The Invisible World

Our world really is controlled by unseen forces and unknown hands. The conspiracy theories, however, have it all wrong.

Thank you so much for your support DISPATCHES FROM A COLLAPSING STATE. Because of you, this is a growing endeavor in spite of all the internet tumult and garbage we’re about to discuss. If you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to this newsletter so that it can continue to grow in the new year and get necessary information out there that hardly anyone else is willing to discuss. If you have already subscribed, consider possibly gifting a subscription to someone who could use that information.

---

The Right Wing isn’t always wrong.

Well. Let’s pause there. Because sometimes sentences hold a lot of potential and a lot of tension.

It might be better to say the Right Wing isn’t always wrong in ways they don’t even understand.

The reason for that is because conservative conspiracy theories are grounded in real-life concerns and anxieties. They are expression of fears of a changing world that harken back to former states and arrangements, but in doing so they are regularly coopted by the wealthy and powerful in order to bolster their own positions. This has been standard fare since conservatism came into being in the 18th century.

This coopting is effective in shifting concern over accumulating capital and power to developing trends, necessitating a faux-populism among its believers that generates cultural battles and wars that are beneficial to the very people who created the problems in the first place. But they are effective, and contagious, because they speak to actual concerns and fears, and so while battling their spread as one would any attack on democracy and free society, it is also in our best interest to interrogate what it is at the center of the conspiracy theory that is powering the narrative.

An ongoing battle of the moment reveals a defining question of our age. Since Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and his relentless turn to the Right, we have watched one of the most powerful and influential online spaces match wrenched into ideological alignment with its unwell owner. For years now, while infecting social media with open racism, sexism, xenophobia, and anti-LGBTQ screeds, Right Wing figures have incessantly whined about being “shadowbanned” by Twitter, Facebook, and every other website of note.

These complaints have been juvenile and originate from some of the most entitled and childish men this country has known. If you listen, it is obvious what is at play. They deserve more attention. They deserve more engagement. They deserve more more more everything. Never mind that the loudest complainers have built entire businesses off their platforms consisting of millions upon millions of sycophantic sad men following their every word and buying every piece of worthless paraphernalia and bogus boner pill they shill. It is never enough because it could never be enough.

But the complaint reveals something important. It is both the same complaint that has existed for generations, but it has shifted. Now, instead of blaming their “rejection” on culture, they blame unseen energies that have changed the culture. It is an echo of past anti-Semitic tropes, for sure, but the focus of this rage is very specific and very telling.

The core dissatisfication in the American experience is the result of decades of austerity and neoliberalism, a process that has redistributed trillions upon trillions of dollars from the poor and middle classes to the wealthiest one percent, corresponding with a continued reframing of our political, economic, and oversight systems with their whims, but the introduction of the internet age has also led to a new fear that is harder to verbalize. Following the popping of the digital balloon in the 1990’s and the reconceptualization of how money could be made on the internet, we have entered a new era that we can all feel if not explain.

This is because our modern age is effectively ruled by an invisible technocracy, a race of people we will largely never know, never meet, and could go our entire lives not thinking about. They are experts in crafts we could only understand if the crafts were our own. Sometimes we have moments where we can see the framework winking at us - like when a targeted ad seems a little too perfect or related to something that felt private - but for the large part it is invisible and inscrutable.

Musk’s purchase of Twitter has already led to so many changes, the vast majority of which have been toxic and made the site borderline unusable, but it’s what he’s done behind the scenes that has really shifted the thing into a different gear. Like a mad scientist turning dials, he has moved the direction, focus, and energy of the site radically toward the Right in order to amplify some of the ugliest voices on the internet while effectively shadowbanning seemingly-random individuals to the point where even a basic search can’t detect their accounts.

With this shift has come a new arragement of “statistics,” including the amount of views a post receives which is just as useful as those fake dummy buttons they put in elevators and on crosswalks that are just there to make people feel an element of control. They’re completely bogus and have, I’ve noticed, on occasion clashed with the numbers on Twitter’s own statistics off-page.

What these things speak to is a larger problem of the age, one of the underlying anxieties. Rather, it is a manifestation of the anxiety that comes with a lack of control. We are subject to forces that have been intentionally programmed to benefit certain ideas, certain businesses, certain individuals, and certain worldviews. In the past the “Invisible Hand” of the economy was at play, and so we could at least begin to believe in a “meritocracy,” even though we all knew secretly that privilege and prejudice played incredible roles in the process, but now it is jaw-droppingly apparent that something somewhere is operating without our oversight or input.

Twitter has become, much like Facebook, a highway system that determines commerce. Many of us depend on its roads and services to maintain businesses and work and, much like a new interstate being constructed that bypasses a town or city or community, the effects of its rerouting are devastating. (Of course, the highway systems were absolutely designed with prejudice in mind, actively cutting minority communities out of the process, which is something the Right Wing still can’t even begin to wrestle with.)

With highways, though, there was still an administration to be held accountable. Elected officials with whom the buck could stop if only the information or the concern was there. Now, in this age, the literal economic and social fates of millions, not to mention the state of democracy as radicalization on these platforms is one of the main threats, lie in the hands of individuals who never appear on a ballot. It is a concrete technocracy the likes of which even the most ardent early neoliberals could not have dreamed of.

The algorithms humming under the veneer of civilization are maybe the most powerful forces this side of capital in the history of the modern world. They are specialized information that even those benefiting from the most don’t necessarily understand or comprehend. They affect our economic fates, but also the world we experience, our relationships, the very reality we observe. When you turn your TV on, when you log onto the internet these algorithms are working overtime to both profit from your attention but also to harvest your information in order to create new feedback loops settled on top of countless others.

We may accept them as necessary connections, but their presence and power are disturbing. They constitute an immaterial influence that not only feels terrible, but is capable of incredible damage, including worsening inequality and booms and busts like the 2008 Financial Meltdown. What’s worse: they are designed and controlled by people who have already proven themselves untrustworthy and unethical. And, in this, they are extensions of existing privilege and wealth that has only further solidified itself.

Heading into this new year, I am focusing on not just diagnosing the problems of the modern age, but advocating for solutions. This is not the stuff of saviors, of messianic politics that promises deliverance while we watch. Some of it is not sexy. Algorithms certainly aren’t. In fact, they’re not meant to be. They are the granular expression of what some of us might even consider magic. The stuff of unknowable power. And, for those who even know about them, understand them to an extent, they are also possibly seen as unavoidable. Now that we have stepped over the banister of the Algorithm Age, it is a done deal. No going back now.

But I refuse to accept this. This exploitative arrangement is not the best of all worlds and is not even remotely tolerable. This regime of surveillance capitalism (if you haven’t read Shoshana Zuboff’s book I highly suggest it find a place at the top of your pile) is not the only means by which we could live and we do not have to live in a world where this technocracy is unquestionable. If Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have done anything of use these past few years it is proving that the wealthiest are not by default our most competent and talented people.

Disentangling ourselves from these wires will be a major step in our eventual liberation. As of now, there is virtually no oversight in any of these operations, which is a horror all of its own considering how long these arrangements have been up and running and how powerful they truly are. Our politicians, from both the Democratic and Republican parties, have existed largely as cheerleaders as Tech has shoveled them incredible mountains of money and profited off of carrying out the technological needs of the state and its endless military operations. This is an incestuous and disturbing relationship, and breaking it is going to be key moving forward.

Only once that bond is broken and severed can the actual work get accomplished. I have advocated (as recently as the latest episode of The Muckrake Podcast) for the breakup of the tech monopolies, but it will also take a stringent focus on data, data protection, and data fairness to create anything even approaching a better world. This will not only shift power, but begin to address greater inequality as well. And, it’s one of the few issues, if handled correctly, that can actually begin constructing bipartisan support, even if some of the GOP holdouts continue to drag their feet.

And here is why: it is a clear problem. The wealthy, regardless of political affiliation, considering their only affiliation is where their money originates, enjoy a tremendous and inarguable advantage. Our world has been constructed in their favor in a demonstrable way. Though there are culture war components (who gets boosted / what ideas make the cut) that is a secondary or even third-tier movement that comes after the stranglehod is cut. It could be the beginning of a new consensus, even if it is downstream of the parties that are currently benefitting from the damage.

At its heart, this is an issue of inequality and fairness. Something recognizable. And by drilling into the core of these conspiracy theories and the faux-populist movements, we can begin to find something approaching common ground and a way out of this mess and the system as it is constructed.

That, of course, leads us to the party system. Which we’ll address in the new year. And, my god, is that a problem in and of itself.

In the meantime: Thank you. Again. Your support means everything to me. We’ll return to the problems and the solutions in 2023, when, a reminder, THE MIDNIGHT KINGDOM: A HISTORY OF POWER, PARANOIA, AND THE COMING CRISIS is being released. If you haven’t already, preorder your copy to ensure you get one.