Technofascism
third-bit.com
third-bit.com
I don't think this is because the author is a Muslim himself; but rather that he has bought into the frame that Muslims are marginalized and Hindus are not, and therefore any technological phenomenon in the world that seems like Hindus use successfully to advance their interests is fascist, and any technological phenomenon that seems like Muslims use successfully to advance their own interests is not worth talking about in the context of fascism.
It's a word to get people to 'rally around' because the negative acts of Theil etc are just not easily defined or incorporated and therefore might not resonate very well.
TESCREAL is like 'Rothschild', a nebulous 'stand in term' for what might be some very concerning actions, but which is nevertheless 'not real'.
Skip the boogeyman and understand the real problems of concentrated power and egos.
Where would you start.
Or contemporary famous people. Michael Jackson. Donald Trump. The entire Epstein Saga.
It's the oldest story.
Just study powerful people, they're all wonky.
Powerful people are not 'checked' by those around them - they are rule setters, not rule takers.
Also - they have enablers to make them extra crazy.
There's like an 'inflection point' along the the path to power where the crazy really starts to take off.
It's why Warren Buffer, Bill Gates are generally pretty good men. They're constantly looking right into the Eye of Sauron yet they remain relatively normal. They probably have normal people around them, and Buffet's lifestyle is down to Earth, just the numbers are big.
Technology is an amplifier, of course, as it always is.
I feel like you mean disseminated, but truth today feels, at the very best, decimated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_International–Posadist
Like Posadism, the future refusing to cooperate will burn them out along the way.
Gawker did bad. JD Vance was 'Hillbilly Eulegy' guy and firmly anti-Trump, going so far as to call Trump 'fascist' etc - at the same time TheIl was supporting him.
Alternative View: these are power hungry, narrow minded egoists. It's that simple. The ideology is second.
So - as long as they are in their 'CEO box' - that's fine - they should not be famous, not be giving lectures, influencing politics so much. They can make 'whatever' and want 'more equity'.
We just can't have them manage society.
If they are 'marginal figures, managing some companies' - then their ecclectic weirdness is not that bad, just intellectual diversity.
Putting CEOs in charge of society was always a bad idea.
These CEOs just 'act a bit different' than traditional CEOs or NY Banksters.
They are cringe, call them that, let them have their companies, not their influence.
Like China.
I agree, but it's too late.
After all, once one has firmly reached billionaire status, what is one supposed to do? Just sit around and sip martinis by the pool?
As we've discovered, the billionaire class, having achieved unimaginable wealth and been convinced of their own intellectual superiority by a coterie of sycophants, have an apparently irresistible drive to meddle in affairs of state, especially when those affairs are well outside their domain of experience. And no matter how badly it goes, they will never be convinced that they are doing bad.
The real argument for taxing billionaires out of existence is not that the money would benefit other people more (although that is true), but because such accumulated wealth in such few hands results in too much concentrated power without the need to care whether it's being applied well, because either way, they will still be rich and powerful. The argument for democracy is not that the "people" always choose the best leader, but that the leader must do at least something well in order to maintain their support.
The thing is, if it is actual intelligence then controlling it will be a pipe dream.
Yeah, both sides have problems. And we are caught in the same systems. The sides are not equally bad.
Biden and Bush were nearly identical.
But this time around, things seem a bit more 'near the end'. The president is taking jumbo jet sized bribes, manipulating markets. Literally doing more self harm than an enemy agent could ever accomplish. Like the country could really collapse any day.
Forget free speech. I literally am a little scared just posting here. People are being rounded up. Even with a fake name, I'm sure Palantir can put the pieces together.
It makes me ponder an interesting philosophical question about raking a pyramid scheme along proximal real vs perceived valuation. I guess the damage is all the same, but things get more flagrant the longer it goes on.
What does Netflix stand for? What lines do they draw?
Modern billionaires have more wealth (adjusted for inflation) and therefore more power than any human being has ever had before in history.
Do you like feudalism? Because that's how you get feudalism.
You're right, we've previously had enormous power concentrated in few hands. And it resulted in such a terrible society that we spent a century fighting wars to build a better system. And Thiel et al want to bring us right back to the old way, and they might succeed.
You are misinformed about the relative power. The industrialists eclipsed the current technocrats in every way imaginable, several of them had whole number percent of GDP level of wealth. Musk is the only one that comes close in modern times, yet a lot of this is in notes on largely speculative enterprises while the industrialists controlled the literal engines of society. If Palantir or Google or Amazon collapse, it will make a dent in the stock market for a couple years but it doesn't matter the same as losing your national industrial base. So they are kind of sock pupating their own stakes.
> In India, Meta’s platforms have amplifyied Hindu nationalist content that incites violence against Muslim communities, while consistently applying content moderation more aggressively to criticism of the governing BJP party than to nationalist propaganda.
If you think this type of interference is just “eccentric billionaires’ opinions about freedom of speech”… it isn’t.
This is the exact modus operandi of the cold war era of causing turmoil on countries at the periphery of capitalism, only now executed by a state captured by techno plutocrats and amplified by the use of social media.
Nations that fall for the freedom of speech rhetoric (instead of state censorship like China) will get ripped apart from the inside, stripped of its resources and not have a seat at the negotiating table.
Way to not understand what Thiel meant.
There's a talk somewhere ont the internet where he explains that you don't want to build a do-it-all product, at least not right away. Don't compete with everyone for everything. Find a more niche market where you can have a monopoly, get comfortable, then you branch out, diversity, and tackle broader markets.
The book indoctrinates founders to act aligned with VCs best interests, not necessarily the company/employees/customers ones.
That's certainly a reasonable business strategy. But what is good for a business is not necessarily good for the country, which is exactly why anti-monopoly laws exist.
And to your point: we have banana republics for a reason.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-...
https://www.csun.edu/~vcact00f/497CapStone/Peter%20Thiel_%20...
The title is “Competition is for losers” and the sub-head is “If you want to create and capture lasting value, look to build a monopoly, writes Peter Thiel”.
Gawker-apologism to frame Thiel as the monster destroying the truth-seeking independent journalists? What a truth-seeker the author is!
Gawker had a lot of issues; they were not exactly the AP. But whether they are allowed to exist as a business should not be up the whim of one billionaire with a fragile ego.
It can both be true that Gawker's individual bankruptcy was no big loss but that the way in which an ultra-wealthy person was able to crush a news outlet for reporting things he didn't like set a dangerous precedent for all journalism outlets.
Of course, the whole thing seems rather quaint now that nearly all media is owned by a handful of billionaires who are actively and increasingly controlling what gets released to the public.