The allure of dictatorship & the dangers of memes
The failures of neoliberalism and austerity and the failures of the left have contributed to a retreat into cynicism and into a curiosity towards authoritarianism.
It’s only been three days since inauguration, and I can tell through the mycelial network that you’re just as exhausted as I am. Maybe, I’ve been watching too much Star Trek.
The air is filled with despair. None of us can keep up with the downpour of executive orders, things seem to be changing by the day, sometimes by the hour, and there’s even political analysis about why there wasn’t a mass mobilization during inauguration despite the Trump’s last inauguration being largest single-day protest in U.S. history (only surpassed by George Floyd racial justice uprising three years later).
Last week in the midst of the will-they-won’t-they TikTok ban, millions of Americans left the platform and joined Xiaohongshu, also known as Red Note or Little Red Book literally translated.
There was a sort of exhilarating surge of Americans taking this action as a “fuck you” to our government. Many of them talked about how it felt like they were part of a movement. On…