have built the yoke that steers.
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Together, they reject liberalism as inherently decadent. And they are not entirely wrong. The status quo and imperialism disguised as “democracy” and “progress” has burned us all.
But what they advocate for as a replacement are authoritarian ethno states with social orders grounded in “civilizational values” that they have chosen. They see that new order dictated by themselves and their proxies. While these thinkers publicly reject leftism, they also cherry-pick thinking from generational leftist organizers, philosophers and movements. In grand colonizer fashion, they stitched together a new ideology of oppression.
The problem we face now is that this thinking, what Youtuber FD Signifier calls “Red Pill Bullshit”, has reached the highest offices of power. We collectively consented to this through our addiction to their tech and the dopamine hits. Collectively we have compromised ourselves via fractured discourse and misinformation borne of tainted algorithms and research.
They Co-opt and Cap
The neoreactionary movement is particularly good at trolling and disguising itself in the language of its adversaries. Rather than rejecting progressive values outright, this movement selectively absorbs, distorts, and weaponizes them. In doing so, it presents a compelling illusion of insurgency, diversity and even futurism (see Land’s roots at the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit) while “hustling backwards”.
For example, the movement publicly roasts “DEI” while it benefits from coalition building. While it lambasts diversity through Project 2025 initiatives, it boasts Black conservative influencers that denounce the reality of systemic racism, gay commentators critiquing “rainbow capitalism,” and women promoting “tradwife” aesthetics as feminist self-actualization...all in the same universe. Ironically, they come together to tell the world that diversity is a flawed, poisonous concept. We are not in disagreement that coercive, disingenuous diversity initiatives can be potentially harmful. From leftist perspectives it is clear that exploitative capitalism disguised as DEI has not solved our big problems.
Back to the co-opting and cap, reactionary movements increasingly mine radical traditions—from Marxist critiques of elite capture to decolonial language of sovereignty and resistance—only to repackage them in service of hierarchy, ethno-nationalism, and authoritarian nostalgia.
Examples include:
“Accelerationism” originally born in Marxist thinking, to be later co-opted and repackaged by Nick Land to map out cyberpunk nihilism in the Dark Enlightenment that now guides world politics.
“Anti-globalism” rhetoric that echoes leftist critiques of neoliberalism, but replaces class analysis with xenophobia and conspiratorial eugenics.
“Parental rights” activism that appropriates feminist ideas of bodily autonomy to dismantle queer and trans protections.
“Decentralization” and “exit” movements that mimic anarchist or mutual aid logics, while being funded by billionaire libertarians who want to create a new paradigm where they are the ruling class.
Even the New Right's aesthetic of irony, play, and rebellion borrows from punk, postmodernism, and meme cultures originally forged in resistance to empire—not in defense of a new one.
This inversion exploits younger audiences raised on memes, and who distrust the status quo. It’s fake punk really, without the historical perspective or coherence of true liberation work.
And So It Has No Sea Legs
At its core, this movement cannot hold because it is at odds with itself.
Much like the liberalism and democracy it despises, it is an identity crisis parading as a political philosophy.
And crucially, its own supposed enemies are who it mirrors.
It is in knowing that the intellectual framework is inherently unstable that we root our hope and faith in its eventual tiring out. In the meantime, ... .while we wait for these guys to implode and eat themselves…we must continue to face down the machine they built that manufactures consent for their existence.
III. The Algorithm is Fascist
The seed of the Global New Right spreads on the winds of the algorithm. It gestates in Silicon Valley’s labs, where tech elites feed on the dark chaos magic slop of Yarvin, Land, and Hazony by the bucket. They bio-hack, cryptolord, and manosphere themselves into heat—while designing the tools that shape public opinion, influence elections, and surveil populations.
And this is how fascism scales in the 21st century.
It glides on swipe velocity and lets people radicalize themselves.
It learns the shape of your outrage and blindspots. Then it tracks what you tap and scroll. When you stop scrolling, it trains on your facial expressions.
By the time you have drafted your post, the beast has already built the bubble for your voice to live in, and blown a cloud of disinformation in your audience’s direction. When you finally post, it will get fat from your outrage and shuttle the earnings towards its NRx masters.
Meanwhile, your feed feels off. Your cousin’s “men’s mental health” posts have recently gotten a bit more aggressive, with a whiff of misogyny. Your old college friend has gotten louder about the woke mob, and can’t be reasoned with. Discourse has devolved. Next thing you know you have masses of people supporting the Gaza genocide, MAGA, Elon Musk as some sort of freedom fighter, and eugenecists like JD Vance are put in place to seize the seat of power.
Repetition, normalization, and reward. Relentlessly. Fascist aesthetics become familiar. Disinformation becomes ambient. And what was once just fringe thinking becomes institutional. And now fascism via NRx is a legitimate political movement.
IV. Amplification: From Fringe to Global
This movement has entrenched via a multi-tiered institutional strategy.
Politics: Heritage Foundation’s “natcon takeover,” operationalized these ideas via Project 2025, a sweeping plan to gut and repopulate the federal bureaucracy with loyalist administrators.
Research: Think Tanks like American Compass and Claremont Institute push “common good capitalism” and “West Coast Straussianism,” into the research data field, giving radical policy a glossy academic legitimacy.
Recruitment: Youth recruitment funnels like American Moment and Turning Point USA train thousands of operatives and influencers that blend up Christian nationalism, red pill ideology, and civic media fluency in a nasty little cocktail.
The endgame is a permanent power structure that locks in minority rule, criminalizes dissent, accelerates ecological collapse, and replaces public systems with privatized networks that comply with authority by design.
Let’s pull back and look at the global part of all this.
The Transnational Neo-reaction
The New Global Right is a global network of digitally savvy reactionaries, loosely aligned around a shared enemy: liberalism.
Some examples of how this movement has mobilized on a global scale.
Modi’s BJP in India is digital authoritarianism in action weaponizing tech that criminalizes dissent
Orbán’s Hungary operates finishing schools for young aspiring far right, populist leaders.
Brazil’s Bolsonaro movement lives on through memes, militias, and livestreams.
The European far right has adopted Yarvin-esque critiques of the EU, reframing neo-cameralism as some just redistribution of wealth.
These movements collaborate and cross-pollinate tactics, aesthetics, and donor networks. What emerges is a global, tech-enabled counter-Enlightenment.
V. The NRx Identity Grift
The New Right make people feel low for their identity politics, then they simultaneously cash in on identity politics to get their work done. One of liberalism’s most visible cultural outputs—DEI initiatives, inclusive language, and symbolic representation—is positioned by New Right influencers as proof of decay. And yet, these same actors have strategic identity-driven tactics that build affinity and scale their messages.
Young Men alienated from traditional markers of success, are algorithmically targeted through podcast clips, gaming culture, and TikTok edits steeped in masculinity cults. These systems surface content that taps into disaffection—turning loneliness into resentment, and resentment into ideology. Young white men in particular, find refuge from a global culture that has normalized identifying white men as the root of all civilization’s ills.
Black conservatives, “tradwives,” and decolonial cosplayers are likely promoted to provide plausible deniability. The tactic exploits platform optics that reward diversity without accountability delivering on equitable returns. They become living proof that “it’s not about race or gender,” even as the policies and ideologies promoted are tied to wild ideas like white ethnostates and “race science”.
The influencer aesthetic—confessional, intimate, algorithmically optimized—makes even authoritarian ideas feel personal and relatable. Performative masculinity and appeals to ancestral “order” become a lifestyle brand. It sells “truth” not through facts but through familiarity.
These are reactionary tactics wrapped in the intimacy of influencer culture.
The NRx identity grift uses affect, aesthetics, and outrage to redraw political imagination.
VI. The Disinformation Pipeline
Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that spreads, but was not created to intentionally deceive people. Disinformation is false information spread with the intent to manipulate, mislead, or cause harm.
Traditional disinfo aimed to persuade and massage consent from the masses. Today’s right-wing disinfo is about intentionally creating chaos and dispute over reality. Basic rules of mutual trust and understanding, typical in human behavior, have been replaced with tribal loyalty that defies objective reason. Algorithmic disinformation is self-sustaining; it creates an environment in which more disinformation can thrive and go viral.
The “fringe to mainstream” pipeline helps anonymous posts on insular communities (ie 4chan) mutate into viral tweets, which then get legitimized on legacy media.
The result? People are primed for authoritarian solutions because the chaos of democracy has tired them out.
Now all they have to do is stumble into the digital bubble that explains to them how to feel about it.
What do we do?
VII. Action Steps: Building Power With General Data Strikes and Collective Counterpower
It is perhaps time for us to imagine new modes of collectivizing for the digital, ecological, and post-liberal reality of the Anthropocene, a geological era that turns all the rules on their heads. We should begin thinking in terms of proactive systems-building, even more so than “resistance”. Building power.
A general data strike could be a step in that direction. Coordinated, large-scale refusals to supply behavioral data could disrupt gluttonous corporate extraction. Extraction that powers corporate surveillance and social manipulation. This could mean strategically withholding ratings, clicks, reactions, and feedback loops that fuel algorithmic dominance—while making clear demands. They could look like and “Algorithmic Bill of Rights” situation for the people:
Data Labor & Governance
Universal Data Dividend: Platform users receive monthly payments or credits proportional to the data and engagement they generate. It should be noted this is food for thought, as there is also justifiable resistance to this idea as a standalone concept. However, couched in other ideas it may have more value.
Algorithmic Transparency Mandate: Platforms must disclose how their recommender systems work—especially regarding political content, monetized posts, and suppression mechanisms.
Collective Bargaining for Digital Labor: Users and digital workers (including moderators and creators) form data unions or co-ops with rights to negotiate usage terms and platform policy.
Right to Algorithmic Opt-Out: Platforms must offer default chronological feeds or non-recommendation modes, without behavioral profiling.
Right to Be Untracked: No data collection or behavioral targeting without clear, revocable consent.
Ecological Restoration & Climate Accountability
Server Farm Extraction Tax: Digital platforms pay taxes proportional to energy consumption and compute usage, tied to local ecological impact.
Biodiversity Contributions: A fixed percentage of platform profits or ad revenue is reinvested in Indigenous-led restoration, conservation, and land back initiatives.
Cultural & Political Accountability
Community-Driven Audit Boards: Publicly accountable panels review platform behavior, content suppression, disinformation patterns, and community harm.
Algorithmic Harm Ratings: Platforms are independently assessed for whether their systems amplify authoritarianism, hate, or disinformation—similar to nutrition labels or energy ratings.
Creative Commons Contribution: Platforms trained on public or user-generated data must reinvest a portion of revenue into public media, arts, and educational commons.No direct precedent exists for mandating platform contributions to public media commons, though some open data initiatives provide related models.
Design & Governance of Platforms
Participatory Platform Design: Frontline and marginalized users are involved in designing interface and moderation systems, beyond superficial “engagement” roles.
Open API for Civic Innovation: Platforms must provide non-extractive, public-interest APIs for researchers, developers, and watchdog organizations.
Done at scale, data strikes with strategic demands placed in concert with community organizing could degrade profitability of targeted advertising. It could also accelerate negotiations over data governance. At their core, these ideas are a declaration: our data is our labor, and it has value.
A data strike would also starve these reactionary microcelebrities and grift champs who depend on algorithmic engagement and response cycles. If we stop feeding the trolls, perhaps they will finally die.
After The Fight: Seeding New Worlds
NRx being reactionary is literally what got us here in the first place. That said, future by the people cannot just be about refusal and reaction. We must also proactively seed the future—to imagine what comes next, as the current paradigm dissolves before our eyes.
Much of the Global New Right’s vision draws from cyberpunk dystopias and accelerationist detachment. It is inspired by philosophers who spin tales in books, papers and digital forums, and who never come into direct contact with the community. Our countervision must look different: perhaps grounded in restoration, mutual care, co-planetary intelligence, and the dignity of slowness (which accelerationism often confuses with stagnation). It must be inspired by human interaction, not philosophers waxing from thier virtual towers of solitude.
Collectively we should plant aesthetic and conceptual seeds now—solarpunk mythologies, ecological worldbuilding, and restorative technologies that prioritize responsibility over control. Flood the feed with these concepts. Organize offline, or in private community and mesh networks. This isn’t the kumbaya illusion of diversity that liberalism has sold to us, and that so many of us fight for. This is liberation work that expects humankind to make the best decisions for itself when oppressive conditions are lifted, and our relationship with the planet is reharmonized. Then together we will decide our path forward once we get there. Some of that work will happen online. But much of it will not. It will require imagination.
That imagination may have to draw from deep wells of indigenous knowledge systems that the NRx and Anglo-driven idea frameworks overlooked. Aboriginal knowledge that has long understood the value of disruption as restoration, like controlled burns on the Earth that increase biodiversity. A foil to reckless tech accelerationism that measures our progress through our material dominance or transcending corporeal humanity through tech means. Our new collective imagination may have to commune with sacred plant medicines, ceremonial technologies, seasonal rites, and other high human practices that are proven sophisticated systems for imagining new solutions. Perhaps it will be through these pathways that we will see new types of engagements, and dream up artful demands from those who would extract from us and amplify tyranny.
This is our version of “tradlife,” but without the ethnopopulism, hierarchy, or conquest. A tradition of interdependence, not dominance. One that sees technological advancement and ancestral wisdom as co-evolving forces for planetary renewal.
Taking Root Among The Stars
Anthropocenic liberation can look like small, sovereign micro-communities that communicate with each other. Connected offline, resilient to surveillance, rooted in older technologies like ham radio, mesh networks, and face-to-face assemblies. These are prefigurative tools that can decentralize power and rehumanize connection. For it is in that connection that we find harmony.
Data strikes and decentralized networks ask us to imagine different relationships to power, technology, and each other. Relationships based on collective bargaining, digital stewardship, and ecological reciprocity.
What if we built a “Global Restoration Fund” with the spoils of algorithmic extraction? What if we reclaimed our data as a planetary resource? Algorithmic reparations, anyone?
These aren’t the only solutions, but glimpses of what’s possible when we stop asking how to restore the old world and “save democracy” —and start designing a new world that fosters humanity.
Breaking the Loop
This NRx movement is a feedback loop. It’s a by-product of fatigue, extraction, and dislocation.
Liberalism’s hollow rituals, performative politics and worship of the status quo have created a harmful environment in which NRx can thrive.
With the reveal of moves like Detachment 201, we can see that the algorithmic apparatus is not neutral. It is being woven directly into the hard power structures of the state.
They are not in vain, but just know that every time you perform politics for the feed, you generate capital for the opps. Every time you react to clips your favorite news influencer posts to get your like, you reinforce and train the machine.
We can’t pracrically eliminate these practices, but we should understand how they actually work. We should become less predictable.
Consider:
Disengaging from spectacle cycles and reroute attention toward long-term systems-building
Reclaiming data as labor—not just something to protect, but something to organize around
Seeding alternative futures, with tools, stories, and infrastructures rooted in mutual flourishing—not synthetic control
Building new collective myths—not of domination or utopia, but of interdependence, slowness, and planetary care
Our IG Stories cannot save us from fascism.
We can’t carousel-post our way into liberation.
The same algorithm shaping your feed is the same one that manufactured consent for war, genocide, and neo-authoritarian power.
Imagine reacting differently than they have.
SUM | SUMGPT | CERITAS | Kizmet Studio
Although this piece was ultimately composed by one human with some AI assistance for organization and information processing, the research within was a CERITAS community project driven by the smart and brave volunteers who came together to figure out “why FAFO with fascism”? We extend gratitude to the wonderful humans who contributed their time, thinking and research to this project.
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A SUMMARY OF POINTS:
Algorithms have made us ready for fascism. They're designed to confuse and overwhelm, making it impossible to agree on what's real. This sets the stage for a global shift to neofascism.
This new fascism is extra dangerous. The most powerful country is led by neo-fascists, we're facing ecological disaster (which they ignore but prepare for), and their whole operation is powered by tech giants and their algorithms, built on our free labor.
Fascism needs us to say "yes," and algorithms make that happen. They blast out content, fake news, and memes, using mainstream media's weaknesses to recruit and radicalize people, especially disaffected youth.
It's all about "Dark Enlightenment." This is the brainy-sounding (but pretty scattered) framework behind neoreactionary (NRx) thinking. It's a mix of fascism, accelerationism, and "necropolitics," pushed by guys like Curtis Yarvin (who wants corporate-monarchies) and Nick Land (who thinks the state should be a corporate startup).
Billionaires are bankrolling this. Peter Thiel, the Palantir guy, is a major funder and philosopher for NRx, mainstreaming these fringe ideas.
"National Conservatism" is turning these ideas into policy. Yoram Hazony's framework pushes religious traditionalism and authoritarianism, connecting MAGA, NRx, and Israeli neocon movements (think Project 2025).
They steal progressive language. The neoreactionary movement is good at taking words and ideas from the left (like "accelerationism" or "decentralization") and twisting them to serve their own regressive goals. It's "fake punk."
Fascism isn't marching, it's swiping. It scales in the 21st century by learning your fears, tracking your impulses, and training itself on your reactions. It feeds on resistance and uses algorithms to normalize fascist ideas and disinformation through repetition.
They're taking over institutions. They're replacing people in federal government (Project 2025), using think tanks to legitimize radical policies, and training young operatives through groups like American Moment and Turning Point USA.
It's a global thing. From Modi in India to Orbán in Hungary and Bolsonaro in Brazil, these movements are connected, sharing tactics and donors. It's a worldwide "counter-Enlightenment."
Young men are a target. The "manosphere" offers them purpose and identity, while Black Conservatives and "Trad Wives" are highlighted to deflect accusations of bigotry. It's "reactionary vibes" mixed with influencer culture.
Disinformation creates chaos. Instead of just persuading, right-wing disinformation aims to create confusion and dispute over reality, making people ripe for authoritarian solutions. This happens through "triple-helix radicalization."
Our old ways of resisting aren't enough. Marches and op-eds aren't cutting it anymore. We need new approaches, like a "general data strike."
Starve the beast! A data strike means refusing to give our behavioral data (clicks, likes, comments) to these systems. Our data is labor, and it has value. This would also starve the "reactionary microcelebrities" who thrive on engagement.
It's not just about stopping them, it's about building something new. We need to imagine and seed new worlds, grounded in restoration, mutual care, and planetary intelligence, drawing from indigenous knowledge systems.
Build small, local communities. These would be offline, surveillance-resistant, and use older tech like ham radio and mesh networks to decentralize power and rehumanize connection.
Break the loop. The "New Right" is a feedback loop that feeds on our attention and outrage. Every time you "perform politics for the feed" or react to their bait, you're fueling the machine.
Disobey the interface. Don't just try to have "better discourse." Refuse to be predictable. Become "illegible" to the system that profits from your reactions.
Key actions: Disengage from spectacle, reclaim your data as labor, seed alternative futures, and build new collective myths.
You can't meme or carousel-post your way out of this. And you can't outsmart a system you're still feeding. Break the loop; the algorithm that shapes your feed is the same one manufacturing consent for bad stuff.