An eagle-eyed community member noticed the Freudian slip in screenshots I sent them of last week's post: I had referred to Tolkien as "Peter Tolkien" when I referred to broligarchs (Peter Thiel) bastardising Tolkien's fictional nouns (Palantir) for surveillance capitalism.
I had noticed this slip and immediately corrected it after publishing by just removing "Peter" from the text, but I too noted the symbolism of having subconsciously inserted Peter Thiel into my critique when referring to Tolkien.
I'd really like to build a world where Thiel doesn't overtake Tolkien in our minds, and in our world.
I'm sick and tired of this exploitative power dynamic where the ultra rich get to set the table and we only get to decide if we are starving enough to eat the scraps they offer us.
When corporate tech has made it clear that fascism is good for business and we are expendable, we have no choice but to carve out our own safe spaces and safe infrastructure in the midst of an ever-more-concentrated internet of government-mandated and for-profit digital surveillance.
If you've heard of the recent push by lobby groups to require age-gating and ID verification to access internet sites and services, let me tell you, it's not to "protect the children" as advocates of these policies claim!
We are collectively sleepwalking into the kind of techno-totalitatian nightmare that would have given Hitler wet dreams.
We are handing private companies and government agencies across many jurisdictions the power to monitor our every impulse, conversation, and bowel movement. For what? Momentary dopamine hits in exchange for our freedom.
The Fellowship of Community Organisations Fighting Fascism (FoCOFF) is a colourful acrostic poem expressing our frustration with the rising tide of techno-fascism.
We need a community-led coalition of the willing that ensures we can weather the figurative and literal storms of fascism and climate change, and we collectively have the tools and know-how and solidarity to make it happen.
Join the Better Together community, and be part of the solution.
https://bebettertogether.ca/
Stay tuned for a special birthday post from me on the 13th reviving my series "Free and Open Source Fridays" where I'll finally get to introduce you to the Community Engine, the open-source community empowerment platform I created to help us Discover, Connect With, and Empower values-aligned allies.
Together, we are powerful. Together, we are wise.
We can't thrive on our own. We are Better Together! 💡
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