Rebooting the Fourth Estate: Building tools for grassroots governance

We’re living in the wreckage of the old 19th century social order. The so-called Four Estates, pillars of traditional power and authority, which 200 years latter are either rotting from within or already dead. It’s now past time to stop mourning and start composting this. Right now we are doing this at the #OMN we’re outlining and building horizontal social/digital tools to grow grassroots governance, aiming to replace what no longer serves us. These tools are based on tested activist process and being built out using current working federated technology through the Open Media Network (#OMN).

Before we get into that, let’s break down the old foundational history:

Lords Temporal – the elites, landowners, oligarchs. Fuckum. Their power is bloated and corrupt. From billionaires flying private jets to COP summits while the planet burns, to political dynasties laughing at austerity from gated compounds, they’re done, even if they don’t know it yet.

Lords Spiritual – organized religion as moral compass? Please. They long ago ceded relevance. As the Church clutches pearls over gender and culture wars, the people are elsewhere, building new values and solidarities.
House of Commons – dysfunctional, what was meant to represent the people now represents donors, lobbyists, and corporate interests. Labour and Tory are different shades of the same managerial grey. Real democracy? It’s not coming from Westminster.
Journalism – the one estate still standing, sort of. But it’s on life support. Mainstream media dances to the tune of its billionaire owners, or worse, chases clicks in the race to the bottom. The BBC parrots government lines and succumbs to culture war baiting.

So what’s next? Our mission is not salvaging old institutions, others can try that path. We’re building on different traditions and mythology. Right now, people are fleeing from the corporate-controlled web (#dotcons) and rediscovering decentralized platforms: Mastodon, Peertube and others built on #ActivityPub. These are important steps towards a federated path. But tech alone isn’t enough, we need governance. We need trust-based, horizontal, transparent tools that empower communities to organize, decide, and act together without traditional gatekeepers.

That’s where the Open Media Network (#OMN) projects come in. We’re designing and testing code to enable this shift, tools for publishing, moderation, and coordination that are rooted in the #4opens: open data, open source, open governance, and open standards. It’s messy, yes. But so is composting. And from that mess, we grow soil. Soil for new media, new movements, and new paths as the old crumbles.

We’re starting with the last two relevant estates: journalism and representative governance. Both are broken, but maybe still salvageable, not by patching them up, but by rebooting change and challenge from the ground up. Think of it as digital mutual aid, media gardening, and radical democracy rolled into one. We have project outlines, we have grounded flows and process. We just need more people who give a shit. This is an invitation, to join, and help build media and governance paths that actually works for the many, not only the churning #nastyfew.

Neoliberalism, Fascism

The best working definition of fascism is simple, economic: “The continuation of capitalism by undemocratic means.” This isn’t abstract theory. Fascism in the 1920s and 30s emerged precisely in response to a very real threat of revolutionary socialism. The Russian Revolution sparked global fear among the capitalist class that their time was up. Fascism – in Italy, Germany, Spain, Austria – arose as a counter-revolution. It wasn’t merely authoritarian nationalism or aesthetic militarism. It was the repressive armour worn by capitalism under existential threat.

Look at the details: In Spain, Franco rose after a democratically elected socialist government began to challenge entrenched economic power. In Germany, the first Nazi concentration camps were built for communists, not Jews. In Chile in the 1970s, the overthrow of Allende’s democratic socialist government was orchestrated by domestic elites and foreign (read: U.S.) interests terrified of socialism spreading in Latin America. Fascism wasn’t a deviation. It was capitalism defending itself with violence. Today, we face the same moment – and too many are looking the other way.

For 40 years, neoliberalism, that mix of deregulation, privatization, and gutting of social safety nets, has shaped our economics and cultures unchallenged. Its effects are easy to see: skyrocketing inequality, mass precarity, and ecological breakdown. But there’s a dangerous myth that neoliberalism is simply unregulated capitalism. In truth, it’s much closer path to economic fascism without the jackboots, until now.

#Neoliberalism didn’t grow in a vacuum. Its roots are in explicit reaction to socialism’s successes. Take Friedrich Hayek, ideological godfather of neoliberal – he was deeply disturbed by Red Vienna, where municipal socialism (like public housing) was working too well. His entire framework arose as an intellectual counterattack to collectivist policies.

And Hayek wasn’t just an ivory tower academic. He directly shaped the policies of Thatcher, Reagan, Pinochet, and the Chicago Boys – bringing theory to life through brutal economic “shock therapy.” Thatcher herself famously declared during a cabinet meeting: “This is what we believe” as she slammed Hayek’s book on the table.

From Mussolini to Musk, capitalism’s new wannabe strongmen. There’s little material difference between Mussolini’s Italy selling off state assets to loyal industrialists and today’s global elites (#nastyfew) hoovering up public infrastructure in the guise of “efficiency.” Mussolini at least expected those capitalists to serve the nation. Neoliberalism assumes, foolishly, that global capital will take care of society without loyalty, borders, or accountability.

In Russia, we see a more classical fascist arrangement: oligarchs allowed to profit, provided they serve the state’s nationalist goals. In the U.S., capital’s alignment with far-right politics is more chaotic but no less real. Corporations rarely oppose Trumpism, despite its chaos. Why? Because, as with 1930s Europe or 1970s Chile, fascism is good for business – so long as the profits roll in and unions, climate activists, and grassroots movements are crushed.

Where we are now is neoliberalism’s endgame, capitalism is in crisis again. But this time the existential threat isn’t just socialism – it’s climate and ecological collapse, a crisis neoliberalism created and cannot solve. And once again, the system’s response is not reform, but repression. Neoliberalism cannot survive democratically. The people don’t want it. So increasingly, undemocratic means are being deployed: voter suppression, propaganda, surveillance, repression, and the rise of far-right movements that promise “order” and scapegoats instead of justice. This is fascism, not a return to it, but its next iteration.

So what now? We don’t just need to resist this – we need to name it. Clearly. Loudly. Repeatedly. The myth that neoliberalism is merely “capitalism with the brakes off” must be composted. It is fascism with #PR. And as in the past, a step, a real alternative comes from the bottom up. From grassroots media, mutual aid networks, radical unions, climate justice movements, and the digital commons. We need to rebuild this solidarity, and we must do it #4opens horizontally, outside the broken institutions that created this mess.

The problem we face is simple and brutal. The right-wing eats everything. Every radical spark, every hopeful idea, every challenge to power, they swallow it, mutate it, and spit it back as bland, digestible social shit.

They take our justified rage and push it back as conspiracy. They take our care and twist it into control. Every revolutionary idea, stripped bare, rebranded, and fed into the #mainstreaming machine as more slop to feed and shape the masses.

This isn’t new. It’s the old game of cultural capture. And they’re very good at it. That’s why we need tools and paths they can’t easily co-opt. Stories they can’t rinse out and rebrand. Protocols that don’t translate into buzzword #blocking. The #4opens, the #OMN, the hashtag as resistance, are frameworks built to rot their greed and appetite.

We compost instead of consume. We grow native paths, not polished products. What we’re building is deliberately messy, deeply rooted, and absolutely unpalatable to the #nastyfew and their simpering acolytes. They want power. We want relational fabric. They want purity spirals and hot takes. We want compost, community, and continuity.

It’s a step. And that matters. As I always say – I like big ideas, but right now, I’m putting my shovel into small steps towards big ideas. That’s how you build something that lasts.

Tearing down the old neoliberal #deathcult consensus

People are celebrating that Trump and the new right are tearing down the neoliberal #deathcult consensus. And to be fair, they’re right, Trump’s movement is smashing the status quo. But there is an easy to see problem, it’s not being replaced with anything better. It’s just more stinking shit, only now it’s wrapped in authoritarian aesthetics and crypto-gold-rush dreams. This is the “new” mess being pushed by the different #nastyfew.

This regime change without a roadmap is the end of neoliberalism, and good riddances to that, but this change is not a “nice” step toward justice, but a corporate free-for-all masked in anti-elite smoke and mirrors. Trump project isn’t building anything. It’s the looting of the ruins.

We have already suffered through the 40 years of neoliberal breaking government to sell it off. What many still don’t understand is that neoliberalism doesn’t just passively fail, it actively sabotaged. For people who pine for this vanishing mess, let’s remind you that if you elect neoliberals, they will work tirelessly to make your government services worse. Why? Because good public services threaten private profit. This is the history of the last 40 years:

Defund and sabotage public services, transit, healthcare, education.
Add layers of bureaucracy to make them inefficient and annoying to use.
Watch public trust erode as services collapse.
Claim privatization is the only solution, and sell it off to friends and donors.

The result? A hollowed-out state, where private companies profit off pain, and public goods are rebranded as luxuries. This is what we voted for with Starmer’s labour coup in the UK. This isn’t mismanagement, it’s strategy.

Chancer, wannabe priest of the #deathcult

But Trump, and likely Farage, if we vote for him to replace Starmer, goes a step further. They’re not just running the neoliberal script, the rewriting it with a real estate mogul’s pen, driven by a dystopian vision of climate opportunism. Want proof? Look at the growing obsession on the American right with Canada and Greenland. Yes, Greenland. It’s not simply a joke, it’s a climate gold rush. As the Arctic melts, they see land, water, and new frontiers. The kids we put in charge who dream of being kings are buying into collapse like its beachfront property.

Trumpism is what happens when the neoliberal state collapses under its own mess and contradictions, and instead of building something new, it hands the keys to a cartel of extractive fantasists. They don’t deny climate change anymore. They’re planning to capitalize on it.

The is currently no plan, no future on the current path. This new right-wing movement isn’t even pretending to govern. There’s no vision beyond seizing land, eroding rights, and cutting deals. They’re not here to fix the climate. They’re here to survive it better than you, and leave you and your kids dieing in the mess.

We need to be absolutely clear about this, government services don’t have to be slow and bureaucratic. That’s a choice. A bad one. We can build public systems that are efficient, trustworthy, and just. But to do this, we need to reject the current “common sense” neoliberal decay and right-wing collapse profiteering.

These men featured here are all #fuckwits, we simply can’t let the #nastyfew define the on rushing era of collapse. A first step away from this mess is in saying out load that the hard shift to the right isn’t the antidote to neoliberalism, its final form, stripped of illusion and fully weaponized. And the answer to this isn’t hiding from the collapse, it’s composting the mess, we need a shovels #OMN

The current #powerpolitics

State violence is the final refuge of the incompetent, considering the staggering incompetence of the present governments, it’s no surprise they’re hedging their failures with increased military spending. When leaders are intellectually and morally bankrupt, when they run out of ideas, when their authority falters under the weight of economic inequality, climate breakdown, and crumbling public services, they reach for the oldest tools of control: fear, force, and distraction.

Across the world, we’re watching this trend unfold. Governments are pouring resources into militarisation while systematically underfunding healthcare, education, and welfare. In the UK, billions are being funnelled into new military hardware, expanded surveillance infrastructure, and policing, all while people struggle to heat their homes, access a GP, or keep a roof over their heads. This isn’t mismanagement. It’s a political choice, and it makes clear where the priorities lie, in protecting the power of the #nastyfew, not people.

They tell us it’s about “security” and “defence.” But when a government starts to feel more threatened by its own people than by any foreign force, we must ask: what kind of future are they preparing for? It’s starting to look like one where dissent is criminalised, protest is heavily surveilled, and public frustration is met not with care or accountability, but with batons and border walls.

We should be deeply worried, because violence is not only about tanks and drones, it’s the everyday grinding violence of austerity, the hostile environment, the punitive benefit sanctions, the calculated dismantling of social safety nets. It’s a state driven project that protects the profits of the #nastyfew while punishing those who dare to imagine something different.

But here’s the hard truth, we did this, and we keep doing it. It’s us. We have the power not to do this. We vote, we organise, we protest, and sometimes we stay silent, and all of that shapes the world we live in. Every time we shrug our shoulders, every time we tell ourselves change is impossible, we make the next wave of repression that much stronger. But the other side of this is also true, when we act, when we organise, when we care, we push the tide in the other direction, this is a basic story of #activism.

Incompetence, paired with unchecked power and militarisation, becomes very sinister fast. It’s a very basic first step, that we must resist this story of more control, more surveillance, and more force as the solutions. What we need now is courage, creativity, compassion and solidarity. The qualities that have been deliberately stripped from the institutions that govern us, but that still live in us, and in the communities in this #openweb commons we build.

The Age of Global Militarism: How Veneration of the Military Spread—and Why it Matters

Struggling for a Real Alternative

For the last 5 years conversations have been about, the #Fediverse, #Web3 and more recently the pushing of #mainstreaming into the #openweb native path. But despite this, the fediverse is still a notable outlier in the digital landscape. This is in part because unlike the dominant tech trends, which emerge from Silicon Valley and the cross-Atlantic #dotcons agenda, the fediverse is rooted in European ideals of decentralization, federation, and digital autonomy, it’s a “native” openweb project.

When you step outside, into so-called “global” tech events, you’re hit with a wall of #techshit nonsense. Looking back, when I used to bring up the Fediverse at these events, the reaction was predictable: blank stares, polite nods, and then a quick return to parroting the latest #bluesky, #blockchain, talking points. This tells us that the techshit is still mainstreaming and more native paths will continue to be invisible to most people looking for real decentralized alternatives.

One of the issue that pushes this is Identity Politics, in our own spaces, beyond the tech sphere, this issue impacts the Fediverse and grassroots media projects or more precisely, its misapplication dose. By overemphasizing individual identity over collective struggle, leftist and progressive movements fall into fragmentation, making them easier for the #nastyfew to co-opt, divide, and neutralize. This is not to dismiss identity politics outright, systemic oppression is real, and addressing issues of race, gender, and class matters deeply. But when these struggles are disconnected from broader grassroots organizing, they are easily absorbed into the neoliberal agenda.

This is the normal mess dressed in a dress, to push a likely unhelpful metaphor. We’ve seen this time and again with corporate tokenism of big tech and NGOs pushing superficial diversity while maintaining exploitative structures. This “thinking” leads to co-optation of radical movements, which are watered down into harmless social branding exercises that don’t threaten power. Feeding divisiveness, when instead of organizing collectively, activists are pitted against each other over micro-issues, while top-down power structures remain untouched.

The central question is who gains power, the only question that matters in activism, are we giving more power to the centralizers, or are we shifting power to the grassroots? Everything else, culture wars, internal leftist feuds, academic debates, is secondary. And the normal reality is that our current #mainstreaming always leads to power centralization. When the path we need to take, requires discomfort, real change, which is never easy. And right now, we are still stuck in this mess, watching many in the #Fediverse waste time repeating liberal nonsense instead of challenging the #neoliberal dieing old world order.

This leads us onto the illusion of the liberal “centre”, where many so-called progressives are still worshipping the #deathcult, by amplifying right-wing culture war narratives. Why? Because it’s easier. The liberal-left is caught in an endless cycle of reacting to right-wing provocations instead of fighting systemic power. The truth, is that the “centre” is not holding, the centre is never going to hold. And that if you refuse to choose a side, both the left and the right will decide your fate for you. Liberal fence-sitting has always been about the rise of reactionary forces, both online and offline. Thus, if you’re still spending your time fighting over petty internal issues while ignoring the big-picture consolidation of power, you are helping the system you claim to oppose.

What’s can people do? A good first step is building real alternative’s. my example is the #OMN projects and growing the Fediverse, this means: Keeping focus on systemic power, not just individual experience that people keep focusing on. Actively pushing back against co-optation, building truly decentralized native alternatives, not only clones of corporate platforms. Rejecting the culture war distractions and pushing real organizing.

The Fediverse should be better, it’s one of the last remaining spaces where you can create rather than just consume. But we won’t get there unless we actively fight for it. So the question is: Are we ready to stop feeding shit and start building something real?

#Techshit Hype – #NothingNew

The is nothing new to pointing out that our #fashionistas #mainstreaming crew push tech mess.

Remember in when drone deliveries were going to revolutionize shopping? When every major news outlet unthinkably reported that we’d have autonomous quadcopters dropping off toothpaste and Amazon boxes on our doorsteps?

Or when 3D TVs were the future of entertainment, pushed so aggressively that manufacturers stopped making non-3D models for a while? Where are they now? Rotting covered in dust in clearance bins or forgotten in garages.

Then there was the Internet of Things (#IoT) hype, your fridge was supposed to talk to your toaster, which would text your smart kettle to boil water before you even knew you wanted tea. Instead, we got insecure, surveillance-riddled devices spying on us for #dotcons corporate profit.

And we need to not forget #blockchain, #NFTs, and the endless #Web3 hype? Each was pushed as a revolution, yet all followed the same pattern of hype, vulture capital gold rush, and then, inevitably, disillusionment. NFTs went from “the future of digital ownership” to being silently abandoned by even their most vocal promoters.

Why do we keep pushing this #techshit? Every time a new #mainstreaming tech fad appears, it follows a predictable, boring hype cycle. First, it’s marketed as the next big thing, a must-have, must-invest, must-embrace technology. Then, sceptics, like this site, are ridiculed as out-of-touch or anti-progress, at best or simply trolling at worst. But when the promised revolution never materializes, we quietly move on, forgetting the past mistakes and priming ourselves for the next wave, this is a rinse and repeat cycle.

We need more people to say, “Not this again, you were wrong last time”? So we have space to ask why do we let the wannabe #nastyfew feed us this mess, why do we let it slide, allowing the same marketing binds to #blind us over and over?

The answer is that we have our heads down worshipping a #deathcult, and this is the pushing of #fashernista tech, the cycle of embracing new trends not because they work but because they fit the cultural moment. A mixture of corporate propaganda, social pressure, and the desire to be seen as forward-thinking creates a path where critical thinking is drowned out by #FOMO (fear of missing out). It’s fear, simply fear.

How do compost this? A first step is, instead of dismissing critics, we should embrace grounded scepticism as part of a healthy tech culture. The goal isn’t to reject all new technology, it’s to demand real, meaningful progress rather than letting corporations sell us snake oil over and over. There’s a hashtag for that: #nothingnew, a reminder that most “revolutions” are just recycled ideas repackaged for a new round of exploitation.

This is part of the native #openweb story, not just about technology, but about culture. We don’t need to mindlessly adopt every new fad. Instead, we should compost the hype, extract what’s useful, and discard the corporate waste. Yes, it’s messy. But that’s what being native to the #openweb means.

Journalism

The media’s focus on Trump’s spectacle over substance pushes the current #mainstreaming path. By focusing on his contradictory statements, they keep the news cycle spinning around noise (words) rather than signal (policies and actions). This distraction benefits those on the #powerpolatics path, that is pushed with little scrutiny while the public and journalists remain fixated on the smoke and mirrors of the rhetorical outrage mess.

The #KISS media’s role needs to be exposing the real consequences of his administration, focusing on who is profiting? Billionaires and corporations received massive tax cuts, while working-class wages stagnated. And who is suffering? What institutions are being gutted? What laws and policies are being enacted or dismantled?

The real story is the looting of the old #mainstreaming system while distracting us all with mess. By chasing every outrageous statement, journalists failed to cover how the new #mainstreaming #nastyfew is looting the remains of the old #nastyfew system. The distractions, bombastic rhetoric, manufactured culture wars, scandals, have a role to play, they bury the obverse of enriching from dismantling public institutions.

The progressive majority must focus on real accountability and action. Instead of reacting to every piece of nonsense, progressives need to cut through the noise and push for more independent journalism that prioritizes policy analysis over personality-driven coverage. Community-driven movements that expose corruption and mobilize against real threats. Structural reforms that break the cycle of #nastyfew capture and maintain public control over essential institutions.

It’s not about what they say, it’s about what they do.

Trump and the tools of the old world order

An example of this is The United States Agency for International Development (#USAID) which was presented as a humanitarian force for economic and social development worldwide. However, its origins and operations paint a different much darker path, of geopolitical manoeuvring and #neoliberal hegemony over the last 40 years. Now, with the hard shift to the right, USAID is being gutted, alongside other long-standing institutions of the U.S. “liberal” global order.

Origins and the Cold War Agenda, founded in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy, USAID was pushed into view as a means to promote global development. In truth, it was the normal Cold War weapon of this era, countering Soviet influence under the guise of humanitarian assistance. The Foreign Assistance Act centralized foreign aid and explicitly tied it to U.S. geopolitical strategy. This was done in the open, Lyndon B. Johnson admitted that food aid was leveraged to redirect recipient countries’ spending toward military and security cooperation with the U.S.

A very easy to see example of this was the Food for Peace program, which used grain shipments to coerce nations into rejecting Soviet assistance. With famine relief being politicized as a tool for control, India, for instance, had to tone down its criticism of the U.S. war in Vietnam before receiving necessary aid.

Covert operations, as a soft power arm of the #CIA, despite meany of these institutions being branded as independent agencies. In 1973, Senator Ted Kennedy directly questioned whether USAID was involved in Southeast Asian covert operations. The answer was a resounding yes.

In Guatemala, during the genocide of the Mayan people in the 1970s, USAID funded and trained police forces to conduct counterinsurgency operations against leftist movements.

In Uruguay, USAID’s Dan Mitrione personally trained security forces in torture techniques, including electroshock and psychological warfare.

In the 1980s, USAID facilitated “non-lethal aid” to Contra forces in Nicaragua, effectively ensuring they remained combat-ready despite congressional restrictions on military support.
In Peru, USAID financially supported dictator Alberto Fujimori’s forced sterilization program, targeting 300,000 Indigenous women under the guise of population control.

Perhaps the most infamous case was Afghanistan, where #USAID provided millions to the University of Nebraska to develop textbooks filled with anti-Soviet propaganda, using religious rhetoric to radicalize young Mujahideen fighters. The blowback in globe mess from these operations is still felt today, a compleat shit storm of mess making.

With the fall of the USSR, these old #coldwar institutions pivoted towards more #neoliberal capitalist economic restructuring, pushing deregulation, privatization, and free-market reforms in post-Soviet states. Democracy promotion was a pretext, but only for “democracies” that aligned with U.S. corporate interests. Any “independence” risked financial punishment or outright regime change operations. This was a disaster for much of the region, which we are seeing play out in the Russia Ukraine war.

Post-9/11: The security state expansion saw budgets balloon, increasing by 70% between 2001 and 2003. The agency became more directly aligned with military operations, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq. In these war zones, USAID’s stated mission of “nation-building” was a flimsy cover for consolidating U.S. control over shattered economies. The real work of development, tackling poverty and fostering stability, was an afterthought compared to the securing American military dominance in the era.

The left, right mess is on repeat

Trump’s “Draining the Swamp” what is this about and what will be likely outcomes: Oligarchy pushing #neoliberal chaos vs managed hegemony, These institutions were a tool of imperial control, but their removal creates a vacuum. The likely outcome is that private corporations and unaccountable privatised military contractors will increasingly step in to replace state-controlled influence operations.

We might see the growth of right-wing Isolationism with Trump’s America First rhetoric leading to a defacto disengaging from directly shaping international development, but not from coercion. Economic sanctions and direct intervention (as seen in Venezuela) remain the preferred tactics for managing the mess these polices create, there is a very dangerous feedback loop here.

There is a shift to cruder authoritarian paths, instead of “soft power” the replacement actors and institutions are based on direct strongman alliances, reinforcing a world order based on brute force rather than, shadowed economic manipulation.

What should the progressive left do? Rather than mourning the loss of USAID and other Cold War institutions, the left should take this as an opportunity to redefine internationalism. Instead of #neoliberal “aid” programs that uphold global inequality, we should be pushing for:

#KISS grassroots solidarity: Development led by those directly affected, not dictated by the #nastyfew imperial wonabe powers. A seed of this is the #OGB project.
Decentralized cooperative structures to replace hierarchical and state-controlled #NGOs with open, transparent, and accountable networks. A seed of this is the #OMN projects.
Reclaiming media from the #nastyfew Influence and control: With US funded media outlets shutting down, now is the time to push for independent, radical journalism free from state agenda. A seed of this is the #indymediaback project.

What we need to focus on is opposing the #deathcult in all forms, whether #neoliberal soft power or #Trumpist strongman tactics, which obviously both serve the interests of the #nastyfew class. A real #KISS alternative means dismantling or mediating global #capitalism itself. #Trump’s destruction of the old world institutions is another step in shifting power from one faction of the #nastyfew to another. The question that matters isn’t whether these institutions should exist, it’s what we build in their place, and how we gain the power to become the change and challenge to do this #KISS

The left, right mess is on repeat

This is at the heart of the contradictions and confusion in the political landscape today. The liberal and left muddle, where elements of economic populism are shared across ideological divides, is something we’ve seen before, especially in the 1930s, when fascist movements co-opted working-class grievances while pushing reactionary nationalism.

Lets looks at history #Bannon, like the Nazi Röhm long before him, plays a dangerous game by mobilizing working-class anger against neoliberal “elites” but steering it toward nationalism rather than genuine class struggle. The key difference is that Bannon, unlike the decedent Röhm, seems aware of how these power games play out, he’s studied history and applies these lessons to manipulate movements in favour of the #nastyfew being pushed into power. The economic critiques overlap with parts of the left, but his solutions (corporate nationalism, authoritarianism) are the very real danger. The question is: how do we make these distinctions clear to people trapped in the populist right-wing narratives? We need a strategy to cut through the confusion:

Recentre on Class Struggle (#KISS #classwar) by striping away the nationalist framing and refocus on economic realities: who actually benefits from policies? Who holds power? Expose how right-wing populists co-opt class anger but always serve capital in the end.
Expose the fake anti-establishment, Bannon claims to fight “globalists,” but his solution is just another form of “elite” rule, corporate fascism, not worker control. The “anti-tech bro” stance is surface-level; fascists historically seek state-corporate fusion, not any real accountability.
Build a networked radical alternative, left populism needs to be clearer, bolder, and independent of liberal NGO-driven paths and politics. We need grassroots led movements like the #OMN
Break through the media fog, #Mainstreaming and #dotcons push right-wing populism by treating it as an acceptable part of discourse rather than a threat. Use independent media (like #indymediaback) to reframe the conversation on more clear class terms.

The 21st Century Struggle is about climate, class, and collapse. This isn’t just about fighting fascism, it’s about surviving #climatechaos and social collapse. The solutions that emerge now will shape the next century. If we allow the right to set the terms, we end up in corporate #feudalism. If we organize and push a real alternative, there’s still a chance to shift to something better.

How do we sharpen this message so it cuts through the noise? What channels do you see as effective? We need working change and challenge #KISS

Trump is more Italian #fascism than German fascism

Trump and the tools of the old world order

A shift back to radical values and paths

Much of academia post-1990s is just a shadow of the #deathcult, stripped of radicalism and repackaged into careerist, bureaucratic loops. It became another self-referential path, detached from real world struggles. The privatization of knowledge through paywalled journals, corporate funding, and NGO capture made sure of this.

The same thing happened with #FOSS and #opensource, once about radical openness, it was watered down when organizing shifted to closed chat systems and corporate-friendly platforms. We lost the #openprocess that made early public archives powerful.

Then you have, Modern Art, once revolutionary, was quickly absorbed into the cultural arm of the #deathcult, turning radical expression into a commodity for the #nastyfew. It’s the same cycle over and over:

A movement starts as a real challenge to power.
It gains momentum.
Power co-opts it, waters it down, and sells it back to us.

People will keep doing stupid things, that’s inevitable. The job is to call it out, push better paths, and make sure they don’t repeat the same mistakes. It’s not glamorous, and it won’t get you applause, but that’s how real social change works.

The cat meowing, the #fashionistas, whether intentionally or not, keep blocking the left’s paths by turning everything into aesthetics and performance rather than actual power-building. They chase whatever is trending, constantly rebrand, and ultimately reinforce the #mainstreaming forces they claim to resist.

Meanwhile, the right organizes, funds, and builds real infrastructure, they don’t waste time on purity politics and endless internal fights. That’s why they keep winning.

So what do we do?

Stop trend-hopping, we need long-term strategies, not just momentary viral moments.
Build real alternatives, tech, media, organizing spaces that serve movements, not just “woke” branding.
Own our narratives, not get trapped in the spectacle of liberal discourse and right-wing outrage cycles.
Get our hands dirty, shovel through the #techshit, compost the failures, and grow something real.

This is about taking control back, not only reacting to the crises the nasty few push us to manufacture. Radical media, the #openweb, grassroots organizing, these are the things that cut through the noise and shift power back to where it belongs.

#KISS

The #4opens act as a foundation to hold back the tide of the post-truth world, they enforce transparency, accountability, and community control. Without them, everything drifts into manipulation, closed power structures, and co-option by #dotcons.

It’s a chicken-and-egg issue because we need social trust and active participation to maintain the #4opens, but those same values are constantly eroded by the #mainstreaming forces of the #deathcult.

The #OMN is crucial because it builds digital commons as a form of social technology. It’s not just about the tech, it’s about the relationships, trust networks, and shared values that make it work. Once we have this space, what we do with it is up to us, but it has to be grounded in real, radical alternatives, not just another tech silo.

That’s where the rebooted #indymedia project comes in. It’s built on the #PGA hallmarks, which means it’s explicitly anti-capitalist, decentralized, and activist-driven. It can’t function within the corporate media sphere, so it has to exist in a #TAZ (Temporary Autonomous Zone)—a liberated, self-organized space outside of state and market control.

Wikipedia gives a decent artsy take on #TAZ, but in practice, it’s about creating spaces where radical alternatives can actually live and grow. #PGA is the backbone, an old grassroot global framework for direct action and real-world resistance.

The key is building trust-based networks that aren’t easily co-opted. If we don’t do this, the cycle repeats: good projects get absorbed, neutralized, or just fade into irrelevance.

#openweb vs #closedweb is the battle for the Internet

The internet’s origins are tangled with the military-industrial complex, designed for resilience in the face of catastrophe. But the protocols themselves, once set loose, created a playground for anarchistic experimentation. The lack of centralized control allowed people to build without permission, and that openness birthed the wild, decentralized internet we briefly glimpsed.

It was an accident, but an accident we can repeat. The #dotcons crushed that brief era of freedom, but the same dynamics that let the early #openweb flourish still exist. The #4opens, the #Fediverse, #OMN — these are our tools to recreate the “mistake” deliberately this time.

What if we embrace the idea that technology can escape its creators? Maybe we can compost the current #techshit and let something even more resilient grow. What do you think? Should we lean into the idea of building “mistakes” on purpose?

It’s well past time to pick a side. For decades, the internet has been being enclosed. The one’s living decentralized network of commentary sites, blogs, forums has been corralled into a handful of paved prison yards controlled by the #dotcons. With most people’s attention and thus freedom being in the hands of a #nastyfew oligarchs. Every post, every ‘friend,’ every creative work is locked behind closed doors, and when push comes to shove as it is now, you will increasingly find that you don’t have the keys.

But the keys still exist, and it’s not so hard for you to pickup them up. There has been a #openweb digital jailbreak going on for the last 5 years, if you value your humanity you need to become a part of this blackout, put the key in the lock and turn it.

OK, yes, maybe a little strong, the #openweb isn’t a utopia, but it’s the closest thing we’ve got to freedom online. It’s built on the #4opens: Open Source: The code is public, hackable, and accountable. Open Data: Information flows freely, not hoarded for control. Open Standards: Interoperability beats lock-in monopolies. Open Process: Transparent governance, not shadowy boardrooms.

This #fediverse path is an escape hatch from the #closedweb. It’s not a product. It’s not something you can buy stock in. It’s a network of interconnected platforms like #Mastodon, #Lemmy, and #PeerTube to name a few, all running on the open protocol #activertypub. It’s messy. It’s human. And it’s yours if you take it.

It should be easy to see that the #closedweb is a digital prison, a mausoleum for human creativity, dressed up like a theme park. It’s run by billionaire-controlled #dotcons and polished by the illusion of safety sold by the #encryptionists. Who keep misshaping our paths. What did they offer? Control: Your identity, your data, your connections — all owned by them. Manipulation: Your timeline, your reach, your visibility — dictated by algorithmic gods. Exploitation: Every interaction, every word, every click — another drop in their profit bucket. We’ve eaten their lie that the internet had to be this way. That Meta, Google, and the hollow husk of Twitter are the price of admission to digital society. But simply, it was never true.

OK, I get your apathy, why does it matter? Because when we blur the lines, we lose the fight. People pour energy into platforms that wear the clothes of progress but are stitched with threads of control. We need to clearly label projects as #openweb or #closedweb, so people can choose where to dig in and build. The #4opens are our shovels, and the remnants of failed #web03 promises are good compost to start on. Let’s turn the decay of false hope into fertile ground for real digital commons.

The internet wasn’t built to be a machine for ad revenue. It was built to connect the paths for radical, collective steps we need in today’s mess.

Grab a spade. Let’s start digging. #OMN

This post is inspired by this #fluffy post to add to the #hashtagstory

#Fashionistas in Activism: How Buzzword Chasing Undermines Real Change

This post is about controlling the narrative, not letting the #nastyfew dictate the terms of engagement. Too often, we let them set the agenda, reacting to their every word instead of actively building the alternatives we need.

Their power isn’t just in what they do, it’s in how much space they take up in our minds and movements. We amplify their mess making when we obsess over their rhetoric rather than dismantling their actions. This is why we need composting, not fixating.

The #Fashionistas in Activism problem is real, when people latch onto whatever gets them attention instead of doing the hard, messy work of creating change. Chasing buzzwords, getting caught in endless reaction cycles, this is what keeps us stuck. We need to be the ones setting the agenda, not just replying to theirs.

Focus. Build. Compost the mess. That’s how we win.

In activism, the term “#fashionistas” captures individuals and groups, especially within #NGOs and advocacy organizations, who latch onto trendy causes or ideologies, not out of any commitment, but more to appear relevant and to align with the latest social currents. This is corrosive to meaningful change, reducing activism to performative gestures rather than a sustained struggle for justice.

Superficial engagement, when they rush to adopt the language of trending movements (like #BLM, #MeToo, or #ClimateJustice) without committing to their radical roots. For example, after George Floyd’s murder, many corporations and NGOs posted black squares on #Instaspam as a symbolic gesture. But what followed? Few made concrete policy changes or redistributed resources to Black-led grassroots organizations. It was activism as aesthetics, empty gestures rather than systemic action that was called for.

Lack of authenticity, when organizations prioritize optics over substance, which breed distrust. Consider the influx of NGOs claiming to champion digital rights but quietly partnering with Big Tech for funding. The grassroots developers working on genuinely decentralized platforms are left unsupported, while the NGO pointless/parasite class absorbs attention and resources, all while pushing and reinforcing the #deathcult paths they claim to oppose.

Mainstreaming, activism, loses its teeth when it’s tailored for palatability. Take the way climate #NGOs soften their language to avoid alienating corporate funders, pushing “net zero” narratives instead of demanding degrowth and direct action. By sanitizing radical demands, they reinforce the status quo rather than confronting the power structures driving #climatechaos.

Misaligned priorities, chasing trends, means resources get funnelled away from sustained struggles. For example, the fleeting attention on #Palestine waxes and wanes with media cycles, while groups doing year-round solidarity work scrape by with minimal support. #Fashionistas flock to hashtags when they’re hot, then move on, abandoning communities who still face oppression once the spotlight fades.

Reactive rather than proactive, when #fashionistas are caught chasing the next big thing rather than strategizing long-term solutions. Think of the explosion of interest in #openweb media during political unrest, a real issue, yes, but one that reveals the broader failure to build #4opens, community-run digital infrastructure proactively. The #OMN project exists precisely to address this, but it’s hard to gain traction when attention constantly flits to the crisis of the moment.

Rectonery, the most toxic aspect of fashionista activism is its tendency to reinforce the systems it claims to oppose. When #NGOs adopt radical language but stay within #mainstreaming paradigms, they create an illusion of progress. For instance, diversity initiatives in tech are often superficial, leading to token hires rather than dismantling structural racism or addressing the #geekproblem that keeps tech culture hostile to outsiders.

How do we compost the #fashionistas mess? The answer lies in prioritizing authenticity, long-term commitment, and meaningful engagement. This means, centring grassroots voices by funding and amplify people working on the ground, not just polished, and mostly pointless #NGO campaigns.

Rejecting mainstreaming, by being willing to alienate power on radical paths. This path needs us to building infrastructure, like #OMN and #indymediaback to grow autonomous spaces outside corporate control. Historical awareness, matters, to remember our past struggles, rights and freedoms were won by collective action, not #PR campaigns.

What, we don’t need, is more buzzword-chasing #nonprofits. We need shovels, compost, and a commitment to grow something real from the ruins of the #deathcult. It’s not glamorous, but it’s the only path to lasting change. Let’s start digging.

#4opens #activism #openweb #OMN #techshit #nastyfew

In the bigger picture. The best revenge against the #nastyfew is simple: don’t talk about them at all. What fuels them is attention — the endless cycle of fixating on their every move. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, keep the focus on the ideas and the collective struggles, not the individuals causing the mess.

Talk about the systems, the structures, in the US the republicans, not the disruptive few seeking to derail the conversation.

Ignoring the #nastyfew is the most powerful revenge you can take. Stay grounded, stay collective, and keep it #KISS.