A Brief Primer on Technofascism

Introduction

It has become increasingly obvious that some of the most prominent and monied people and projects in the tech industry intend to implement many of the same features and pursue the same goals that are described in Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism(4); that is, these people are fascists and their projects enable fascist goals. However, it has become equally obvious that those fascist goals are being pursued using a set of methods and pathways that are unique to the tech industry, and which appear to be uniquely crafted to force both Silicon Valley corporations and the venture capital sphere to embrace fascist values. The name that fits this particular strain of fascism the best is technofascism (with thanks to @future_synthetic), frequently shortened for convenience to techfash.

Some prime examples of technofascist methods in action exist in cryptocurrency projects, generative AI, large language models, and a particular early example of technofascism named Urbit. There are many more examples of technofascist methods, but these were picked because they clearly demonstrate what outwardly separates technofascism from ordinary hype and marketing.

The Unique Mechanisms of Technofascism

Disassociation with technological progress or success

Technofascist projects are almost always entirely unsuccessful at achieving their stated goals, and rarely involve any actual technological innovation. This is because the marketed goals of these projects are not their real, fascist aims.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are frequently presented as innovative, but all blockchain-based technologies are, in fact, inefficient distributed database based on Merkle trees, a very old technology which blockchains add little practical value to. In fact, blockchains are so impractical that they have provably failed to achieve any of the marketed goals undertaken by cryptocurrency corporations since the public release of Bitcoin(6).

Statement of world-changing goals, to be achieved without consent

Technofascist goals are never small-scale. Successful tech projects are usually narrowly focused in order to limit their scope(9), but technofascist projects invariably have global ambitions (with no real attempt to establish a roadmap of humbler goals), and equally invariably attempt to achieve those goals without the consent of anyone outside of the project, usually via coercion.

This type of coercion and consent violation is best demonstrated by example. In cryptocurrency, a line of thought that has been called the Bitcoin Citadel(8) has become common in several communities centered around Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies. Generally speaking, this is the idea that in a near-future post-collapse society, the early adopters of the cryptocurrency at hand will rule, while late and non-adopters will be enslaved. In keeping with technofascism’s disdain for the success of its marketed goals, this monstrous idea ignores the fact that cryptocurrencies would be useless in a post-collapse environment with a fractured or non-existent global computer network.

AI and TESCREAL groups demonstrate this same pattern by simultaneously positioning large language models as an existential threat on the verge of becoming a hostile godlike sentience, as well as the key to unlocking a brighter (see: more profitable) future for the faithful of the TESCREAL in-group. In this case, the consent violation is exacerbated by large language models and generative AI necessarily being trained on mass volumes of textual and artistic work taken without permission(1).

Urbit positions itself as the inevitable future of networked computing, but its admitted goal is to technologically implement a neofeudal structure where early adopters get significant control over the network and how it executes code(3, 12).

Creation and furtherance of a death cult

In the fascist ideology described by Eco, fascism is described as “a life lived for struggle” where everyone is indoctrinated to believe in a cult of heroism that is closely linked with a cult of death(4). This same indoctrination is common in what I will refer to as a death cult, where a technofascist project is simultaneously positioned as both a world-ending problem, and the solution to that same problem (which would not exist without the efforts of technofascists) for a select, enlightened few.

The death cult of technofascism is demonstrated with perfect clarity by the closely-related ideologies surrounding Large Language Models (LLMs), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and the bundle of ideas known as TESCREAL (Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singulartarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism)(5).

We can derive examples of this death cult from the examples given in the previous section. In the concept of the Bitcoin Citadel, cryptocurrencies are idealized as both the cause of the collapse and as the in-group’s source of power after that collapse(6). The TESCREAL belief that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will end the world unless it is “aligned with humanity” by members of the death cult, who handle the AGI with the proper religious fervor(11).

While Urbit does not technologically structure itself as a death cult, its community and network is structured to be a highly effective incubator for other death cults(2, 7, 10).

Severance of our relationship with truth and scientific research

Destruction and redefinition of historical records

This can be viewed as a furtherance of technofascism’s goal of destroying our ability to perceive the truth, but it must be called out that technofascist projects have a particular interest in distorting our remembrance of history; to make history effectively mutable in order to cover for technofascism’s failings.

Parasitization of existing terminology

As part of the process of generating false consensus and covering for the many failings of technofascist projects, existing terminology is often taken and repurposed to suit the goals of the fascists.

One obvious example is the popular term crypto, which until relatively recently referred to cryptography, an extremely important branch of mathematics. Cryptocurrency communities have now adopted the term, and have deliberately used the resulting confusion to falsely imply that cryptocurrencies, like cryptography, are an important tool in software architecture.

Weaponization of open source and the commons

One of the distinctive traits that separates ordinary capitalist exploitation from technofascism is the subversion and weaponization of the efforts of the open source community and the development commons.

One notable weapon used by many technofascist projects to achieve absolute control while maintaining the illusion that the work being undertaken is an open source community effort is what I will call forking hostility. This is a concerted effort to make forking the project infeasible, and it takes two forms.

Its technological form is accomplished via network effects; good examples are large cryptocurrency projects like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which cannot practically be forked because any blockchain without majority consensus is highly vulnerable to attacks, and in any case is much less valuable than the larger chain. Urbit maintains technological forking hostility via its aforementioned implementation of neofeudal network resource allocation.

The second form of forking hostility is social; technofascist open source communities are notably for extremely aggressively telling dissenters to “just for it, it’s open source” while just as aggressively punishing anyone attempting a fork with threats, hacking attempts (such as the aforementioned blockchain attacks), ostracization, and other severe social repercussions. These responses are very distinctive in the uniformity of their response, which is rarely seen even among the most toxic of regular open source communities.

Implementation of racist, biased, and prejudiced systems

References

[1] Bender, Emily M. and Hanna, Alex, Ai Causes Real Harm. Let’s Focus on That over the End-of-Humanity Hype, Scientific American, 2023.

[2] Broderick, Ryan, Inside Remilia Corporation, the Anti-Woke Dao behind the Doomed Milady Maker Nft, Fast Company, 2022.

[3] Duesterberg, James, Among the Reality Entrepreneurs, The Point Magazine, 2022.

[4] Eco, Umberto, Ur-Fascism, The Anarchist Library, 1995.

[5] Gebru, Timnit and Torres, Emile, Satml 2023 - Timnit Gebru - Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through Agi, 2023.

[6] Gerard, David, Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Etherium and Smart Contracts, {David Gerard}, 2017.

[7] Gottsegen, Will, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Miladys but Were Afraid to Ask, 2022.

[8] Munster, Decrypt / Ben, The Bizarre Rise of the ’Bitcoin Citadel’, Decrypt, 2021.

[9] , Scope Creep, Wikipedia, 2023.

[10] , How to Start a Secret Society, 2022.

[11] Torres, Emile P., The Acronym behind Our Wildest Ai Dreams and Nightmares, Truthdig, 2023.

[12] Yarvin, Curtis, 3-Intro.Txt, GitHub, 2010.

  • Steve@awful.systemsM
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    1 year ago

    I just finished reading it and enjoyed what you have so far. A lot of threads that I’m interested in but you have a different perspective that doesn’t get caught up in abstractions.

    One piece of general feedback, knowing it’s a draft, is that the section titles may be unnecessary because your narrative flows well enough to follow in a linear thread.

    Ok, digging in.

    However, it has become equally obvious that those fascist goals are being pursued using a set of methods and pathways that are unique to the tech industry

    This line leaves me wanting a little more info about why they are unique to the tech industry. Maybe because it’s close to home for me and my writing, but do you mean this because digital technology affords the methods and pathways in a way that the physical world doesn’t? Or is it related to the ideologies of the people behind them? I don’t think the intro is the place to explain it fully, it could be a whole article in itself, but maybe a few more words to tighten up that context would help.

    There are many more examples of technofascist methods, but these were picked because they clearly demonstrate what outwardly separates technofascism from ordinary hype and marketing.

    Sorry if nitpicky but “clearly demonstrate” hurts your intro a little bit because the article’s purpose seems to be to demonstrate why these thing are technofascist despite their hype and marketing.

    Technofascist projects are almost always entirely unsuccessful at achieving their stated goals, and rarely involve any actual technological innovation. This is because the marketed goals of these projects are not their real, fascist aims.

    Nice summary of the key indicator. Because I get caught up in the details and haven’t thought about this stuff in terms of fascism much, I see this when they state a problem which you can’t argue with it as being a problem, but you can’t really argue with it not being a problem either. Usually because it’s a problem area rather than a tangible, pertinent, problem. Like “productivity”, for example. Then they present their solution which has the same characteristics. You can’t argue for or against it because it’s like using a marshmallow hammer to drive in a marshmallow nail. (Sorry to bring up my pet target example) Notion has all these wonderful things for organising stuff and collaborating because if you don’t talk about specific productivity problems and just talk about productivity in general then being “organised” sounds great!

    Anyway, my reason for sharing this is that your article makes me think that technofascism can be found even in the most innocent-seeming projects because we’ve let the concept of solid product definition be iteratively replaced by these mushy masses of code.

    Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are frequently presented as innovative, but all blockchain-based technologies are, in fact, inefficient distributed database based on Merkle trees, a very old technology which blockchains add little practical value to. In fact, blockchains are so impractical that they have provably failed to achieve any of the marketed goals undertaken by cryptocurrency corporations since the public release of Bitcoin(6).

    I thought this paragraph could be improved as a follow up to the previous by talking about Bitcoin’s claimed purpose rather than the faults of the technology. You lead into it by talking about “Technofascist projects are almost always entirely unsuccessful at achieving their stated goals” but you don’t talk about Bitcoin’s stated goals, which are interesting in themselves. There is this strange juxtaposition between the libertarian love for bitcoin and decentralised independence yet the white paper makes it reasonably clear that bitcoin is pro-vendor and not necessarily designed for the purpose of the individual. It takes a pretty one-sided tone when read through that lens.

    First sentence of the whitepaper:

    Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non- reversible services.

    moving on.

    Successful tech projects are usually narrowly focused in order to limit their scope(9), but technofascist projects invariably have global ambitions (with no real attempt to establish a roadmap of humbler goals), and equally invariably attempt to achieve those goals without the consent of anyone outside of the project, usually via coercion.

    This is a great line! Kind of like Bluesky making their own protocol instead of using webmention and activitypub.

    In keeping with technofascism’s disdain for the success of its marketed goals, this monstrous idea ignores the fact that cryptocurrencies would be useless in a post-collapse environment with a fractured or non-existent global computer network.

    This highlights that idea that if your goals solve conceptual problems with conceptual solutions the ability to see obvious problems like this are easy to dismiss as being conceptual criticism. When it can’t be used now to do something now then we have no criteria for success or failure. The grift is to keep edging the believers as long as possible by continuing to add new details that sweeten the pay off and push it further away at the same time.

    Urbit positions itself as the inevitable future of networked computing, but its admitted goal is to technologically implement a neofeudal structure where early adopters get significant control over the network and how it executes code(3, 12).

    I’m scared of the Urbit rabbit hole so I don’t give it too much time but this sounds exactly like the ENS project as well.

    This can be viewed as a furtherance of technofascism’s goal of destroying our ability to perceive the truth, but it must be called out that technofascist projects have a particular interest in distorting our remembrance of history; to make history effectively mutable in order to cover for technofascism’s failings.

    I like the way this contradicts the blockchain obsession with immutability and permanence of information. LLMs are perfect destroyers of truth and distorters of history - what exactly are the things we would want to calcify into blockchains with enough confidence that they exist unmodified forever?

    One obvious example is the popular term crypto, which until relatively recently referred to cryptography, an extremely important branch of mathematics. Cryptocurrency communities have now adopted the term, and have deliberately used the resulting confusion to falsely imply that cryptocurrencies, like cryptography, are an important tool in software architecture.

    They imply they are important by repurposing the word utility beyond any meaning. They’ve turned utility into a means and an end. They tell you something has utility in a way which 5 years ago would have sounded like an odd, unfinished, sentence. “This token is great because it has so much utility”

    Its technological form is accomplished via network effects; good examples are large cryptocurrency projects like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which cannot practically be forked because any blockchain without majority consensus is highly vulnerable to attacks, and in any case is much less valuable than the larger chain. Urbit maintains technological forking hostility via its aforementioned implementation of neofeudal network resource allocation.

    The concept of weaponised open-source is fascinating and something I haven’t read about before. I really enjoyed this section and would definitely read a whole article exploring this further.


    Thanks for sharing what you have so far! It was a nice read and it kept me hooked all the way. I hope this feedback is helpful. Looking forward to seeing your progress

    • self@awful.systemsOPM
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      1 year ago

      there’s so much good feedback and so many great questions in this post! a longer form reply is in progress (you’ve prompted me to chase down new threads of inquiry) but until then, thank you for reading and for posting the kind of feedback that keeps me writing!

      • Steve@awful.systemsM
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        1 year ago

        It was a really interesting read. Let me know if anything I wrote doesn’t make sense. I didn’t get a chance to proofread