This Machine Kills Fascists

[JCMach1]

Can we all agree on this now?



Mobile phones and the internet have empowered anyone to be a propagandist, pundit, or a reporter. The truth is uploaded world-wide in a matter of seconds.

It may be optimistic, but along with the direct digital revolution, could it be possible that me might soon see the first direct digital democracy?

[leveymg]

1. Tweets don't kill Fascists. People do.

I hope we don't confuse social revolutions with social media, and real rebellion with Facebook.

Revolutionary messages can't be limited to 148 characters.

[JCMach1]

4. It's a tool- like a protest song- but a pretty damn powerful one

[leveymg]

8. Mr. Guthrie knew a thing or two about how to fight Fascists.

We need some more where that came from.

[Iris]

12. Yes, and people tweet.

[Newest Reality]

2. I don't know about "kill"

but it certainly looks to be an effective tool to thwart Fascists and push-back. keep in mind that the corporations are technically a part of Fascism as in the merger of business and State. So, who makes the phones and provides the service?

I certainly hope that the network revolutionaries push the meme hard that corporate media is infoganda and, for the most part, should be considered suspect and even illegitimate. Awareness and education by whatever route and means is extremely important in ending what is becoming a real, Corporate Occupation of control.

[lob1]

3. Now we can carry democracy in our pocket...

along with our change.

[Skip_In_Boulder]

6. Wow, you still have change left in your pocket. n/t

[Recursion]

5. People (me included) mocked Zuckerberg when he said he was changing the world

I'm starting to rethink that, taking "Zuckerberg" as a convenient proxy for information technology in general.

[JCMach1]

7. And while we have been mulling over the nothing is private part...

with Wikileaks and other effects, we are seeing and reaping the benefits of the brave new world of NOTHING CAN BE HIDDEN... NOTHING!

Not even by the most powerful and oppressive governments in the world.

[leveymg]

9. I believe that Zuckerberg (and other billionaires) will be appalled by The Change that's coming.

I don't think he personally has any real sympathy for democracy, and that surely wasn't his goal when he created (stole?) Facebook.

[Recursion]

10. Zuckerberg's an enigmatic character

But in the interviews I've seen he seems quite aware of how disruptive the changes a user-directed Internet can bring about will be. Comparing it to the printing press is probably not hyperbole.

[upi402]

11. TV News is warning of the dangers of social media lately

coincidence?

[JCMach1]

13. No, has Beck ranted against it yet?

because no doubt Al Quaeda, the muslim brotherhood and Obama are all in on Twitter somehow.

[leveymg]

14. What they are afraid of is The Change they can't stop, silence, kill, or ignore.

It's in the air, as they said before the French Revolution, and it's worldwide.

[Kablooie]

15. I miss alt.activism myself.

[JCMach1]

16. I miss FIDONET and the political forums there... but that's nostalgia at this point

:)

[BOG PERSON]

17. edit

(no text)

[BrotherLove]

18. Maybe the is the WMD that Bush and friends were looking for :-)

[leftstreet]

20. lol

:thumbsup:

Welcome to DU!

[Bluenorthwest]

19. In the same sense that Woody's guitar did so, yes indeed.

There is an amazing speech from the Paddy Chayefsky screenplay for Network, delivered by the Howard Beal character. This is a line from that speech, about television, but I think this bit is as good for the internet in this moment.
"Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube! This tube is the Gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers... This tube is the most awesome God-damned force in the whole godless world."

The internet is the most awesome God damned force in the whole godless world. I just decided that for sure this week. Slow learner.

[BOG PERSON]

21. Goldman Sachs invested $450 million in Facebook last month

placing a $50 billion valuation on the enterprise, and JPMorgan reportedly will do the same for Twitter. A dozen years ago, a pair of college dropouts in cutoff jeans could stumble into the oak-paneled offices of venture capital firms and walk out with eight figures' worth of startup capital. Facebook and Twitter sound like deja vu all over again.

Why should a social networking site have a market capitalization equal to DuPont or Metropolitan Life? It stands as an index of the anomie of the life of young adults in the industrial world, the apartment-and-cubicle dwellers who do not have friends, but only Facebook friends.

One made real friends in the deep past in the army, in church, or other venues that elicit deep loyalties. In the dystopia of youth culture, one encounters drinking buddies rather than comrades-in-arms, and hookup dates rather than romantic involvements. People lead trivial lives - lives, that is, unseasoned by sacrifice, by deep commitment to God, country, or even a prospective spouse.

Social networking elevates the trivial. Young people who have no intimate connection to each other, and no enduring tie to any institution, nonetheless feel a need for human contact. Facebook makes it seem that tiresome pursuit of pleasure, banal tastes, and gossip somehow add up to human interaction.

What is true of the atomized, post-cultural young people of the United States applies in force to the Facebook revolutionaries of Egypt. They are neither secular nor Muslim, neither modern nor traditional, neither enlightened nor backward. They are stuck in a cultural twilight zone, between the traditional world of their cousins who mutilate their daughters' genitals, and the modern dystopia flickering in colored pixels just beyond their grasps. They have no safe place in Arab society, except in the disembodied cyberworld of social networking.

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MB16Ak02.html