Recent searches
Search options
IMHO: It isn't that far-right has suddenly become a big movement in Europe. The far-right support has always been and will always be around 20%. The task of society is to keep that support in the "morally unacceptable" box that is buried deep in the ground. Clickbait, polarisation supported by technofascism and Putins money and methods to foster destabilisation in democracies however are the most powerful attack against that fragile equilibrium I have ever experienced. And we are losing.
@jwildeboer Tax the rich... Just saying.
What we are experiencing today has its roots in the era of Thatcher, Reagan and the like. With their exceptional love for the super rich they laid the ground for today's disaster.
It sounds like populism, maybe it is populism, but my strong opinion is: Revert any tax policy of this era, and maybe we'll be safe. Otherwise: Goodbye democracy.
@taschenorakel @jwildeboer agreed. Thatcherism et al were the seeds towards a rise of cynicism, belief that the state can do no good, that things are getting worse, that what we used to have is going away.
But tax policy isn’t enough; the changed media landscape is also a huge problem.
@chucker @jwildeboer It comes together: Media is what it is because untaxed super rich had too much money available to play with.
@taschenorakel @jwildeboer but while changing tax policy is relatively easy, putting the media genie back in its bottle is hard. How do you make people trust journalists again? How do you explain that “social media” has its virtues, but often amplifies lies and sometimes even propaganda?
@chucker My approach is to focus on decentralisation. "Too big to fail" can be beaten by simple ignorance. To be able to ignore the Big Few, you need to offer (a lot of) (hyper-)local alternatives that people trust through personal relationships, AKA "I know those people and I trust them". ActivityPub/Mastodon has that potential. To create and foster communities of practice that can break the power of the Big Few. On many levels. It'll take time. It won't happen overnight. @taschenorakel
@jwildeboer @taschenorakel optimistically, yes. Cynically, well, look at COVID. Decentralization has made people trust the local town crier over medical professionals.
That phenomenon has always existed to some extent, but its influence has grown in recent decades.
@chucker @jwildeboer @taschenorakel I'm not sure how that was decentralization to be honest.
People that were denying COVID and antivaxxers seemed to have been primarily relying on F***book and Twatter from what I remember. Not exactly decentralized.
The true root cause of the problem was/is IMHO: lack of education & lack of critical thinking skills.
Divide and Conquer my friend.
Give the populace bread & games and we will stay in power.
I.e. modern media, including "social", are the games.
@chaosmonkey @jwildeboer @taschenorakel it’s decentralization in the sense that Facebook and Twitter aren’t the classic mass media, which they’ve lost trust in.
We’ve moved from people mostly getting their information from the newspaper or the evening TV news, then discussing them at the pub to them increasingly using smaller information sources (some random with a blog, or on Facebook, or elsewhere) that blur the line of information and opinion.