MENTICIDE IS NOT FREE SPEECH: An Updated Compilation of My Investigations Into Technofascism
MENTICIDE IS NOT FREE SPEECH: An Updated Compilation of My Investigations Into Technofascism
As pro-Kremlin propagandists coordinate talking points over the arrest of a ‘broligarch’ in France, I updated my Tech Pollution compilation to add my latest reporting on why mind war isn’t free speech
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“The conscription of today is information literacy. The information space is toxic, and we should behave the same way as if the water we drink and the air we breathe would be poisoned too.”—Alexandra Alvarova
I was cautious when news broke that Pavel Durov was arrested in France.
At 1:55 pm Pacific yesterday, I tweeted: “Have any legitimate news sources confirmed the arrest of Pavel Durov in France?”
The old newsie in me knows to be cautious when a report is being rickrolled throughout the right-wing disinfosphere, particularly when Andrew Tate — arrested again recently as new human trafficking allegations emerge involving minors — starts whinging about free speech.
By the time I woke up this morning, legitimate news outlets had confirmed reports that Durov, the founder of Telegram, had been arrested at Bourget airport outside of Paris on Saturday evening. Local reporters said that the French investigation focused on how lack of moderators on Telegram fostered criminal activity on the app.
Vive la France.
Soon came more whinging by Rumble founder Chris Pavlovski, who tweeted out that he fled France after alleging he too was threatened for his pro-Kremlin propaganda platform, funded by Peter Thiel and JD Vance.
“Run, rabbit run,” read the text message this morning from my podcast partner High Fidelity, a Silicon Valley technologist who has reported for years on the criminal culture linked to the tech bros.
As our other podcast partner Jim Stewartson always says:
“When oligarchs say they are fighting for your right to free speech, they are really fighting for their right to brainwash you.”—Jim Stewartson
Menticide is not free speech. Running a platform distributing child sexual assault material, facilitating illegal drug activity and money laundering is not free speech — it’s criminal behavior and the enforcement of laws should be championed.
As my latest Unmusked investigation indicates, we are starting to see new digital regulations with teeth and countries beginning to take action to hold broligarchs to task.
More of this please.
Tech Pollution Has No Borders
Originally published on August 12, 2024 — updated to include new reporting
Technofascism is real and the tech bros — or ‘broligarchs’ as the brilliant Carole Cadwalldr coined them — truly are handmaidens to authoritarianism.
People are finally starting to see that in real time, which is likely why there’s been such a great interest in my back catalog. As I wrote last week, my work and the work of the various teams I work with and the work of many independent investigative journalists is making it much less comfortable for corporate journalists to be stenographers for fascism. They’re puffpiecing themselves into irrelevancy.
The next so-called reporters to offer cover for Elon Musk or Peter Thiel or Robert Mercer will be outing themselves as Fluffers for Fascists (FFF).
I’m sure the pay is better, or crypto, or whatever the going rate is to lie to the public in service to transnational mob enablers, but whatever. I just made it another month as a reader-funded independent investigative reporter and that feels heroic. Thank you to the hundreds of people who support my work. You give me wings.
I received calls and messages over the weekend from friends, who are mourning the loss of those in their life whose minds have been hacked by Elon Musk, Andrew Tate, Fox News etc. and what they are experiencing is real grief.
In the place of their loved one is a brainwashed zombie, who knows nothing about reality, gets all their facts wrong but recites them with argumentative smugness, and at the root of it, they are simply racist — or worse — they've been indoctrinated to become racist. It’s ugly stuff. Undue influence makes people so very ugly.
Grieving friends tell me they’ve been searching my back catalog to get the deep dives on the perpetrators of this misery, and I realized that it might come in handy if I compiled some key investigations into technofascism in one post.
When High Fidelity and I interviewed investigative reporter and feminist author Sian Norris this morning for RadPod Ep107 about the UK riots and the global network of right-wing extremism, it occurred to me that what we are dealing with is tech pollution.
When I was working for Al Jazeera America, producing specials on global warming, a source reminded me that pollution has no borders. I realized that the tech-induced extremism we are dealing with also has no borders, as I learn week after week in the interviews I do with distraught family members from around the world. Each reveals how the loss of loved ones to racism and extremism began online — coordinated and disseminated through far-right channels — both on the web and buttressed on cable — how fear of the “other” is weaponized until these radicalized souls become the foot soldiers for insurrections, riots, massacres, and genocide.
We’ve seen throughout history how people are whipped up into a fearful, hateful frenzy, and it just took a beat for today’s growing awareness because fascist obfuscation/normalization is profitable.
Social media has changed the world in ways that we’re still coming to grips with and that we must get a handle on for people to be healthy, but when HiFi asked Sian if we need to organize a global tech treaty, she said, at the very least we need international cooperation.
To diagnose the problem, we first have to admit it.
I’m typing as fast as I can.
A Compilation of Some of My Investigations Into Technofascism
The 2016 Election Attack Series
Musk:
Peter Thiel
Tucker Carlson
Robert Mercer
The Kochtopus
Steve Bannon
Complete American Monsters Series to date:
The Cult of the Genius Tech Bro
The Virtual Battlefield
On Putin and Combat Propaganda:
20 Years of Internet Espionage with High Fidelity
‘The Signal Is Getting Out There’ with Jim Stewartson
Move Fast and Break Things, Just No
Latest reporting
I often think about why we’re lagging behind other countries on addressing tech pollution and passing regulations like the EU, Japan, and UK are doing in their attempts to return sanity to their citizens by removing the toxins people are being carpet-bombed with daily. Brainwashing isn’t free speech.
Perhaps it’s because we’ve become an information economy, and the desire to protect capitalism from Democracy is strong with the technofascists.
Everything is solvable in a Democracy… a republic, if you can keep it.
Right now, Elon Musk is using his platform — his $44 billion psyop cannon as HiFi noted in my first Unmusked report in 2022 — to attempt to interview Donald Trump.
If these technofascists are anything, they’re predictable.
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