Fascistic Technologies in Liberal Societies
All technologies are praxis of ideology. When a technology is thought out, the ideas for how it should be used, who should use it, under what circumstances, and with what consequences as acceptable, and which as sought – the answers to all these questions come before the technology is ever made, and point creating minds towards conceiving one possible technology over another.
The fascistic minds, filled with patterns of fascistic thought and fascistic habits, produce fascistic technologies. In their assumptions of superiority, authority, and hierarchy within adoption, use, and control, they output fascistic designs, fascistic machines, figured out in fascistic trials and in fascistic production processes. Even when this is not a conscious “intent”, their thoughtlessness, their unawareness of their own fascisms, still has the effects of perpetuating privilege, exclusivity, domination, oppression.
Inventors replicate their ideologies. Not necessarily successfully, and in that there is the hope that they may fail to bring about in their creations their worst tendencies. But they do replicate, and when we end up with their products: we end up living with and inside their ideologies.
Fascistic inventors seek to please the powerful: those who control money, those who set the rules, those with the privileges of executing decisions backed by law, the police, the state, and its other agents. Fascistic inventors seek the approval and appreciation of power – sometimes for the glory, sometimes out of cowardice, sometimes both. And power benefit greatly from this submissiveness.
Take your typical, regular boss. It could be a government official, a business owner, or a manager. A boss would have little to do in 21st century society unless technologies were made with the purpose of enabling central oversight, central control, central command. Without the sensors to collect data, without the digital reports following the boss in the cloud, without statistical panels and predictive models, without central control buttons to press directly or via subordinates – without these, what is a boss but a tyrant interrupting the good laborer? A boss that cannot make informed judgement is a powerless and “useless” boss. Without these technologies, those in power cannot take credit for the work of those beneath them in a fast-paced economy. The assumptions running in our times: that the sought-after difference-making – the producing of goods, services, and the acquisitions of new powers – that these come from the boss, to say such a thing in the absense of fascistic technologies would tend towards incredible. Such propositions would have to be increasingly based on faith alone, instead of the combination of faith and the evidence of capable difference-making, as is now the case. The boss who cannot show comprehension of their organization’s work, and the ability to control it, and thus imply a causal link to organizational output – that boss cannot justify their position in the long run, not even in liberal society. And without advancements in centralizing technologies, the accelerating speeds of our economies increasingly make such “bossing” impossible.
Fascistic inventors though, don’t just go after singular persons or institutions of power. They also seek to please the political majority: those who own things, those who possess the money to pay, those with citizenship, those whose opinions and whose welfare are most valued by the powerful because of their family, their ethnicity, their social class, their place of birth, their nationality, or other inherent privilege. To the fascistic inventor, what is a good invention is what captures the approving attention of those who are already powerful, already privileged, already favoured.
The fascistic inventor wants the light of glory and the support they believe only a political aristocracy can provide. What are the understood requirements of that aristocracy, and its base of supporters (i.e. a complicit middle-class) is what are the needs of society. This is what they believe they need to create. So they create giant corporate server farms, because community-driven server-farms or household servers are not what the powerful need. It would be very empowering for ordinary people if servers were ran by them in their own homes – but here a few assumptions has come ahead of such developments. Among these is the role of ordinary people in the market. Ordinary people are supposed to be “mere consumers”, or in some cases exploitable “prosumers” who don’t understand their work as labor – they are not supposed to be interested in having power, control, or a say over their own lives other than the choice that is given to them from the app provided by their select streaming giant. They are supposed to be helpless, and disinterested enough, that the only realistic choices they can make, are those select few provided for them by the industrial leadership whose resources are endless.
The fascistic inventor create advertisements in its many technical forms and with its many tricks, to preoccupy the consumer-mind with nothing but consumption, and no desire, never, to own their own existence, to be in full possession of their own world. Any such desire, for the fascistic inventor, should first be filtered through the needs of the aristocracy, where power over one’s own existence is reduced to a virtual power, a simulated power that is all show and no substance. Power is the masculine ideal of big muscles, of physical power. So they engineer chemical compounds that accelerate muscle growth. They give you the muscle, the symbol of power, and make you feel powerful through your new consumer addiction, without making you be powerful – without empowering you with control over your life. Power, in another example of simulation, is the ability to triumph over an enemy. So they make you a video game, and give you power-ups, they give you levels of power, advantages, chances to beat new enemies and display your power to destroy, to annihilate your opponent, and verify your superiority – for the cost a fee, or your attention. Power is the car you can drive, anywhere there are roads, with your own skill and the privilege of a licence. So they make you a car, a stylish expensive car, one with which to brag for everyone the power of your salaried money power, the horsepower of your engine, the loud noises that it makes – an announcement of your immense and “powerful” presence for all the world to witness.
The fascistic inventor create idols. After all, not all their technologies are so technical or scientific. There are plenty of social fascist technologies too. The pretty women and talented girls for females to mimic, least they be seen as subpar. The success-driving men for males to mimic, least they be subpar. People who feel good enough about themselves are a minor threat to power. People with high self-esteem are a major threat to power. After all, if they are such good people, surely they are good enough to govern their own lives and their own world? To fully make their own independent decisions? Even decide for themselves what is good, how it should be attained, and under what circumstances.
The fascistic inventor sees people’s self-esteem as an irrelevance at best. Worse, they may see self-esteem as a way to elevate someone to the status of a new or an expanded aristocracy, like an idol going from being puppet to industry leader. At worst such people are an obstacle, one for fascistic inventors to invent themselves out of, so that the people may, once again, be lead and governed by “their better” in the aristocracy.
The fascistic inventor creates traditions – consumer traditions, national traditions – to entrench the roles of the powerful. To justify their roles, and to fix the less powerful in time, in place, and behavior. To make them predictable, controllable. The powerful loves tradition, because a tradition followed means people vulnerable to messages associating power with tradition; with a moment of elevated importance.
Hired advertisers turn traditions into consumer traditions by associating brands, like an idol or a company or a product line. Politicians turn traditions into national traditions by associating themselves, or their institution (which they control). The king holds his speech at new year’s eve, the prime minister holds hers, the company chief theirs. All speeches are the same. The content is different, still the speech is the same. For the underlying message is this: “In what you hold dear, we are important.”
We may continue the listing of fascistic technologies on and on. What is common to all fascistic technologies though, is a favouring of privilege in consumer-oriented initiatives, and the favouring of centralized control in production-oriented initiatives. In social technologies, the entrenchment and expansion of the powerful is what is favoured. The imagination of fascistic inventors is an imagination of control running from the top to the bottom of a plain and simple hierarchy, it is an imagination of the expansion of the powers of aristocracy.
Be aware of the ideological alignments in your technologies. For what purpose have they been designed? For whom have they been designed? Think about that, because if you ever feel like the world holds you down, perhaps that is because you’re living with, and inside, fascistic technologies. Uncaring technologies, oppressive technologies. Perhaps you are living in a world first defined by the conveniences of the powerful, with you as either irrelevant, or someone reaping the benefits of another’s misfortune. That is another favourite of the fascistic inventor: to make us complicit in the exploitations of less powerful peoples. So do not think that technologies stand on their own merit, that they seemingly fall out of nowhere as some inexplicable gift from an above. There are many possibilites in the developments of technology, and some possibilities are chosen, consciously or subconsciously, over others, to serve particular purposes or exploit particular opportunities made possible by particular circumstances.
But if you are not merely the adopter of technology, or its victim. If you are an inventor, then be a different inventor – be that cherished source of empowerment, and self-liberation, for those without! Be different – imagine differently. Imagine the people, in control of themselves, of their environments, and their world. Imagine the people liberated with the creative and unlimited potentials to change, and define, and redefine. Imagine us free, everyone at once, and give us the technologies to naturalize this freedom.
Be the counter – the inventor of anarchist technologies, in our liberal societies.