What do you mean by “mainstreaming”?

At its core, #mainstreaming is how we, often unconsciously, uphold and reproduce the values of the dominant system. In our time, that system is #neoliberalism, or what I metaphorically call the #deathcult. It’s the air we breathe: shaping our politics, our economics, even the food we eat and how we relate to each other.

In activist terms, #mainstreaming too often means pushing this dominant worldview into alternative spaces, building careers and institutions that play progressive on the surface, but ultimately reproduce the very system that’s driving the crisis. It’s what happens when people take grassroots energy and repackage it in #NGO boxes or #dotcon business plans. The result? We end up feeding the monster we’re supposed to be fighting.

This is the path to #stupidindividualism, where neoliberalism “common sense” didn’t just attack unions, welfare and public goods – it atomized our very identities. Over the past 40 years, we’ve been trained to act as isolated economic units. Individualism replaced solidarity. Competition replaced care. This is what we metaphorically call #stupidindividualism – the corrosive belief that the only way forward is by looking after yourself, even when your actions are part of a system that destroys community and climate. And as history has shown us, when communities collapse, what rushes in to fill the vacuum is fear, resentment, and authoritarianism, in a word: #fascism.

In real-world examples, let’s take @NovaraMedia. They produce great content. But their distribution strategy is rooted in #dotcons (YouTube, Twitter, Instagram), and their cultural aspirations are aimed at becoming the next @Guardian – a new node in the old system. They’re playing inside the media ecosystem of the #deathcult. Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to grow an audience. But if we don’t also invest in building and sustaining #grassroots alternatives, we’re just treading water in the mainstream’s tide.

Most NGO agendas follow this same mainstreaming logic: speak in respectable tones, aim for policy tweaks, never rock the boat too hard, and above all, protect your funding. This echos my experience of doing media training and its limits, i’ve spent 25+ years training thousands of people to create radical, grassroots media, through projects like #Undercurrents, #Indymedia, #visionontv, and now the #OMN. Here’s what happened: Most of those trained went on to have careers in mainstream journalism or #NGO communications. Almost none stayed with grassroots projects. And honestly, I kinda don’t blame them, it’s hard to survive outside the system. But that’s the problem: without long-term support for non-mainstreaming work, there’s no soil for alternatives to grow.

We trained them to change the world, but the world trained them to change careers. So what do we do? If we don’t build real, working alternatives, then the only future left is one where billions of people die or are displaced over the next 100 years, from accelerating #climatechaos, and the rise of digital authoritarianism and political fascism. That’s why we need to push back against mainstreaming, not with purity politics or infighting, but with tools and structures that offer real alternatives.

The #OMN (Open Media Network) is one such tool:

Technically solid

Politically grounded in the #4opens and #PGA hallmarks

Designed to resist co-option by the #NGO sector or #dotcon logic

Rooted in peer-to-peer cooperation instead of hierarchical control

This path is a seed of something better, not perfect, not finished, but growing from decades of experience. We can’t blame people for trying to survive, but still we can and must build and defend spaces that nurture something, different, better.

Otherwise, the #deathcult “wins” by default.

Everything we build sits on standards

An example of the #geekproblem is the refusal, or failure, to engage seriously with standards. In tech, as in life, nothing exists in isolation. Every app, every protocol, every line of code rests on a foundation of inherited agreements: protocols, languages, schemas, and governance systems. These are the invisible scaffolding of the digital world, we call them standards, and whether people like it or not, everything you’re building is already part of an industrial web of standards.

Now, here’s the issue, some people like building sandcastles, it’s fun, creative, and ephemeral and that’s fine for a beach. But when you’re trying to build something social, collective, public, sandcastles don’t last. Tech built without engagement with standards is just that, fantasy castles doomed to wash away with the tide. The #geekproblem is this tendency, to act like you’re inventing from scratch, when you’re just ignoring the foundations that are already holding you up.

So, what is an “Open Industrial Standard”? Think of it this way:

An industrial standard is a shared agreement that enables interoperation. Think HTTP, HTML, RSS, USB, SQL, IP, ActivityPub. These let different things talk to each other, without asking permission.

An open standard means anyone can read it, implement it, and improve it — without a license fee or gatekeeper.

When it works well, it becomes a public commons — infrastructure we all use without even thinking about it.

That’s the real power of the #openweb, these boring, beautiful agreements that allow radically different people and machines to cooperate at scale. And yes, the process of defining them can be nebulous and political. There are gatekeepers, old boys’ clubs, turf wars (just ask anyone who’s fought through the W3C or IETF). But without engaging with these processes, you’re not doing tech that scales, you’re doing cosplay.

Tribalism vs standards, some geeks mistake tribal loyalty for technical innovation. They reject standards because they didn’t write them, or because they’re seen as “corporate,” or because it’s not their language/community. This is understandable, but it’s also deeply destructive when building shared tools. This tribalism can be:

Beautiful — as identity, passion, and solidarity.

Problematic — when it blocks interconnection, growth, and real-world relevance.

And yes, nationalism is another form of this, some #dotcons are more powerful than countries, so perhaps it’s a useful metaphor. If Amazon or Meta can out-legislate half of Europe, then tribal structures and state structures start to blur. The violence of exclusion, whether through passport or platform ban, operates in similar ways.

The #geekproblem is a 20th-century hangover, a part of the tech tribe that’s clung to personal purity, control, and isolation. But this path is real damage: #climatechaos worsened by inefficient or extractive systems, #failbook dominating sociality through centralised design, #diaspora outreach falling apart from internal ego wars.

The #geekproblem refuses the hard, messy work of social coding, open standards, federation, collective governance. It prefers to build new silos rather than inhabit and improve shared space. We see this constantly. New protocols, platforms, forks. Few links, no bridges. We need to talk about this, as it’s not personal, it’s structural. But people get very personal when you point this out, that’s the #stupidindividualism talking. Instead of building relationships and cooperation, they build sandcastles and expect others to admire them from afar. Meanwhile, the world burns, and tech could be helping, but mostly it isn’t.

In Summary: Open industrial standards are the foundations of anything that actually works at scale. The #geekproblem is a block when it pretends these don’t matter. Sandcastles are nice, but you can’t build a future on them. Let’s engage, not isolate. Link, not fork. Share, not hoard.
That’s the path to a real #openweb, that resists the #deathcult and has a shot at making lasting change.

I’ve been fighting this for 20 years. I wrote this in 2005, and it still holds:

“It’s going slow but we are getting there… One of the main problems seems to be a dysfunctional idea of division of labour – ie. Everyone seems to think I should do everything – as I am pretty useless at many things it’s no wonder it is going so slow… If you wanna see something miraculous happen you gotta wave your arms around a bit and mutter some arcane words… Go on you can do something… Just look at the blog page to see what.”

What Do We Do With Our #Mainstreaming Alt-People?

This is an old and familiar problem: people who say they want change but consistently choose the path that neutralises it. Welcome to the “common sense” #NGO worldview, currently being repackaged in the #Fediverse as things like the Fedi Foundation. It’s not new. It’s not empowering. It’s a tired institutional gravity that drags every radical project into a fog of bureaucracy, branding, and paid careers.

In contrast, we have the “nativist” #openweb crew – grassroots people working with messy horizontalism and free tools, trying to keep the fire alive. See the more grounded reflections like What would a fediverse “governance” body look like?.

And then, sitting awkwardly in between, we have the #geekproblem, coders who are working hard on technical processes like the FEPs (Fediverse Enhancement Proposals) but who avoid touching anything political. They’ve been pushing the #fep process for years now, and while technically interesting, they often ignore the deep political questions of governance and power. That’s fine. But it leaves a vacuum.

The risk: If native paths don’t move, the NGO model will win by default is the hard truth, if the “native” #openweb people don’t move beyond our tired leftist divisions and infinite internal critique, then the #NGO model will be imposed. History tells us this, over and over again. Nature abhors a vacuum. Institutions are always waiting to fill the space with “best practices,” dull forms, and “inclusive” hierarchy. It’s just what happens when there’s a failure to organise from below.

And here’s the problem, the argument between “structure” and “lack of structure” is largely a strawman. Most functioning grassroots projects have lots of structure, it’s just soft structure: relational, implicit, culturally encoded, emergent. The #OGB project (Open Governance Body), for instance, grew from the #EU outreach work and shows this kind of structure in action. It’s not rigid like an NGO. It’s not anarcho-chaos either. It’s #KISS structure, small, practical, and adaptable. But people often miss this because they’ve been taught to only see hard structure: constitutions, charters, legal entities, chairs, and trustees. This blindness is a serious block.

On coops, NGOs, and the shadows of the #Deathcult. A note on coops: They’re often cited as a model alternative. And yes, coops can be good. But many have been co-opted. They function more like bureaucratic relics than vibrant counter-systems.

Examples:

The Coop supermarket hired Tesco managers to “turn it around,” resulting in soviet-style shopping and a full embrace of corporate logics.

The Coop Bank? Try dealing with them — they’re functionally broken through bureaucracy.

1970s wholefood coops had potential — many evolved into neoliberal health shops in the 1990s, selling overpriced turmeric capsules to middle-class wellness seekers.

In contrast, activist organising – even when messy, clumsy, and exhausting – is a better bet. It rarely becomes the shadow of the #deathcult because it is in active struggle against that system. NGOs and formalised coops often become the shadow by default.

What should we do?

Name the problem without being prats about it. People drift into #mainstreaming by habit, not usually by conspiracy. But habits can kill movements. Name them. Push back gently but firmly.
Embrace diversity of organising models. Don’t push coops or NGOs as a one-size-fits-all. Sometimes a loose affinity group or soft network is better. Sometimes a coop makes sense. But don’t dogmatise structures that we know often fail.
Build soft structure, not rigid rules. Ask simple questions like “How does this work with the #4opens?” or “Does this strengthen the PGA Hallmarks?” This builds accountability without shutting down creativity.
Support native projects like #indymediaback, #OGB, and the #OMN, these are based on working structures, rooted in radical history, and built by people with lived experience of doing the work.
Don’t confuse visibility with substance. Just because a foundation or NGO gets press or looks shiny, doesn’t mean they’re doing anything real. Look under the hood.
Compost what needs composting. Don’t let failed or flawed projects keep clogging up energy space. Say goodbye, thank them for their lessons, and move on. We have enough shit to shovel already.

In summary, we don’t need to choose between chaos and bureaucracy. There’s a third path of soft, relational, rooted organising with shared values, proven history, and practical tools. But we have to fight for it. Because if we don’t, the NGO train will keep rolling through, colonising everything with HR-speak and grant metrics. And we’ll be stuck rebuilding, again and again. Let’s not waste more time on that.

Stop throwing regurgitated theory at me: We’re drowning in academic mess

The “common sense” of mainstreaming #deathcult worship is one thing. But a different side, i’m getting bored – and honestly frustrated – with people constantly throwing academic articles and dense theory into conversations about practical grassroots change. If academic knowledge worked in the real world, we wouldn’t be stuck in a permanent state of crisis. We wouldn’t be burning out. We wouldn’t be watching every radical initiative slowly get co-opted, neutralised, then forgotten.

The truth is obvious: most academic frameworks don’t translate well into real-life practice. They to often abstract away the people, the politics, the pain, and the actual doing. And when you try to impose this abstract knowledge onto the messy, complex world of activism, it often backfires. Badly.

Example: The Horizontalist Trap – We’ve all been in those consensus meetings that take hours because someone read a paper on “formal process” and insists we follow it to the letter. The outcome? People walk away frustrated, nothing gets done, and the only ones who benefit are those with time, education, or social power, the exact opposite of what the theory promised.

Example: The NGOization of Resistance – Academics love to talk about power and hegemony, then take funding from the same institutions that perpetuate the problems. They publish papers about “grassroots voice” while never showing up to a single protest, occupation, or food distribution.

Worse still, academic frameworks often become the justification for #NGO “best practices”, which means measurable, fundable, easily controlled deliverables that neuter real resistance and keep everything nice and “professional.” Look at the climate movement’s NGO wing, all form, no fire.

Example: The Misuse of Radical Jargon – Words like “intersectionality,” “decolonisation,” “assemblage,” and “ontology” are thrown around like power spells. But often, they act like a fog machine, confusing, not clarifying. They become tools for gatekeeping rather than building shared understanding.

This isn’t to say these ideas are worthless. But if they aren’t grounded in practice, in lived reality, in #DIY doing, they become another form of control, the academic equivalent of bureaucratic jargon. Empty power.

Let’s Talk About Practice – If you’re serious about radical change, start with what people are actually doing. Watch how trust is built. How disagreements are handled. How collective tools succeed or fail. This is the terrain of useful knowledge. Theory should grow from practice, not the other way around.

This is the basis of the #DIY approach. It’s what grounds #OMN, #IndymediaBack, and the #4opens framework. These projects didn’t come from a PhD thesis, they came from struggle, failure, and iteration on the ground. They work because they grow from practice.

Stop adding to the mess – when you post academic articles without any connection to what’s happening now, in the real world, you’re not helping. You’re contributing to the noise. To the inertia. To the pile of unread PDFs sitting in everyone’s guilt folder.

Instead:

Link to practical guides, not just papers.
Summarise ideas in accessible ways, not just as a show of knowledge.
Relate theory back to what people are already doing.
And most of all, ask first: Is this helping, or is this just feeding my own need to be heard?

We don’t need more theory right now. We need fire, tools, and compost. If you must bring theory, make sure it’s something that came from someone doing the work. Otherwise, maybe save it for the seminar room.

We’re building from the bottom, join us there.

#DIY #NothingNew #4opens #OMN #IndymediaBack #Activism #Compost #OpenWeb #Deathcult

Theory and Practice in Activism

The roadblocks to change: #Stupidindividualism and the #Deathcult that breeds it

If you’ve ever tried to build something radical, collective, and actually useful, you’ve run into these forces. They’re not just annoying. They’re dangerous, structural, and they always show up. This post is about naming those, calling them what they are, and understanding how they’re entangled in the wider problem:

A culture that valorizes individualism, feeds on careerism, and bows to the false “common sense” of the neoliberal #deathcult.

The #NGO agenda: Careerism in activist clothing. Too many grassroots projects are co-opted by well-meaning (or not-so-well-meaning) NGOs and their functionaries, who come waving grant forms and talking about partnerships. But really, they’re selling a diluted, bureaucratic version of change that fits inside capitalist institutions, with jobs and funding flows to protect.

At best, they water down radicalism into “deliverables.” At worst, they actively trample grassroots horizontality to build careers. They normalize the #dotcons. They manage, rather than transform. This isn’t conspiracy. It’s structure. And we need to build outside this model.

Petty politics and personal grudges: Micro-level sabotage. Let’s be honest, some people would burn the future to win a petty feud. This is the everyday rot of #stupidindividualism, where narrow self-preservation and shallow ego become more important than collective progress.

Projects like #indymediaback, which depend on shared vision and mutual respect, break down when people refuse to grow beyond grudges. These behaviours reflect deeper cultural damage, we’ve been trained to see each other as threats, not collaborators. We can’t build anything real if we don’t actively mediate this. That means talking it through, holding space, calling it in, before it derails the work.

The liberal trap: Dogma masquerading as “common sense”. I’ll say something unfashionable, I have respect for old-school liberalism. It gave us social safety nets, education, some rights, a lot of good stuff came out of liberal traditions. But today’s dogmatic liberals, clinging to broken institutions and smearing “common sense” over radical action, are a drain on movement energy. Their default is always compromise, always moderation, even when the world is on fire. We’re stuck negotiating with people who believe the future is a reformed version of the past. It isn’t. We need to move forward, not beg to stay where we are.

The #geekproblem: Control, complexity, and disconnection. We’ve talked about this before, and it keeps coming up. The #geekproblem is when technologists build tools for control rather than empowerment, for complexity rather than access, for themselves rather than people. Often dressed in “neutral” language or “perfect systems,” these tools lock out users, deny social context, and kill collaboration with arrogant assumptions. The fix? Build for people, not machines. Use the #4opens. Work from #DIY practice, not just theory. Centre community. Make it work for the bottom, not the top.

The path we need is compost, this isn’t about perfection. We’ve all played roles in the mess. The key is naming it, owning it, and moving differently. Tools like #OMN, #indymediaback, and #OGB are not shiny new things. They’re grounded in lived practice, built to solve real problems. They don’t pretend to be magic fixes. But they are shovels, to compost the current mess, and grow something better.

We don’t need another app, another platform, another paper. We need to build trust-based networks, support each other, and get our hands dirty together. A humanistic, future is still possible, if we stop feeding the #deathcult and start feeding the soil.

Add yours: What Blocks the progressive path? We need to name these issues clearly, not to shame individuals, but to make them visible as systemic patterns we all get caught in. So tell me: what else is holding us back? What sabotages collective projects from within? Let’s document the patterns so we can start composting them.

#grassroots #DIY #openweb #4opens #nothingnew #postcapitalism #stupidindividualism #culturewars #commoning

Talking about the mess we’re in

We’re living in an age of permanent crisis, there’s no going back to “normal.” Stop waiting for it. Let’s just STOP worshipping the #deathcult as a first step away from this mess. The trap we’re in, neoliberalism, or the #deathcult, isn’t optional. It’s systemic. You don’t get to opt out unless you’re rich enough to buy an island… and even then, it’s a fantasy.

But metaphors have value. #deathcult is a metaphor, yes, and a sharp, useful one. It’s a name for the dominant ideology of the last 40 years: neoliberalism, where markets are sacred, society is optional, and #climatecollapse is just another economic opportunity.

We use hashtags like #deathcult, #fashernista, #climatechaos, #stupidindividualism not to confuse, but to bring dry, academic critique into emotional, accessible terms. They’re #KISS, Keep It Simple, Stupid. They cut through the noise, if you let them.

Want an example? I lived a metaphor, ten years ago, I bought a lifeboat and sailed away. Not into isolation, but into reflection. For the last five years, I’ve lived outside most laws and norms. Not because I think that’s the answer, but because it’s one place to plant seeds for better ones.

But the boat, like the #nastyfews islands, isn’t freedom. It’s a metaphor. A stopgap. A reminder that we can step sideways, temporarily, to prepare for change, but only IF we come back and build together.

Power is always social. There is no “DIY freedom” that doesn’t end in loneliness or failure. You are powerless until you engage with others, to build trust and accountability. This is what the #OMN is about. It’s not individual exit, it’s collective entry.

So, talk in metaphors. Use the hashtags. Share the language. Together, they tell a story. But only if you join in.

No more waiting for heroes.
No more worshipping broken systems.
No more technocratic denial.
It’s time to compost the old world and plant something new.

Theory and Practice in Activism

There’s a common confusion, pushed by well-meaning #fashernistas, about how change actually happens. They love theory. They love to talk about change. But when it comes to doing, things go sideways. Why? Because good horizontalists know: theory must emerge from practice, not the other way around.

At the root of radical practice is #DIY culture. We don’t wait for perfect theory or academic approval. We get our hands dirty. We try things, we fail, we try again. Through this, we build theory that is grounded in reality, not floating above it.

The Problem with top-down theory is that when you start from theory alone, disconnected from lived experience, you go ground and round in abstract circles. Then, inevitably, someone tries to apply this neatly wrapped theoretical package as a “solution” to the mess we’re in… and it breaks everything.

At best, this leads to another layer of #techshit to compost. At worst, it becomes academic wank, beautifully phrased but practically useless, imposed on grassroots organisers trying to get real work done. We’re tired of clearing up after these failed interventions. Focus matters. Resources are scarce. Energy is precious. The practice-first approach, is why we’re doing something different with projects like:

#OMN (Open Media Network): building tools from the bottom up, with open metadata flows and radical trust.

#Indymediaback: rebooting a proven model of grassroots publishing that worked, updated for today.

#OGB (Open Governance Body): prototyping governance based on lived collaboration, not abstract debate.

All of this is theory grown from practice. None of it came from think tanks or grant-funded consultants. It came from kitchens, camps, squats, TAZs, mailing lists, and dirty hands. If you want to be part of this work, great. But please engage with it as it is. Bring your experience, your skills, your curiosity. But don’t dump disconnected theory on it. Don’t smother the flow with top-down frameworks or overthought abstractions.

We need people to join the flow of practice. Let the theory emerge where it’s needed, like compost, growing what feeds us. So: Start where your feet are. Build from what works. Trust the process of doing. And please, don’t push mess our way. We’ve got enough of that already.

Let’s build something real. Together.

#DIY #grassroots #4opens #KISS #deathcult #nothingnew

Why most radical tech is pointless, and why #indymediaback isn’t

Almost everything built in today’s alt-radical tech scene is, bluntly, pointless. Despite good intentions, most of it ends up feeding the endless cycle of #fashernista churn, flashy new platforms, bleeding-edge protocols, or encrypted communication tools nobody uses, built by isolated teams disconnected from real-world needs or history. This is the #geekproblem: a culture where novelty is fetishized, and social usefulness is an afterthought, if it appears at all.

Examples:

Secure scrolling tools: Every few months we see new chat apps, usually cryptographic fortresses with no communities. No one’s asking what these tools are for beyond vague abstractions like “privacy” or “freedom.” Tools without context.
Peer-to-peer silos: Projects like Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) or many DAT spin-offs build entirely new social ecosystems that demand complete buy-in, rather than integrate into existing networks. What results is islands of lonely idealists yelling into empty timelines.
Protocol over people: Many Fediverse projects argue endlessly over specs like #ActivityPub or #Nostr, often prioritizing purity over pragmatism. What good is a protocol if no one actually uses it beyond a few devs congratulating themselves?

Why #indymediaback isn’t a pointless tech project, it offers something truly different. It is not “new.” It doesn’t pretend to invent a whole new ecosystem. It is an act of digital memory, a revival of the still-needed infrastructure that once helped build radical networks globally. #Indymedia worked. It published resistance. It distributed power. It was embedded in real communities and real movements. This is #nothingnew done right.

The #nothingnew approach mediates against the churn by reusing workflows, social trust, and existing cultural practices. It doesn’t ignore tech, it grounds tech. Examples:

#indymediaback uses simple publish-form-comment workflows, already familiar. No #AI, no #blockchain, no obscure identity layer. Just people posting and curating stories.

It connects to existing radical spaces: housing co-ops, street kitchens, climate camps—places where digital tools are needed right now, and where the point isn’t building a unicorn startup but having a place to publish the truth when the cops are lying again.

Why copying #dotcons isn’t enough, in the #fediverse we so far have replicate Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram — Mastodon, PeerTube, PixelFed. This is useful, to a point. But all code is ideology. Copying capitalist infrastructure dose smuggle in capitalist logic. Copying invites the #deathcult right back in through the side door.

indymediaback avoids this trap. It doesn’t replicate any#dotcons logic or UX patterns. It revives a publishing common that worked before Silicon Valley captured this path. And more importantly, it’s embedded in a set of radical social practices: the #PGA hallmarks, the #4opens, and the messy, beautiful legacy of grassroots movements who already knew how to organize.

The value of #indymediaback isn’t just in tech. It’s in trust-based social continuity, the hidden glue of any working movement. Without this, you don’t have a radical tech project. You have a ghost repo on GitHub. That’s the central point, without real community, without continuity, without trust, radical tech is a dead end.

This is the carrot and stick we need now. If you care about the #openweb as a human value network, not just a protocol playground, you have to build things people can use today, and that people want to use, not because it’s encrypted or federated, but because it serves a purpose they already have.

This is where the wider #OMN (Open Media Network) comes in. It’s not another protocol war. It’s a shovel to compost the inhuman mess we’ve inherited. It’s a framework built with the #4opens, to grow digital commons that don’t depend on VC, control freaks, or fashion. It’s where we build bridges between radical tech projects, rather than isolate ourselves in yet another Git-based castle.

In short, it’s a path of people over product, process over platform. We don’t need more “solutions.” We need to stop being prats, pick up the tools we already have, and start rebuilding.

Food for thought, and action.

America was always violent -You likely just have not noticed

The thing most liberals forget is that Americans are a notoriously politically violent bunch. From the Boston Tea Party to armed labour uprisings, from the Black Panthers to white vigilantes, from state crackdowns to citizen riots – the American story has always been soaked in political violence, the “land of the free” has enforced its freedom with fists, guns, and fire.

But over the last 40–50 years, all that was deliberately erased, rewritten, smoothed over, sold back as Disney-branded rebellion or CNN documentary tragedy. Out of sight, out of mind, out of options. That was the bipartisan strategy from Reagan to Clinton, Bush to Obama. Not to resolve pressure, but to suppress it.

The return of reality, is what we’re seeing now, this isn’t some “unprecedented crisis.” It’s a return to form. It’s the American normal that elitists have been desperately trying to keep hidden under plastic for decades. The only thing that’s changed is this: There’s no longer any outlet for the pressure, no trusted media, no real opposition party, no economic ladder, no commons to gather in, just debt, anxiety, and screens.

What now shocks the political class isn’t the chaos, it’s that there’s no release valve except their own collapse. They’re not afraid of the people rising up, They’re afraid that the state will be held accountable, and lose.

We were at this moment before in the USA, when the new deal was a white flag, let’s go back for a moment, FDR’s “New Deal” wasn’t a gift, It was a surrender, after 50 years of exploitation by the robber barons and their cronies, the country was on the brink. Labour revolts, communist organizing, anarchist movements, real threats to the state, were everywhere. FDR was smart enough to see the writing on the wall. The New Deal was a bargain: “Here’s a little back. Don’t take the rest.” It worked, temporarily. But only because people still had leverage.

Now? Every President since has mostly just tried to keep the lid on, offering less and less in return, and weaponizing the “culture war” as a distraction. By the Clinton era, the deal was done.

Deregulate the economy.

Outsource everything.

Privatize everything else.

Turn politics into a spectacle.

Keep the pressure building—but never release it.

And now here we are, in a real mess, with a poisoned society from 40 years of #deathcult worship, the political class are now standing naked before the onrushing #climatechaos and social break down, stripped of their sacred robes.

Spiritual poison: stripped rituals, atomized families, forgotten connections.
Social poison: movements fractured, solidarities lost to infighting.
Civic poison: institutions hollowed out, education turned to obedience training.
Media poison: truth for sale, journalism devalued, platforms turned to weapons.
Cultural poison: every feeling a product, every hope a commodity, every act of care reduced to an app.

This should worry the #nastyfew who are propping up this political class. We, the people, are still numbed, distracted, transactioned, algorithmically isolated, so still we can barely even imagine a world otherwise. And still the pressure builds, the worst mistake they’ve made is believing they can just keep doing this, that there are no consequences, that people will always submit if fed enough Netflix, fentanyl, and Uber Eats.

But history doesn’t work that way, when a government wages war on its people… Eventually, it loses, not because the people are strong, but because the government is brittle. The lie of modern technocratic rule is that you can govern without trust, coerce without violence, suppress without blowback. That myth has shattered now, collapse is a trajectory, not a theory.

So what now? We need to rebuilding beyond collapse. This is where our work comes in. #OMN, #indymediaback, the #openweb they’re not just nice ideas, they’re survival infrastructures. We can’t wait for a revolution that will never be televised or appear in our algorithmic feeds. We can’t expect institutions to reform themselves. We need:

Public spaces without paywalls

Media systems without gatekeepers

Tech that serves people, not platforms

Governance that comes from below, not above

This isn’t just political, it’s existential. Either we rebuild from the rubble of this poisoned world, or we get buried beneath it.

The choice isn’t “radicalism” or “reform.”
It’s resistance or thoughtlessness.
Collapse or commons.

You decide.

The current mainstreaming’s greatest sin is thoughtlessness

The current mainstreaming’s greatest sin is thoughtlessness

Everyone knows we are in a mess, but most people are too distracted to do anything to change the current path. We’ll keep on this path – scrolling, clicking, consuming – because the current mess we live in is incredibly skilled at hiding consequences.

The environmental cost is buried under greenwashing. BP rebranded itself as “Beyond Petroleum.” Shell sponsors art galleries. Apple makes claims about “carbon-neutral” devices—then glues batteries shut to prevent repair. Meanwhile, rare earth extraction, e-waste, and fast fashion destroy ecosystems from Congo to Cambodia.
The labour cost is outsourced, invisibilized, atomized. Amazon warehouse workers urinate in bottles to keep pace with surveillance timers. Foxconn installs suicide nets around dorms. Uber calls drivers “partners” while avoiding all responsibility for their lives or livelihoods.
The mental health cost is reframed as personal failure. You’re anxious and burnt out? Must be your mindset. Try a mindfulness app. Maybe eat better. Maybe “grind smarter.” Meanwhile, the structure of your life—precarious work, information overload, climate dread, is never questioned.
The social collapse is blamed on the “irresponsible poor” or “divisive politics.” Communities are gutted by austerity, housing is hoarded by speculators, but you’re told it’s your neighbour’s fault—immigrants, the unemployed, the other political tribe. The system throws fuel on every fire, then lectures you on “civility.”

Every crisis becomes your problem, not the system’s. This is because the #deathcult we unconsciously worship doesn’t just produce stuff, it produces numbness, distraction, and above all, thoughtlessness. A never-ending now, stripped of memory and consequence.

And the moment you try to pull back the curtain? There’s a brand, an #NGO ready to sell you “resistance” too. It’s a system designed to make rebellion feel like a clone lifestyle choice.

A t-shirt with a slogan.
A rainbow flag slapped on a weapons manufacturer.
A “climate justice” conference sponsored by Shell.
A new Netflix docuseries about the thing you’ll forget by next week.

#KISS resistance requires more than outrage, we don’t just need better tech or better politics. We need:

Better attention — to what's real and what's propaganda

Slower thinking — against the churn of hot takes and algorithms

Reclaimed time — stolen back from platform metrics and work schedules

Spaces for consequence — where the impacts of our actions (or inactions) are visible, shareable, accountable

That’s why #DIY infrastructure, the commons, and openness, matter. That’s why we reboot the #openweb, with the #4opens, with the #OMN, with peer-to-peer tools, and with each other. And we need to do this before thoughtlessness becomes all we have left in the #mainstreaming mess.

Tech princes and the #deathcult

Capitalism is a hostage situation -Not an economy

Our current #mainstreaming path of paywalls stacked on paywalls isn’t life, it’s a trap, we need a way out. In our everyday lives, we’ve come to accept the absurd:

You pay to eat food grown on land you don’t own,
Pay to sleep under a roof that someone profits from,
Pay to drink water privatized by corporations,
Pay to breathe, because the air is poisoned by industries that sell you both the problem and the solution.

And if you miss a payment? Game over (inspired by). That’s not a functioning economy, it’s not freedom, it’s a hostage situation, where every basic human need is held behind a transactional barrier, and the meter is always running.

This #deathcult is late capitalism: an endless stack of paywalls enclosing what used to be public, shared, and free. It isn’t just about money, it’s about control, dependency, and isolation. It’s a system that engineers artificial scarcity, so a #nastyfew can profit while the many just try to survive.

But it wasn’t always like this, for most of human history, people lived within commons-based paths, where land was collectively stewarded, food was grown and shared within communities, tools and knowledge were passed down, not patented and governance was often local and participatory.

The last 200 years of “common sense” capitalism is an enclosure of these commons, first the physical ones (land, water, food), and now the digital and social ones (communication, culture, identity). The #openweb, like the open land before it, is being fenced off. Platform by platform. App by app. Cookie banner by paywall.

This enclosure now defines much of our tech infrastructure, every scroll, click, and share is now mediated by profit-driven platforms. Even activism – once vibrant and messy – is being swallowed by slick interfaces and the same throttled feeds. Resistance is filtered, shadowbanned, deboosted, and pushed to monetize. And “our” #NGOs fighting platform power… are doing so on those same platforms.

It’s an absurdity, and worse: it’s a trap. We need alternatives, real ones. We’re not going to “ethics workshop” our way out of this. We need to rebuild the tools of everyday life – economically, digitally, socially – from the grassroots up.

Commons-based systems, let’s turn some “common sense” on it head, instead of private ownership: stewardship. Instead of scarcity: abundance through sharing. This is where projects, like The Open Media Network (#OMN) come in as a practical framework for grassroots media infrastructure:

Built on the #4opens: open data, source, standards, and governance.

Designed to decentralize publishing, and return control to local communities.

Uses both client-server and P2P bridges for accessibility and resilience.

Encourages trust-based networks over extractive platforms.

OMN is not just theory, it’s active code, messy dev, and practical tools for people to tell their own stories, host their own content, and build alternative knowledge systems outside corporate media. These technologies make community hosting the default – not the exception. They reduce reliance on fragile or compromised #dotcons infrastructure. They’re imperfect, but they’re a step out of the enclosure.

The point isn’t just tech, It’s power, capitalism doesn’t just gate resources. It enforces relationships of power. That’s why rebuilding tech without addressing governance, ownership, and access won’t get us far. The #geekproblem is real: tech that nobody can use isn’t liberation, it’s just another dead-end.

The alternative? Keep it #KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), prioritize social usability over technical elegance, build bridges, not silos, return to shared ownership and open processes. Capitalism is a hostage situation, but we can walk out the door – if we build the exit together.

You’re not powerless, and this isn’t about purity or escape. It’s about building real infrastructure for real life, so when the capitalist system keeps crumbling (as it will), we’re not left scrambling. We’ll already be living differently.

#OMN #MakingHistory #4opens #openweb #p2p #indymediaback #geekproblem #commons #decentralize #cooperative #foss #degrowth #resilience

UPDATE the seed of this post was from a toot, but can’t find the original to link to due to the #UX of mastodon updating and no functioning search on my instance to find history, sorry, add in comments if you find the original. Updated

The #mainstreaming is talking about the #deathcult – So why are you still waiting?

It took four decades of sleepwalking through #neoliberalism, cultural decay, ecological collapse, and social atomisation, but at last, the #mainstreaming is starting to talk about the #deathcult we’ve been worshipping.

Case in point: Steve Coogan – yes, Alan Partridge – is now publicly accusing Keir Starmer and Labour of “paving the way for Reform UK,” the rising hard-right threat. Here’s the article. It’s not satire, it’s despair. Coogan’s right, and a few years ago, such a comment from a mainstream celebrity would’ve seemed extreme. Today? It’s just stating the obvious.

The “centre” has collapsed. The “left” has hollowed itself out in fear. And the space where #lifecult politics might live is now overrun with fear, cynicism, and opportunism. This is the #deathcult in action, the system that tells you there is no alternative while everything burns down around you. For 40 years we’ve been taught to accept decay as progress, control as freedom, and despair as maturity.

But here’s the thing, we told you so, for people like me, and many others working on open networks, digital commons, grassroots media, and post-capitalist systems, this isn’t news. We’ve been working and talking about this for decades.

In the world I am in, we’ve already working on alternatives: Decentralised governance via the #OGB. Federated publishing through the #OMN. Ethical tech rooted in the #4opens. And a cultural path that doesn’t rely on selling your soul to #dotcons or begging #NGOs for scraps.

We weren’t trying to be ahead of the curve. We were trying to get people to notice the damn cliff. Now that we’re tumbling over it, suddenly everyone’s surprised. Now the #mainstreaming, which ridiculed or ignored these grassroots, native paths, is whispering our language, but still to often refuses to take the paths we are on.

On this continuing common sense #blocking, let’s be blunt – now is the time to stop being prats about this necessary change. No more waiting for the next electoral saviour. No more hiding behind polite inaction. No more pretending that rebranded centrism is going to save us from fascism, it won’t.

If you're reading this, you probably already know the centre won't hold. So what's stopping you?

We don’t need more think pieces, what we need is more people to get their hands dirty, pick up the tools we’ve been building, and start doing the real work. This means, in my area of tech activism:

Federating your networks.
Hosting your own content.
Engaging in horizontal governance.
Publishing with principles.
Building trust and commons, not brands and silos.

The good news? The framework paths exist, the seed communities exist, the infrastructure, with the #Fediverse is small but growing solid. What’s been lacking is you, your time, your courage, your refusal to keep being a prat, to become brave enough to take this different path.

This Isn’t about nostalgia – It’s about now. We’re not dreaming of the past, we’re recovering futures that were lost when the #dotcons, the NGOs, and the #neoliberals buried the #opwnweb’s radical possibilities under a mountain of grift and branding. This isn’t utopianism. it’s simple pragmatism, resilience. It’s how we survive the rise of the new right without defaulting into the arms of the old centre – the ones who made this mess in the first place.

And for the record, if you need reminding: In this tech path, we don’t need another “platform.” We don’t need another fake “community” run by venture capital. We don’t need more loud voices doing nothing. What we need is to take paths back to rooted, open, and federated ways of working.

This is what the #OMN and #4opens have always been about. You can ignore it for another year or two, but you won’t outrun what’s coming, better to start planting now – it’s not too late to grow something real.

The time is now, if you’re waiting for permission, this is it. The people who once called us cranks are now writing op-eds about the collapse we have seen coming for years. The centre is falling, the right is mobilising, the old paths are dead ends.

The future will be built by those who show up now.

We need you, not in six months, not after the next election, now. Stop being a prat, pick up the tools to help build the next world – before the current one burns it all down.

First step: Stop being a prat