STAR WARS: THE SOFT EMPIRE

Let’s try some metaphors (was looking for a Star Wars meme but find them horribly right-wing, we have made a real mess of this)

Had to use an old video, kinda on subject to the metaphor

A long time ago, in a network not so far away… The internet was alive with wild diversity. Countless small worlds of the #openweb – linked by trust, shared roots, and messy, beautiful collaboration.

This #FOSS federation of commons was rising… until the Soft Empire came. They did not come with star destroyers and stormtroopers. They came with funding proposals, frameworks, and friendly smiles. Their weapons were not lasers but language, phrases like “scaling up,” “alignment,” and “governance.” They promised stability, but what they brought was assimilation.

Across the #Fediverse, the #NGO Order spread the doctrine of “professionalisation,” pushing the one’s free instance into managed dependency. This “Fluffy Fleet,” draped in banners of care and civility, softly conquered all that was unruly, to replace the grassroots with “strategic partners.” Yet in the outer systems, among abandoned nodes and fading servers, a Native Resistance survived. The composting moon, a dim squat, in forests of forgotten code, still small online imaginary fires burn. Around one fire sits a circle of rebels – coders, gardeners, storytellers – the last of the Commons Stewards.

“They say ‘alignment’,” whispers one. “But what they mean is assimilation,” replies another. “We compost their words,” says the elder. “We turn control into soil for renewal.”

They speak of ancient #FOSS practices – #4opens, the sacred code of trust. Their whispered language is relational: “affinity,” “balance,” “re-booting.” They call themselves the Open Media Network (# OMN) keepers of the native web. Their mission: to expose the imperial euphemisms hiding behind “good governance,” to reclaim story telling as an act of freedom, to rekindle the federation of wild diversity across the digital web. “In the age of the Smiling Empire, domination wears the mask of care. Naming is resistance. Trust is rebellion. And compost is revolution.”

Our language is where the imperialistic paths hide

In the change and challenge of the #openweb reboot of the last few years, there are strong echoes of imperialism through #NGOs – soft domination rather than open conquest. Funding becomes a disciplining tool: if you want a seat at the table, you must conform to their norms. This is semi hidden economic and cultural imperialism inside the #openweb, pushing the path of replacing shared trust (#4opens) with institutional control.

To shovel to compost this, first, we need to look at where the Imperialistic language hides, the imperialism here isn’t overt, it’s in tone, framing, and process. You see it in phrases like: “Scaling up” or “professionalising” community work. “Creating standards for everyone.” “Ensuring governance” (but meaning control). “Bringing structure” or “alignment” to “fragmented” communities. “Representing the movement” or “speaking for the community.”

These sound neutral or even helpful, but in context they reproduce colonial logic: centralising power, erasing difference, replacing “native” messy grassroots diversity with clean, managed systems and narrowing paths that are in serves to funders and institutional interests. This is soft imperialism – language as enclosure, while framing itself as care (“we’re helping you get organised”) but, the harder reality is its ownership and #mainstreaming domestication.

In contrast, “native” grassroots languages, speak in a different tongue, open, lived, relational.
You can hear it in: “Composting” instead of “managing.” “Rebalancing” instead of “reforming.” “Native paths” rather than “standardisation.” “Affinity” instead of “alignment.” “Trust” instead of “compliance.”

That’s the language of commons stewardship, not imperial management. The clash in practice, can be seen most clearly when #NGO-fluffy or #dotcons outreach talk about “onboarding the next billion users” or “building shared infrastructure,” they’re actually talking about absorbing the commons to pull people into their world, under their definitions, within their control.

Our native path, on the other hand, speaks about bridging, federating, sharing roots, and keeping diversity alive. That’s anti-imperial by design, the tension is clear: #mainstreaming always wants to flatten difference, while we aim to amplify difference within shared openness.

In our work, with clearer naming, we can strip away the euphemisms, we can call things what they are. Imperial language real meaning: “Scaling” Colonising, “Professionalising” De-commonsing, “Governance frameworks” Control mechanisms, “Community representation” Gatekeeping, leading to “Alignment” Assimilation.

And on the positive side is commons language rooted meaning: “Grassroots governance” Native balance, “Decentralised collaboration” Open trust networks, “Interoperability” Mutual recognition leading to “Commons stewardship” Collective autonomy

The positive #KISS thing we can do is in simply naming the power play as it happens, not after it’s already shaped the story. Imperial language hides behind civility and “neutral coordination.”

Naming is power. And if we can focues to name it, we can compost it. #OMN’s job – and ours – is to expose those euphemisms and restore more native naming so we can see the social we build more clearly.

Let try to do some of this: “Invisible roots / generation change”… “…the original crew who put the real work into growing the Fediverse… are no longer invited, so become invisible to the new fluffy crew.” This is historical erasure, rewriting origins stories, to present them selves as the natural inheritor of progress. Here, “new” replaces “native.” The grassroots phase is forgotten or mythologized, allowing control to shift quietly to NGOs, corporate “helpers,” and state-aligned foundations.

Then we have “Fluffy dominance”, “…friendly, soft, smiling… but sliding into dogmatic blindness.” The language of niceness too oftern act as imperial propaganda to enforce a monoculture of tone, with no dissent, no spikiness. This becomes ideological policing through manners, a soft colonialism of behaviour.

“Zero balance”, “…third event with the same narrow people… zero balance…” Imperial projects always stabilise imbalance. “Balance” is removed, so hierarchy can harden. Here, the imbalance is cultural: those aligned with funding and institutional legitimacy dominate; those rooted in messy grassroots work are marginalised.

So we need to work to compost the imperialism, in #OMN stories, composting means turning the waste of #mainstreaming into organic soil for renewal. The antidote to imperial framing is openness and plurality: Reclaim language – stop saying “community” when we mean “closed club.”. Decentralise narrative – many voices, not one authority to re-root trust – back to the base layer, where people actually do the work. Expose the smiling empire – funding, branding, and institutional capture need transparency to reassert the #4opens – the anti-imperial charter for #OMN governance.

The future of the #openweb depends on seeing through the soft imperialism of “good intentions.” If we can see it, we can name it, then we can compost it to grow something real, grounded, and free.

Let’s try a #spiky view of #fluconf

#OMN #openweb #4opens #mainstreaming #grassroots #FOSS

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 reproduce the 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 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 we realy on. 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 fresh node in the old crumbling 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 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 then 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.

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

If you’ve ever tried to build something radical, collective, and actually useful, you’ve run into strong #blocking 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, highlights how 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 deadened swamp.

What keeps this hard to see is the petty politics and personal grudges, as 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. #KISS 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 is about 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 is about 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 only the top.

The path we need is compost isn’t about perfection. We need to admit 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 ONLY shiny new things. They’re grounded in lived practice, built to solve real problems. They don’t pretend to be magic fixes, they are basic shovels, to compost the current mess, to old space to grow something better.

Let’s get on with composting the #tecsit. 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. If we work for it, a humanistic future is still possible, to make this happen we need to stop feeding the #deathcult and start feeding the soil.

Add your thoughts in the comments: 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

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

News, the signal-to-noise mess

Almost all our posting in the #openweb and in the #dotcons in response to #mainstreaming news is noise. It’s reactive, fragmented, performative. We scroll, we rage, we boost, we block, but we don’t build. Sometimes, someone posts something thoughtful, something deep, meaningful. But it vanishes in the churn. The system is designed this way.

Even on our #openweb, where we have more autonomy, we are mirroring this spectacle path, feeding it attention, reposting its narratives, amplifying its blinded framing. In the mess of this world, our timelines become echo chambers of secondhand despair and outrage. In short, we’re still speaking their language, on their terms, even with our tools.

Why? Because we haven’t (re)built a place for real signal yet. The #OMN (Open Media Network), is a push to shift this dynamic. It’s not about broadcasting noise slightly more ethically. It’s about creating different spaces entirely, where the roots of stories matter more than the spin, where the focus is on shared compost rather than hot takes, where people and community are producers, and where signal isn’t just a flash, but an ongoing process.

The current state of the web, especially on the path of the #dotcons, is colonized communication. It rewards (stupid)individualism, immediacy, virality. It buries context, nuance, history. This structure #blocks liberation because it’s built to sell alienation back to us, one like or scroll, one click at a time.

Even the current #openweb reboot, for all its potential, reproduces these patterns, because we carry them within us. We don’t just need alternatives in name, we need alternative cultures, processes, and values. We need to compost the mess, the #techshit, and grow new paths from the decay. That’s what the #OMN is seeded to do.

But let’s be honest, we’re not there yet. And we won’t get there unless we start collectively focusing on building signal, not just yelling about the noise. The tools need to be #KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), the governance needs to be transparent, trust-based, and the tech has to get out of the way, not be the centre. This requires stepping away from the #geekproblem, the cult of control, complexity, and abstraction, and towards living, messy, grassroots cultures that grow access, action, and accountability.

Take media coverage of protests as an example. It’s always framed through the lens of disruption and spectacle, “violent clashes,” “unrest,” “inconvenience to commuters” rather than the systemic injustices that birthed the protest in the first place. The message from the #mainstreaming is clear: “Why can’t you express your anger in a way that’s easier for us to ignore?” This is not journalism, it’s narrative policing. It flattens struggle into caricature and erases the causes: the exploitation, the dispossession, the broken promises. This is normal when we have no media infrastructure of our own. Without projects like #indymediaback to hold space for grounded, first-voice storytelling, all we get is the echo of power describing its own reflection.

The #mainstreaming is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. But that collapse is not the revolution. What grows next is.

#OMN #OGB #4opens #openweb #geekproblem #deathcult #nothingnew #buildalternatives #grassroots #trustbasedgovernance

Regime change in the West

There’s a “normal” dangerous illusion still clinging to liberal democracies: that we’re in a time of political turbulence, but the foundations remain intact. That, somehow, we’ll “course correct.” But this needs to be seen as blinded thinking.

What is obvious is that we’re actually experiencing regime change, not in some distant land, but right here in the West. And it’s not coming from tanks or coups, but through the ballot box, boardrooms, social media algorithms, and #NGO “common sense”. It’s a sometimes hard sometimes soft, systemic shift rightward, authoritarian, nationalistic, and wrapped in the aesthetics of democracy.

From the U.S. to the UK, the EU to Australia, this right-on-right push is becoming the new normal. Neoliberal “centrism” no longer holds the centre, it’s morphing, accommodating and enabling hard-right politics, law-and-order, border control, national identity, anti-progress, pro-surveillance, anti-labour, the #deathcult is adapting to survive.

The #mainstreaming left is either co-opted, defanged, or fragmented. The radical left, where it exists, is distracted, performative, and lost in a fog of internal squabbles. Meanwhile, the far-right is disciplined, funded, and in motion. They’re winning not just in elections, but in narrative, shaping what is possible, what is sayable, and what is unthinkable.

The mainstream was never a neutral space, it’s a battleground, and we are losing it. Every time we dismiss a new policy as “just politics,” or think this is just another swing of the pendulum, we miss the simple truth that a new regime is consolidating, one that sees basic rights, justice, and truth as obstacles, not goals.

We need to name this clearly. We need to organize outside the institutions, because those institutions were never neutral. The work is not just advocacy or lobbying, it’s resistance and reconstruction. We need to rebuild from the bottom up. Projects like the #OGB, the #OMN, and a rebooted #Indymedia are small seeds. But they matter. Because if we don’t grow our own ecosystems, we’ll be forced to live under theirs.

This is not alarmism. It’s the world as it is. Let’s not wait for the full lock-in before we act, please.

#regimechange #rightshift #geekproblem #openweb #deathcult #grassroots #buildalternatives #OGB #OMN

For a radical liberal view, https://www.theindex.media/america-the-isolated of this same issue.

Building #OGB is about power without #powerpolitics

If we want the #openweb to survive and thrive, we need new forms of power, ones that can defend the community and challenge traditional power dynamics without falling into the traps of control, hierarchy, and co-option.

The problem is clear: If we follow traditional power politics, which are built on control, manipulation, and exclusion, we will fail. We’ve seen this play out repeatedly, grassroots movements spark change, only to be then sold out and absorbed, neutralized by the #mainstreaming flows of #blinded personal and institutional power.

The #blocking issues, what’s stopping us building the #OGB? This is about the “Silo Path” vs. the “Aggregation Path”. Centralized control (the silo path) is easier to manage, but it kills autonomy and leads to gatekeeping. A decentralized, organic approach (the aggregation path) requires more effort but keeps power in the hands of the community. The #OGB needs to be built on open trust networks, not locked-down institutions. This leads to perception of a lack of “perceived power” and currently people, default to following power. It’s a chicken-and-egg issue, If we don’t look like power, we will struggle to attract participation. But power doesn’t have to mean hierarchy, it can mean influence, legitimacy, and real impact. We need to keep building structures that feel like power while staying true to open, bottom-up values.

This brings up issues of funding and recognition of grassroots growth, which is where almost all valuable social and technological change, comes from, ONLY grassroots movements, not the #mainstreaming institutions that later co-opt them and claim ownership and CONTROL. The problem is that these CONTROL institutions default to sucking up resources, draining the energy and focus from grassroots projects, leaving hollowed out shells, undervalued and underfunded. To fix this, we need a cultural shift that recognizes and invests in decentralized, community-driven alternatives.

An important change is needed before we can be coming the change and challenge, to actually make this work. This is the path of supporting “Organic Intellectuals with Muddy Feet”, Change happens on the ground, not in #NGO meetings or #dotcons boardrooms. We need to elevate people who are actively engaged in building solutions, not just talking, or co-opting them.

To learn from effective grassroots paths, the #OGB draws from real-world activist organizing, not abstract theories or #fashernista posturing. Let’s look at some examples, in coding, loose scrum for open source dev leads to adapting flexible, iterative structures for governance. In culture, Burning Man’s self-organizing, mutated from Rainbow Gatherings, illustrating that radical decentralization works at scale, though this dose brining issues. And in tech federated networks (like the #Fediverse), show that distributed, non-hierarchical systems can replace corporate monopolies.

To take a few steps, we need to avoid the trap of fighting over power, where internal battles drain energy and distract from the real mission. This is needed to keep the focus on building the native path, not arguing over control. In this #KISS path, the #OGB must function as a shared infrastructure, not a battleground for egos.

The Path isn’t to directly destroy existing power structures, it’s to build alternatives that are too effective to ignore. The #OGB isn’t just another governance tool; it’s a blueprint for creating sustainable, community-led power without falling into the traps of traditional politics.

Let’s work together as if we are at a turning point. We can either follow the same old paths of control, stagnation, and eventual failure, or we can build something new that actually works. The choice is ours. Let’s make it happen, please.

#4opens #nothingnew #DIYculture #openweb #grassroots

The #mainstreaming mess

The #mainstreaming project is visibly failing. Worse, it is set to catastrophically fail over the next 30 years as #climatechaos escalates. The signs are everywhere: environmental collapse, political instability, and the hollow nature of mainstream culture. Yet, large parts of liberal society continue to bow to the #deathcult, a path of power, greed, and control over life, community, and sustainability. The end result we can now clearly see is the rule of big, dumb, ugly men with guns, a world driven by violence and fear rather than cooperation and creativity.

But we do still have a choice, on the internet we can build and support alternative projects and paths. Instead of kneeling before the #deathcult, we could embrace a #lifecult dedicated to nurturing the #grassroots, growing resilient communities, and reclaiming our collective autonomy. This path is not easy, nor is it comfortable, but it is one of the humane outcomes we can hope for. Am not up for cults my self, but if this is what people won’t let’s make it life rather than death.

The challenge of change, is that this does not emerge from #mainstreaming circles without friction. When alternative movements gain traction, they are both rejected outright and then co-opted and diluted until they become meaningless. The #OMN hashtag story highlights this process, and pushes back the rejection, to balance the struggle, and the slow but real impact on agendas we need.

The question is whether people can engage with this, in the needed #4opens processes. The #4opens is a completely obverse “social” restating of the #FOSS development process, with a crucial addition: #openprocess. Over the last decade, much of this transparency has been lost as activist communities and developers shifted towards encrypted chat for process, locking away vital discussions from needed public discourse.

The weaponization of process, in my experience, whenever we create rigid structures, people inevitably pick them up and start hitting each other with them. This pattern has repeated over decades, killing countless effective grassroots social challenge/change projects. Nearly all of them, in fact. The result? Communities that should be working together end up tearing each other apart over minor ideological differences, procedural disagreements, or personal conflicts. This cycle of infighting and stagnation serves the interests of those in power, it ensures that no real alternative ever gains momentum.

Food for thought is how do we break this cycle? One path is rebuilding the commons, which is currently possible in the digital spaces. Yes, more evaluation than revolution. It’s not about grand theoretical debates or ideological purity, it’s about doing the work by getting involved in your communities. By gather a group together to take practical steps towards #stepaway to move to the #openweb and start rebuilding commons outside the #dotcons.

From a growing network of people and groups doing this, we might get real social change, or we might not. But at least we’ll be doing something practical, rather than simply feeding the current corporate machine.

Seeding the #OMN is a solution to a universal problem, the shit nature of both mainstream/traditional media and the #dotcons that dominate the media landscape. Our lives, economies, and governments are now totally embedded in these corporate-controlled spaces, leaving us little room to manoeuvre. The #OMN offers an alternative, but the biggest barrier is not technology, it’s people’s capture and passivity. Right now, the ONLY thing holding us back is the mass acceptance of despair. The #mainstreaming system breeds apathy. It tells us there’s no alternative, that change is impossible, that resistance is futile. But we know that’s a lie.

The question is: will we act before it’s too late?

The question, how do we bring more people into the space of stepping away and creating something better?

There is a widespread deep frustration with #mainstreaming culture strong pushing of the wrong people and prioritizing misguided actions in the worship of the #deathcult paths. How can we “think better” beyond the traps of the current “common sense” socio-political mess.

The scum rises, in #mainstreaming culture, those who conform to the system, rather than challenge it, to often are pushed to the top. This creates a cycle where meaningful change is stifled by mediocrity and #stupidindividualism opportunism.
Grassroots value, social progress, has historically emerged from the #grassroots. By using this #KISS steps we move away from the toxic #mainstreaming, and we refocus on nurturing these sources of value.
The wrong thing gets done, funders and institutional forces push agendas that diverge from grassroots needs, resulting in projects that perpetuate the status quo. This #blocks any real hope of change or challenge.
Paralysis of choice, the perceived lack of viable options (e.g., “you have no choice but to do the wrong thing”) leads to a sense of helplessness and frustration.

If we can take, some time, a breath to think better, we need to be on paths that reject the foundations of the current #mainstreaming while building more collective, focused and actions. Let’s look at some broad outline we could take:

Anarchist paths focus on horizontal organization, mutual aid, and direct action. Strengths: Empowers communities, resists hierarchy, and builds autonomy. Weaknesses: Often struggles with long-term scalability and coordination.
Trotskyist/Stalinist paths centralized control with a focus on revolutionary goals and structural transformation. Strengths: Can mobilize large-scale change and challenge systemic power structures. Weaknesses: builds authoritarianism, co-option, and detachment from any real grassroots needs.
Liberal paths lead to incremental reforms within existing systems. Strengths: Pragmatic and accessible, with a focus on policy and advocacy. Weaknesses: Co-opted by #mainstreaming agendas, leading to only superficial solutions.

With these options in mind let’s look at the #4opens approach, it is permissionless to sidestep these systemic failures, yes it aligns with anarchist values of autonomy while addressing their scalability challenges through technical structured openness and federation. It has some practical steps to nurture grassroots power: Step away from toxicity, recognize when systems and (stupid)individuals perpetuate harm, and refocus energy on constructive grassroots work.

The working path is about muddle through together, embracing imperfection and collective experimentation. Mistakes are inevitable, but progress emerges from the process. A first important step is to push back against #NGO funders’ agendas, build alternative funding models (e.g., community support, cooperative economies) to reduce reliance on these ways too often damaging top-down directives. Focusing on trust networks, investing in relationships and trust-building at the grassroots level. Trust is the antidote to the cynicism of #mainstreaming.

This is about holding space for uncomfortable conversations, leaning into the discomfort of challenging entrenched norms and assumptions within movements. This path of challenge is a very real mess while we’re stuck in a cycle where “the wrong thing” gets done, with the strong pressure from flawed paths. Breaking free is always about stepping away, nurturing #grassroots alternatives, and committing to frameworks like the #4opens that push more collective empowerment over individual gain and #mainstreaming institutional control.

For more of this, a bunch of grump old sods working on the same things seizethemeans and ave your say in the comments please, let’s #KISS link the alt`s as a good first step. The question, we need better answers for, is how do we bring more people into this space of stepping away and creating something better? Currently, yes, it is not very attractive to the #fashernistas

Where do you see the opportunity for these dialogues

Recognizing the cracks in the current path

This is an overview, the path we need to try is to focus on #commons and #cooperation for building tools and communities, then to use these tools to challenge the current structures of power. This is a very different path than the #stupidindividualism (as some people say #hyperindividualism) of the current #mainstreaming capitalist path. The way isn’t through more fragmentation, but by connecting these fragments into a more coherent whole, something the #OMN (Open Media Network) is working towards. We need #solidarity and #mutualaid to build these tools, which can then be used to build the communities to use them.

The issues are wide, is not just the #dotcons enclosing the commons, but the way people get sucked into the #NGO culture/control paths, which reinforces the very systems of oppression, that on the surface they claim to fight. We can’t keep putting plasters on these problems. In the media/tech world the path is actually not that hard, real change comes from #grassroots efforts that prioritize #4opens: OpenData, OpenSource, OpenProcess, and OpenStandards. These create transparency and accountability, and help us compost the #techshit that has built up over decades of bad practice.

I outline this in the OMN project, which provides a structure to link these disparate actions and paths together, creating a “native” #NetworkOfNetworks where flows of trust and information/data and metadata can be built on solid, open foundations. By strongly focusing on principles, we foster #communities that are resilient, self-sufficient, #DIY and capable of defending against the enclosures that happen by default on the #mainstreaming path most of us are currently on.

It’s time to turn away from the (stupid)individualistic mindset that capitalism cultivates and return to a more healthy balance with #CollectiveEmpowerment. This isn’t about returning to a naive vision of the past but evolving our tactics for the present, using what’s left of the openweb to build something more robust and deeply rooted, we have started down this path with the #fediverse

The #OMN project is building from this first step, a path that is usefully as it’s native to create a #reboot for the #openweb. It’s about recognizing the cracks in the current system and knowing where pressure can make the cracks grow to open up space to compost the old and nourish the fresh shoots of alternative tech and media that we need. This nurtures communities that then builds better tech, a simple circle, with likely a better outcome than the current #deathcult

Individualism isn’t the problem, the “stupid” part is the problem

There is a lot on this subject on this website

Meany people write on this change of path

Post-Modernism Influence on Social Movements

Leaving the fig leave of dead philosophies covering #liberalism and #neoliberalism, gives cover to continue ideological works, this mess masks and hides insidious agendas. By removing these fig leaves, we can see, understand and dismantle the mechanisms of power they obscure.

I have talked about this, a lot, let’s try one more time. The lingering #zombie of post-modernism and its influence on social movements and #mainstreaming anti-ideological “common sense”, despite being very much dead in most intellectual circles, continues to exert ongoing influence on thought. This lingering specter is not only academic debate but a tangible and invisible force that shapes ideologies, policies, and actions. Understanding the ramifications of post-modernism is a path to addressing the current societal mess and dismantling the layers of deception that obscure the nature of #liberalism and #neoliberalism.

The legacy of post-modernism, emerged in the mid-20th century as a reaction against the certainties and grand narratives of the progressive modernism with the denial of objective truths, embracing relativism, and deconstructing power and knowledge. While this philosophical approach did provide insights and can be used to challenge oppressive systems, with its embrace and twining with the #neoliberalism of the last 40 years it pushed a lot of the current mess, of pervasive skepticism and cynicism that undermined the path of collective action and coherence in social movements.

The Perils of Post-Modernist Relativism. Erosion of Truth: Post-modernism’s insistence on the relativity of truth has eroded the foundation of factual discourse. In a world where all narratives are equally valid, distinguishing between reality and fiction becomes opaque, creating fertile ground for misinformation and manipulation, as any attempt to assert objective truth is met with suspicion and relativistic counterarguments. This is the mess of our use of the #dotcons
Fragmentation of Social Movements: By emphasizing the multiplicity of perspectives and identities, post-modernism pushes the current fragmentation of social movements. While recognizing diverse voices is important, the lack of unifying visions leads to disjointed efforts that fail to achieve any substantial change. This fragmentation makes it possible for entrenched powers to maintain the status quo, as there is no cohesive opposition to challenge and change them. The mess we work in.
Depoliticization and Inaction: The post-modern emphasis on discourse and representation over material conditions and collective action leads to depoliticization. When activism becomes #fashionista shouting primarily about language and symbols rather than tangible change, it loses any efficacy. This shift from praxis to performative results in social movements that are about virtue signalling and status games rather than achieving concrete goals. The mess we are in today.
Liberalism has been a Fig Leaf for Imperialism: Liberalism, with its emphasis on individual freedoms and democratic values, serves as a fig leaf for imperialism. This is evident in foreign policies that justify interventionist actions in the name of spreading democracy and human rights. However, these interventions serve geopolitical and economic interests rather than the purported liberal ideals, leading to the exploitation and destabilization of other nations. The mess our apathy pushes over others.
Neo-Liberalism’s Economic Fig Leaf: Neo-liberalism uses economic theory as a fig leaf to conceal a conservative agenda that prioritizes corporate power and wealth accumulation over social welfare. Policies promoted under the cover of economic efficiency result in austerity measures, deregulation, and privatization, which harms the working class and marginalized communities while enriching the few. The mess we push over ourselves.

To move beyond the mess created by the undead philosophies which hides behind the fig leaves of liberalism and neoliberalism, we need a renewed commitment to social truth, solidarity, and collective action.

Reasserting Objective Truths: While acknowledging the complexity of reality, we must reclaim the importance of objective truths and evidence-based discourse. This involves resisting relativism and combating misinformation through critical thinking and basic media literacy. We need tools, shovels for this composting #OMN
Building Lose Unified Movements: Social movements need some unity without erasing diversity. This requires finding common ground and shared goals that can unite different groups in the pursuit of systemic change. Solidarity should be the cornerstone, enabling coordinated efforts that can actually challenge entrenched powers. We need federated p2p tools for this #OGB
Focusing on Material Conditions: Activism prioritizes material conditions and tangible outcomes over performative gestures. This means addressing economic inequality, environmental degradation, and social injustices through concrete policies and actions rather than symbolic acts. We need media for activism #indymediaback to build meaningful action.
Exposing and Dismantling Fig Leaves: By examining the fig leaves of liberalism and neo-liberalism, we can expose the motivations behind these ideologies and advocate for #grassroots alternatives that prioritize human well-being and ecological sustainability over #mainstreaming corporate profits and imperial ambitions. #makeinghistory is a #KISS tool for this.

The philosophy of post-modernism, despite its intellectual demise, continues to shape our “common sense” contemporary thought and social movements. To navigate this mess, we must compost the relativism and fragmentation it has pushed. By reasserting “objective” truths, building unifying movements, focusing on material conditions, and exposing ideological fig leaves, we can walk the path for a just, equitable, and sustainable future. It’s this simple, please try not to push prat down this path, thanks.

What can you do https://opencollective.com/open-media-network

#SSB splintering a “commons”

Another link that is pure #geekproblem but interesting for #OMN in that #SSB is splintering https://www.manyver.se/blog/2023-04-05

@rabble is involved in another splinter #nosta

How protocols die… #SSB was a protocol that they all reallyed round, a “commons”, we now have 3 “commons” on the table. The rabble one which has hidden #VC money behind it, then this individualist one https://www.manyver.se/blog/2023-04-05 which will maybe rally the grassroots, and the original #SSB which might or might not carry on.

We don’t have a cross culture “common” any more. A clean separation of the #mainstreaming and the #grassroots. To make this relevant, the same is likely going to happen to #ActivertyPub when the #W3C “formal consensuses” is captured by the #dotcons

The enclosure of commons is always a bad path. And yes not saying #SSB was a good protocol it was not, it came from the encryptionsists, but it was a rare “commons”.

#AP is a good/bad protocol, we don’t need to do the same path. Thus, the message to #socialhub, 95% chance they will ignore it or more likely see it as weakness and attack harder, cats…

“The is currently an undeclared battle going on between the rebooted #WC3 and the grassroots (#fashernista dominated) #socialhub for power. If the libertarian cats can’t herd themselves to do something useful, like we managed with the #EU outreach – currently they cannot do this, have a feeling socialhub will lose.

Not a big problem, but a dangerous outcome for #ActivityPub as #WC3 is formal consensus which is easy to capture and control for the #dotcons – where socialhub libertarian cats have failed messy consensuses so less open to capture.

But from my view the libertarian cats are being prats as cats are… so WC3 is stepping back in to CONTROL… how to herd cats – should I try? Or keep focus on #OMN codeing is a question am asking my self?

@xxx @xxx@xxx, have tried building bridges, but no foundation stones laid on this building work. Honest question are we helping or hindering in this grassroots space?”

There is a small chance they act, we did herd cats on #socialhub for the #EU outreach. This is why I bring it up, though, think people can only see the power politics and not what am saying when doing this. Agen 5% chance of a good outcome…

Maybe this helps to make the “mess” metaphor clearer. For the #geekproblem they likely have no idea about the damage they do. Because in their terms they are mostly right. Step back to look at the wider picture, and it’s obviously adding to the mess to be composed.

The #geekproblem

Storeys of our tech http://hamishcampbell.com/2023/04/05/ssb-splintering-a-commons/ a post that give background on #SSB and its splintering as an example.

Why this matters, the #openweb is the most powerful tool for change/challenge. The mess we are in The moral depravity of virtue signalling solidarity at this time of mass murder – Roger Hallam The moral depravity of virtue signalling solidarity at this time of mass murder