For the last 40 years, we’ve worshiped the #deathcult of #neoliberalism witch has blinded us to the collapse unfolding around us. Every institution that promised to guide and protect us has failed. The ruling classes, in every hue of politics, have abandoned us. Our media and entertainment elitists distract and distort. #NGOs, once trusted, have betrayed the causes they claimed to champion. Academia and business alike have clutched at power, are now dithering while the world burns.
We face #climatechaos naked and disjointed – at war with ourselves and lost in consumerism. Yet, in this wreckage, there is still a choice to step away from the #mainstreaming, let go of fake promises, and dive into the #undercurrents. Compost the mess, build anew.
The #makinghistory project is a seed for this rebuilding. It’s a #KISS project that offers a way to reclaim our own narratives, digitizing archives like the Campbell Family collection to preserve grassroots histories of resistance and hope. I use this data set as an example here. This is more than data collection, it’s a living, breathing ecosystem of collective memory.
Walking through this step by step:
Setting up the Application: Communities install the #makinghistory app on local machines or hosted instances, creating a decentralized network of storytellers.
Uploading Digital Files: Activists and archivists upload historical files, adding metadata and context.
Building a Community: By inviting family, affinity groups, and wider activist circles, the archive grows into a collaborative space, nurturing participation.
Interacting with Data: Users engage directly with the history, categorizing, tagging, and enriching it with new insights.
Storytelling Features: The enriched data flows into narratives, connecting seemingly isolated events into cohesive stories of struggle, solidarity, and change.
Public Sharing: These stories aren’t locked away, they’re shared openly, contributing to a global commons of knowledge.
Impact: In reclaiming history, people find inspiration and strength. Grassroots stories challenge the top-down narratives, showing that change comes not from a #nastyfew (elitists) but from those who dare to dream and act.
The ‘Resistance Exhibition’ was started to extend this vision, turning physical spaces into participatory hubs where visitors become archivists and storytellers themselves.
This is not passive consumption, it’s collective action. It’s the compost from which new movements grow. It’s #makeinghistory – not as an abstract concept, but as a living, evolving reality. Let’s step away from the wreckage and start building something real please.
Privatization is one of those words that has been thrown around a lot, usually accompanied by promises of efficiency, lower costs, and better services. But the reality is far grimmer, and people generally don’t understand why. What Is Privatization? It is simply when publicly owned industries or services are transferred to private companies. It usually happens under the pretence of cutting costs and driving innovation, but the underlying reason is always profit by extracting value from public goods, selling assets cheaply. Public infrastructure, built and maintained with taxpayer money, is sold off to private interests for far less than it’s worth. Then this is ongoing – when privatized, companies monopolizing sectors, jack up prices, and pay workers as little as possible, to maximize returns for shareholders.
We need to see that the ideology behind privatization is beyond profit. #Neoliberals say that public services are flawed because people might use them without paying directly (the “free rider” problem) or be forced to pay for services they don’t use (the “forced rider” problem). Privatization supposedly fixes this by turning everything into a transaction. But this ignores the complex nature of economies. Even if you never use public transport, you benefit from reduced traffic congestion. The same logic applies to healthcare, education, and other services that generate economy-wide benefits.
Privatization claims to improve efficiency through competition, but it’s less efficient. Yes, public services can be inefficient due to bureaucracy and mismanagement, but privatization builds inefficiency into the path because profit is a drain, shareholders demand returns, which means money is siphoned away rather than reinvested. Plus, splitting industries to create the illusion of competition reduces economies of scale.
An example of this is Britain’s rail disaster, rail privatization is a textbook example of failure. In the ’90s, British Rail was split into dozens of companies: some ran trains, others owned the tracks, and still more handled maintenance. This fragmented was designed to prevent trade unions from gaining too much power, but it created a logistical nightmare. The private company Railtrack, which inherited the infrastructure, cut corners to boost profits, leading to catastrophic accidents like the Ladbroke Grove and Hatfield crashes. In the end, Railtrack collapsed, and the government had to step in and take control through Network Rail. But train operations and rolling stock leasing remain privatized, meaning public subsidies prop up private profits while fares remain some of the highest in Europe.
After 40 years of this mess making, the endgame, is that it doesn’t just fail on its promises, it makes things worse. It centralizes capital, encourages monopolies, and turns essential services into cash cows for the #nastyfew. Companies prioritize wealthy communities, rely on government bailouts, and pour money into executive salaries while neglecting public needs.
The truth is that public services, no matter how flawed, exist to serve people. Privatized services exist to serve shareholders. And until we break free from the grip of our worship of the #deathcult of neoliberal ideology, we’ll keep paying more for worse services, while the nasty rich fuck wits keep getting richer. It’s past time to rethink privatization, not as a necessary evil but as a failed experiment in greed. Let’s start talking about this, please.
The #dotcons have turned web searches into a cesspit of algorithm-driven consumerist and political ideological propaganda. What was a tool for discovery and connection is now a tightly controlled funnel, pushing people towards preordained narratives and commercialized echo chambers. Nowhere is this more obvious than on Google, the go-to gatekeeper of information, where what you find is shaped not by the richness of human knowledge, but by whatever serves the interests of the #nastyfew who control power and capital.
This isn’t simply an “inconvenience”; it’s a crisis for public knowledge and collective memory. When dissenting views, grassroots history, and alternative voices are buried under layers of #SEO spam, ad-driven results, and opaque censorship, we lose the ability to shape any understanding of the world. So what’s the plan to step outside this mess?
A real path is to build and use the #openweb to actively shift our habits to support networks, platforms and projects built on the #4opens principles – open source, open data, open process, and open standards. The #OMN (Open Media Network) is one path to reclaiming these collective narratives, by creating decentralized, community-driven archives where stories are curated by people, not algorithms.
With the #dotcons shift to #AI in everything, resisting this algorithmic trap is key, that the more people understand how these systems blind us, the less power they have. Building native #4opens tech is a very good first step, then teaching media literacy, by running workshops on the dangers of algorithmic control, and spreading knowledge about decentralized alternatives, so this can gradually chip away at the illusion of choice presented by the #closedweb paths.
This is a big step to #Rewilding the digital commons, the web was meant to be a messy, vibrant ecosystem, not a manicured, walled garden. We need to plant seeds in neglected corners of the internet, build hyperlocal networks, and use peer-to-peer tech to share knowledge directly. The more we create and share outside the #dotcons, the harder it becomes for them to control the narrative.
The next step is to create and nurture alternative search tools, we used to run an instance of #Searx which is #metasearch tool which works outside the algorithm as much as possible. But we had to shut this down due to lack of support, this lack of support is a real continuing issue we urgently need to overcome, we need users, contributors, and champions to increase usage of these tools and promote their development to build the infrastructure for an alternative discovery layer that need to bypass the #dotcons.
This is based on #KISS just do it, don’t wait for permission or a perfect alternative to emerge. Start archiving, writing, and sharing now. Build your own small-scale #4opens projects and connect them to others. The #OMN isn’t some grand centralized solution, it’s a framework for thousands of messy, local, independent nodes, each adding to a larger network of people-powered knowledge. This is a shovel-ready project. We don’t need to beg the #dotcons to change, and we certainly don’t need to play by their rules. Let’s get our hands dirty, compost the rotting remains of the algorithmic web, and start cultivating a truly human-centred internet again.
Over the last week you can see it in real time, Trump meeting world leaders, the handshakes, the staged press moments, the ass sniffing, barely concealed jockeying for position. But beneath the surface, we need to see that something bigger is cracking apart. The last 40 years of #neoliberalism, cold, calculating #realpolitik path is collapsing. The alliances of the #nastyfew we took as fixed is shifting, not because of thoughtful, progressive change but because of the hard shove of a global rightward lurch.
The world shaped by the #deathcult of neoliberalism is disintegrating, but don’t mistake this for liberation. The old deathcult is simply being replaced by a new mask, this is history repeating, not a new start. What was once masked in the language of freedom, democracy, and human rights is shedding its disguise, revealing a rawer, more brutal face to the same pessimistic human paths.
One of the most dangerous elements of this shift is the ideological bait-and-switch. The old liberal order for the last 40 years had co-opted the language of the right, with neo-imperialism of the new world order. Now, the emerging #fascist path is playing the same game in reverse, adopting the language of the left to push far-right outcomes. Talking about peace, authoritarians wrapping themselves in ‘anti-colonial’ rhetoric, hard-right demagogues claiming to fight for the ‘working class’ while gutting social safety nets, and far-right online communities using ‘free speech’ and “safety” to silence dissent. This ideological camouflage is not a glitch; it’s a feature. It confuses opposition, fractures movements, and traps the #mainstreaming in endless powerless cycles of reaction and outrage. It’s a survival mechanism for the #deathcult, a shapeshifting strategy, to ensure it evolves unchallenged.
For those of us working on projects like the Open Media Network (#OMN) that push for a genuine #openweb, this is the landscape we need to navigate. The answer isn’t to retreat or try to ‘purify’ movements from infiltration, that feeds the cycle. Instead, we need to cultivate resilience and clarity. Recognize the patterns, understand the language games, and keep building decentralized, trust-based networks that can weather the storm, both in the media and practically with onrushing #climatechaos.
The shift in both cases is happening whether we like it or not. The question is, do we use the compost of the old world order to feed the roots of something new, or do we let the poison linger in the soil? It’s time to get out the shovels.
Are we in such a mess? People conform to the #deathcult of neoliberalism, capitalism, and its destructive paths because they are conditioned to. The control is media, education, social pressure, economic dependence, is used by the #nastyfew and their acolytes to shaped compliance. Even when people recognize the system is dark and broken, they still bow down. Why?
Fear & survival, meany people get trapped in precarious economic conditions. They fear losing their jobs, homes, and social standing if they resist. When survival is at stake, rebellion feels too dangerous to risk the little they have.
Comfort & convenience, worshipping the #deathcult provides short-term rewards: consumerism, entertainment and distraction. Even those who hate it find comfort in its predictability. Change is hard, uncertainty is scary.
Psychological conditioning, our #mainstreaming propaganda is everywhere, it has convinced people there is no alternative (#TINA). They’ve been trained to see resistance as futile, rebellion as chaos, and compliance as “normal.”
Social pressure & herd mentality, simply few people want to be outsiders. They follow the crowd, even when the crowd is heading off a cliff. Conforming is easier than facing any rejection and isolation.
Exhaustion & despair, knowing the current path is going to harm them and kill their children, makes them feel powerless. The #deathcult grinds people down, keeps them struggling just to survive, leaving little energy or focus for resistance.
Lack of vision, the #mainstreaming invests a lot in destroying alternatives before they can take root. Without these clear, viable paths, people fall back into the familiar, no matter how broken it is.
But why STILL? Five years ago, yes, this wasn’t as obvious. Now, the mask has fallen, simply look around, you can see people on their knees, the #deathcult is marching us straight into #climatecollapse, endless wars, and digital enslavement. Yet people still conform. Why? Because fear works, the system adapts, the majority would rather scrabble for comfortable servitude than risk any unknown path.
On the positive, note, cracks are forming, the illusion is fading, the question is, will we build something better before it all collapses around us?
PS. The current hard shift to the right is simply worshipping a more historical #deathcult, that of #fascism with its dark, very dark history, so the question still stands, WHY?
What’s striking in today’s mess is how desperately we need spaces for people to come together and organise against the concentrated accumulations of power that are running rampant. Billionaires and massive corporations hold most of the power, shaping society to serve their narrow interests, while the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves as the social and ecological foundations collapse around us. Worse still, the law—once seen by some as a tool for justice—has been openly co-opted to maintain this imbalance. By declaring that corporations are people and that money is speech, the legal system has been twisted to the will of the #nastyfew, rigging the system ever more.
Yet, as is often the case, the root of this wealth and power is labour. Wealth doesn’t exist without the workers who create it. If workers collectively said, “We’re not putting up with this anymore,” the balance of power would shift overnight. The numbers are overwhelmingly on our side—there are far more workers than there are billionaires and CEOs. The problem isn’t a lack of power, it’s a lack of organised power. The real challenge is bringing that latent force together.
This is where the original promise of the internet—and the #openweb—once offered hope. These tools were supposed to create open, horizontal spaces for solidarity, connection, and global collective action. But for the last 20 years, with the rise of the #dotcons, they’ve done the exact opposite. Instead of bringing us together, they’ve carved us into isolated filter bubbles and antagonistic echo chambers, constantly at war over manufactured divisions.
And it’s become increasingly obvious that this isn’t a byproduct of bad design—it’s the business model. The algorithms that dominate our online lives are designed to maximise profit and control by fuelling conflict and outrage. The more we argue, click, and spiral into reactive cycles, the more money flows into the pockets of the platform owners. Social media hasn’t just failed its stated purpose of connection—it’s been repurposed as a weapon of division.
A study out of the Netherlands drove this home. Researchers found that the overwhelming majority of misinformation on social media originates from right-wing populist networks. This is a deliberate tactic, misinformation and polarisation serve to confuse and distract, obscuring the suffering, the unchecked concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a toxic few. The #dotcons are a systemic effort to fracture society, weaponising identity politics and #stupidindividualism to keep us fighting each other instead of confronting the root causes.
If we’re going to break out of this death spiral, we have to bypass the endemic #techshit. This is where activist-led projects like the #OMN come in—creating new spaces rooted in solidarity, shared stories, and collective action. These aren’t just tools, they’re seeds for new social relations and regenerative culture. We still have the numbers. What we need now is the courage and will to come together—to become the change and challenge that this world so urgently needs.
On this, it’s worth looking back on the 1980s #Thatcher era in the UK, #deathcult privatisations, this era is now ripe for real and useful contemporary criticism. And this criticism could be used for a useful push for the change and challenge we need now.
Water Companies, privatized in 1989 with promises of efficiency and investment, have since faced continuous scandals over sewage spills, underinvestment, and skyrocketing bills. The outcome, profits have been pushed over public service, leading to environmental and infrastructure mess which will coat billions to compost.
Railways, privatized in the 1990s under Major, have led to fragmented operations, high ticket prices, and crap service. Public subsidies have increased dramatically, effectively making it a publicly funded but privately profiting system. The failures of companies like Railtrack highlighted systemic issues. This urgently needs to change, but this is a mess that leads to huge public costs.
The Steel Industry, British Steel, was privatized in 1988 but continued to struggle to compete globally. Subsequent closures and job losses have been crippling to industrial regions. Today, the UK steel industry remains a declining mess, requiring government intervention and subsidies to survive. We don’t have a path out of this mess, in the era of international instability we need a solution.
Energy, the privatisation of electricity and gas led to reduced competition over time, with prices soaring for consumers. Companies have been price gouging and underinvesting in sustainable energy. A mess, to manage the shift to renewables, that we now need to compost.
Telecom, while privatisation of BT (British Telecom) did modernize telecommunications, it created an uneven playing field, with BT retaining dominance and smaller competitors struggling to compete meaningfully. What is the path with this?
The promise of our worshipping of the #deathcult was to reduce costs through privatisation unsurprisingly, this hasn’t materialized; instead, public funds have been used and continue to be used to subsidize failing privatized companies owned by the #nastyfew.
The broader impact has been the pushing of widening social inequality. Essential natural “commons” services and utilities were turned into “profit” drains for the #nastyfew at the expense of affordability and quality for the meany. With privatisation, it transferred wealth from the public to this small group of greedy and nasty people.
The scale of these failures and public dissatisfaction might be a force for the change and challenge we so urgently need. That is, if we can make the more horizontal path actually work for us as a first step #OMN
The current #mainstreaming paths are dependent on capitalist structures, when looking at this critically, it reveals itself as a #deathcult, with the embodiment of unrestrained growth and consumption that runs counter to meaningful solution to #climatechange. While billionaires and corporatens entertain the illusion of future-proofing their wealth and safety, the reality is more perilous. Their greed fed opulence and influence, but it can’t shield them indefinitely from a collapsing ecosystem that sustains all life, including their own.
Inherent to this contradiction in capitalism itself: it requires perpetual growth to survive. This expansion is incompatible with the measures needed to mediate or stop #climatechaos. But if growth halts, so does the economic machinery that upholds the current power structures, creating a destabilizing domino effect. While you might ask why those in power do not pivot to environmental preservation, it’s the same mess, the answer is the system’s relentless demand for expansion. Even if an individual capitalist – or a consortium – decides to scale back for the sake of long-term planetary health, the market will simply replace them with competitors who are more willing to pursue relentless profit, growth, and resource consumption.
The current path has a self-destructive logic, this paradox is why even billionaires who are conscious of the dire climate situation resort to insufficient and infective measures. They might fund green technologies and push for marginally lower carbon emissions, but the actions remain constrained by the underlying logic: protecting the continuity of capital. This capital-only world-view can’t embrace the radical systemic change we actually need to avert ecological collapse.
Let’s look at this, billionaires and the bunker illusion, the ultra-wealthy/greedy #fuckwits, plan to retreat to their fortified bunkers and private, insulated zones once climate-induced social and environmental chaos grows un medateable. While contingency plans do exist – high-tech shelters, land acquisitions in regions predicted to be less affected by climate change -these are temporary solutions. A world unravelling from the fabric, ecosystems will not sustain even the most fortified enclaves indefinitely. Even if technology advances to the point of enabling space colonization, the timelines required for such ventures far exceed the immediacy of the crisis we keep #blindly pushing.
This is an easy to understand systematic issue, and it should be obverse we need a collective rater tan the mask of individual solution. Capital, the motivation and power for action, is not about individual capitalists but capital as an entity, the dogmatic socio-economic phenomenon that exerts control over its arbiters. Capital has built in infinite growth, prioritizing profit over sustainability and long-term human survival. An individual or collective attempt to defy this logic and implement meaningful, planet-preserving strategies would be outpaced and outcompeted by others who align more closely with capital’s pushing of this #stupidindividualism, ruthless, greed is good.
This #KISS understanding underscores the distinction between idealist and materialist interpretations of the crisis. Idealists believe that with enough awareness and willpower, the system can change from within. Materialists, recognize that capital is a structure that acts beyond the control of individual or organization. It functions like biological evolution: it values reproduction and expansion above survival, when as we see now those traits are in the end destructive.
There is some room for corrective action within the existing system, but it’s inadequate. Policies to mitigate environmental impact, even when enacted, are slow and piecemeal. The issue isn’t that #mainstreaming decision-makers don’t understand the problem; rather, they don’t grasp the depth of systemic overhaul required to address it. The principles they consider immutable -the rules of modern economics and finance. The “common sense” is the problem.
The #deathcult of mainstreaming is propelling growth and consumption despite ecological warnings, it is locked in a dance with CAPITALS logic. While billionaires may fund clean energy startups and talk about sustainable practices, their wealth and the power structures uphold and are bound up in the unsustainable status quo. Change and challenge requires uprooting fundamental beliefs about how economies MUST operate, not just superficial adaptations. Until this realization is shared and spread, capital will continue on its path, indifferent to the ruins it leaves.
Best not to be a prat about this, thanks.
Why capitalism and climate change solutions are fundamentally incompatible. The urgent need to address climate change collides with an uncomfortable reality, as we outline capitalism’s foundational mechanics to make meaningful climate action impossible. This isn’t a case of individual negligence but a systemic flaw. As we say, capitalism, by design, prioritizes profit and growth, at the expense of long-term, collective concerns and environmental preservation.
Capitalism favours the #nastyfew who maximize profits in the shortest timeframe. It’s a path where the most ruthless and nasty competitor prevails, setting the standard that others must follow or face obsolescence. This constant pressure means that if an individual capitalist or company recognizes the existential threat of #climatechaos, they cannot afford to act on it meaningfully without losing their competitive edge. For example, a corporation that decides to limit emissions at the cost of profitability will quickly be outcompeted by one that does not.
The logic of capitalism ensures that any significant deviation from maximizing short-term profit results in failure within the market. Thus, while some companies engage in “green” initiatives to pay lip service to sustainability, these efforts are superficial. They exist to placate public concern and leverage marketing advantages, rather than drive the needed change. The myths are that capitalism, through innovation and competition, will solve climate change. However, capitalist solutions boil down to maintaining leverage and coercing others into action. For example, the race for green technologies like electric cars and renewable energy can be more about dominating a new market sector than reducing environmental harm. Elon Musk’s ventures into space and sustainable technology, was hailed as forward-thinking, illustrate this principle. Space colonization and technological fixes reflect an expansionist mindset, a search for new “territories” to exploit as resources on Earth dwindle.
Capitalism’s path needs to push costs onto external parties, the public and the environment. The system relies on government-funded infrastructure and socialized costs, as seen with subsidies for oil companies, highway construction for the automotive industry, or public bailouts for corporations in crisis. When it comes to addressing #climatechange, this reliance on externalized costs becomes a liability. The climate crisis is a global “cost” that capitalism, left unchecked, will not address willingly. It requires collective action that contradicts capitalism’s individualistic and profit-driven paths. This is why capitalist markets require regulation by state or more importantly collective paths to function at all or sustainably, and even then, such measures face fierce resistance.
We now live in the automation age, the question is how the #nastyfew plans to survive. Whether billionaires believe they can weather the storm of #climatecollapse is complex. Many of them, seeing the unsustainability of infinite growth, look for exit strategies. This explains the investments in space travel, underground bunkers, and gated communities. The implication is stark: they believe their wealth will shield them from the mass suffering climatechange will bring. Automation adds another layer to this story. With machines replacing human labour, the exploiters envision a future where their economic power persists without the masses of real people, that’s you and me. This very dystopian reality shows the detachment of capital from human and ecological concerns.
We currently face a failure of collective action to mediate, one of capitalism’s flaws ts inability to coordinate collective action without state intervention. While some countries have managed to decouple emissions from #GDP growth through, exportin emissions, advancements in service sectors and digital economies, this decoupling remains insufficient to meet the global targets needed for net-zero. The system’s piecemeal and reactive, cannot match the scale of planning required for real climate action. Without a fundamental restructuring that prioritizes the collective good over private profit, meaningful progress remains an illusion.
In the modern world, #neoliberalism penetrates every aspect of our lives. It commodifies not only goods and services but human relations, creativity, and increasingly the natural world. This historical #deathcult is designed to obscure its roots and operations, keeping people powerless and confused, while ensuring the prosperity of a greedy and #nastyfew. By stripping away regulations and protections, neoliberalism pushes into a rentier society that thrives on exploiting paths essential for survival.
After 40 years of this mess, people think this is natural, a natural law, but in reality it is an ideology engineered to strip away all barriers to capital. This system reconfigures societies, deindustrializing, privatizing, and commoditizing vital services while dismantling unions, which are key obstacles to capital’s control. As a result, wealth is funnelled upwards, creating vast inequality and social decay.
For many, life feels empty, alienated, and devoid of meaning. Stripped of communities of trust, disconnected from nature, and instrumentalized relationships, turning humanists into consumers. The result is widespread disenchantment and mental health crises as people struggle to find purpose beyond our worship of this #deathcult of cold logic, profit.
On this #mainstreaming path, nature itself is commodified, with the “natural capital” agenda aiming to put a price on ecosystems, further pushing exploitation rather than preservation. This soulless, anti-humanistic calculation drains the “spiritual” value from the world, creating an environment where everything, including human beings, are treated as a resource to be mined, used and exploited until they collapse.
The allure of this system is its false promise of simplicity, we can point to external forces, like an enemy or a far-off political struggle, and believe the problem is out of our hands. This form of disengagement is a hallmark of neoliberal control, preventing the collective action required to reclaim #KISS power and meaning in our lives.
The antidote is not only in dismantling neoliberalism but in rediscovering our sense of agency, rebuilding social bonds, and fostering a grassroots vision of community and solidarity. This is where resistance begins, by recognizing that another world is possible and actively working to reclaim the future from those who profit from the present decay.
In doing so, we must compost the rot in the current path and plant seeds of hope and collective action, like the #OMN, #OGB and #indymediaback to build paths that ensuring that the systems of tomorrow are built with people and planet in mind, not only profit.
A crucial question, that speaks to the frustration many people feel toward the ongoing crises -political, environmental, social – that is not only the failure of the centre but also the collapse of the system itself. The centre, blindly sees itself as a space of compromise and stability, but has been propped up for decades by a neoliberal ideology that promised endless growth, market solutions, and moderation, yet we are witnessing the disintegration of that “stability”.
Recognizing the Failure of the Centre:
Erosion of Trust: People are aware that the centre, the moderate, mainstream establishment, has failed to deliver on its promises. Political polarization, the rise of populism, and a loss of faith in democratic institutions signal, the so-called centre is unable to address the mess people face. Economic inequality, climate breakdown, and social injustice are not marginal concerns but #mainstreaming crises.
The System is Not Working: The underlying system, whether it’s neoliberal capitalism, representative democracy, or technocratic governance, are visibly incapable of dealing with the crises they have created and exacerbated. The #climatecrisis is intensifying, the wealth gap widens, and the erosion of civil liberties in the name of security shows that the current paths prioritizes control and profit over human well-being. Some are starting to admit that the system itself is fundamentally broken.
Centre Did Not Hold: The idea that the path of endless growth, individualism, and market-driven solutions would bring prosperity for all, but, the reality is starkly different. The collapse of consensus politics, the weakening of institutions, and the rise of extreme right-wing movements are native to this “centre” path. It could not hold because it was never stable to begin with.
Why Haven’t We Admitted It?
Denial of Alternatives: For the last 40 years, the mantra of #neoliberalism has been “there is no alternative” (#TINA), so as the system crumbles, people and institutions cling to the belief that it’s the only path. This ideological blindness has so far prevented the meaningful change we need from taking root, as alternatives are either dismissed as utopian or subverted into market-friendly forms.
Fear of Uncertainty: The collapse of the system brings with it the fear of uncertainty. People, even those disillusioned with the status quo, fear what might come next when the system fails. This fear manifests as apathy, #blocking or retreat into isolation, the scale of the problems seems overwhelming.
Perpetuation by the few greedy, nasty people who “benefit”. The #deathcult worship still works – though only for a small, powerful few who benefit from this deteriorating status quo. As long as this #nastyfew control much of the media, politics, and economy, the narrative of the centre and the system’s viability will continue to be pushed. This gatekeeping prevents #KISS acknowledgment of systemic failure.
What Happens Next?
Collapse of “Legitimacy”: We are already witnessing a growing collapse of the respect for the priesthood of the #deathcult and their continuing propping up of “legitimacy” in institutions across the globe, from governments to corporations. We can also see the rise of decentralized movements, from the #Fediverse to local grassroots activism, people are looking for alternative ways to organize outside the path that has failed them.
Emergence of New Stories: One of the tasks ahead is to (re)create narratives that challenge the current paths, offering visions of sustainable, cooperative, and inclusive futures. Where grassroots movements, #4opens technology, and environmental justice play a role in this shift, offering both practical solutions and different trust based ideological frameworks that counter the fear-driven status quo.
Radical Imagination: Admitting the system didn’t work requires embracing a radical imagination, to start to think beyond the limitations of the normal political and economic paths. This means reconnecting with hope, while recognizing the balance of collective action over (stupid)individualism.
In so many ways, people are already admitting the failure of the centre and the “common sense” that supports it, though often not explicitly. The challenge now is how to move from recognition to practical #DIY grassroots action, from seeing the collapse to building what comes next. That requires tapping into the potential in grassroots networks, tech communities, and activist spaces to grow a viable path. You can see a part of this path in the work done on the #OMN for the last ten years.
When do you think we reach a critical mass where this failure is acknowledged widely, when this happens can we avoid the lurch to the hard right? What role do you see for grassroots #DIY movements in driving this alt change?
If you’ve spent time on my website, you’ve come across the term neoliberalism. It’s a word that’s used so much that its meaning has maybe been diluted. You might have a surface-level understanding: deregulation, privatization, tax cuts for the rich, the classic “trickle-down” nonsense where we’re supposed to believe that if the rich get richer, everyone will magically benefit. It’s not entirely wrong, but it only scratches the surface.
So, what really is neoliberalism? It’s the core of what I call the #deathcult – this unquestioning faith in the free market, a belief that capitalism, when left completely to its own devices, will allocate resources efficiently and justly. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. This ideology has been pushed to the heart of why our society and is now why it is collapsing, why inequality is rampant, why climate change isn’t being addressed meaningfully, and why we’re on a collision course with disaster.
#Neoliberalism isn’t new. We’ve seen it before in the laissez-faire economics of the late 19th century, which crashed into the Great Depression. It ended in global upheaval, political unrest, and the rise of authoritarian regimes, leading to globe war. And now we’re on the same path with social disintegration and #climatechaos, this time the mess is even more poisonous, with ecological collapse looming.
At its core, neoliberalism is about giving all the power to the #nastyfew in the “business class”. Not the people, not communities, not workers – just businesses, capitalists and what remains of the old feudal orders. In a #neoliberal world, the capitalist class gets to make all the decisions: setting wages, determining prices, managing resources, polluting freely, without interference from governments and collective movements. It’s a system designed to serve the interests of the most evil people while pretending to offer “freedom” to “consumers” what ever this means. But that “freedom” is a lie. What kind of choice is it when you can’t afford housing, healthcare, or basic survival? “Pick one” shiny piece of crap they say, while everything crumbles around us.
And the worst part? Neoliberalism doesn’t just push suffering, it justifies it. If you’re poor, it’s your fault. You didn’t work hard enough. You’re lazy. The cruelty of it is staggering: the rich hoard their wealth, built on the backs of workers, while the system vilifies those who are struggling to get by. This ideology isn’t just economic, it’s political. Neoliberalism co-opts the state, transforming it into an enforcer for the business class. The state’s role becomes about protecting corporate interests, not public welfare. Deregulation, privatization, militarization, these are its tools to keep the market “free” for capitalists while making life increasingly unfree for everyone else.
This is the mess we are in now. We’re witnessing the slow, methodical destruction of the real social safety nets built up by workers after the second world war, of any meaningful government oversight, and of collective power. Neoliberalism hates unions, despises activism, and fears real challenge and challenge to class interests and power. And when push comes to shove, it would rather align with #fascism than allow any alternative like socialism or genuine collective power to rise to balance the current mess.
So when I talk about the #deathcult, this is what I mean. It’s a simple metaphor for #neoliberalism, an ideology of destruction, dressed up as “freedom” and “efficiency.” The task before us isn’t just to critique it but to compost it, to build affinity groups, to seed movements that understand the depth of the problem and are ready to nurture the seeds of real alternatives. We can’t afford any more to just sit back and let it continue. We have worshipped this #deathcult for 40 years, we need to lift our heads and shovels (#OMN), and we need to do this now.
For meany people, the old #dotcons like #Instagram, #Facebook and #Twitter still dominate their online lives, shaping not only what they see but also how they still think and interact. These platforms, with their complex dark algorithms, offer an addictive experience people find hard to resist. The allure is not just in the content they provide, but in the nature of how that content is delivered – tailored, curated, and designed to keep engagement to the point of dependency.
The problem for society is that this dependency on these algorithms has become a digital addiction. This is even more true for the next generation of digital drugs from fallow on generations of #dotcons. The algorithm decides what to show people, shaping perceptions and influencing decisions. Over time, this erodes people’s ability to make choices independently, undermining the freedom that the internet was initially supposed to offer. This loss of autonomy is frightening, as it suggests a surrender of our agency to the invisible hand of the algorithm, which prioritizes engagement in capitalism over well-being.
The Algorithmic trap, how we got here? The business model of these “#closedweb” social media platforms, the #dotcons, is based on addiction. The more time people spend on the platforms, the more data they collect, and the more targeted the ads and “content” becomes, leading to increased profits for the #nastyfew. This cycle creates a powerful incentive for these companies to make their platforms as addictive as possible. The more we rely on them, the more they control us, and the less freedom we have to think and choose for ourselves.
What is particularly messy about this model is how it normalizes digital dependency. For meany people, the idea of switching back to the #openweb, to federated, decentralized social media, where algorithms do not dictate what you see, is unappealing precisely because it does not offer the same instant gratification, fix. These platforms do not feed the addiction in the same way, making them less attractive to those who have grown accustomed to algorithmic curation.
To break free from this spiral, people need digital detoxification, but It’s hard to know how to go about this? This is not just about reducing screen time; it’s about reclaiming the paths to make choices independently of what an algorithm suggests. It’s about learning to engage with content and people on your own terms, rather than being passively fed by a machine designed to keep us hooked.
Driving this mess is our worshipping of the #deathcult for the last 40 years, the social shift towards practices and systems that, while profitable for a few, are destructive for the many. The #dotcons have built their neo-empires on this, creating digital paths, prioritize profit over people, “engagement” over any enlightenment. This mess extends beyond social media. It speaks to a broader critique of how our paths in technology and #neoliberal ideology have shaped our lives. #Neoliberalism, with its focus on free markets and strong right-wing social government intervention, was pushed into our thinking, making us blind to the ways in which we are being manipulated and controlled. This is so ingrained that it has become “invisible” to most, making it difficult to see any possibility of a different path we could take.
Beyond this ideological wall, we need to help people see the invisible, to recognize the ideological frameworks that shape their perceptions and actions. Many people find it difficult to appreciate perspectives outside their own, particularly when those perspectives challenge deeply held beliefs. This is why so many people are #blocking by dismiss paths that try to explain these concepts from different ideological viewpoints. For those of us who try to view the world through multiple lenses, it can be frustrating to see how limited the #mainstreaming narrative is. With status quo, liberal media, pushing a narrow view of the world, that reinforces rather than challenges the mess.
Activists and thinkers, who have long warned of the dangers, are frequently sidelined or ignored. This is why it’s crucial to keep telling these stories, even if they are not always heard or understood. We must continue to highlight the ways in which our digital lives are being shaped by forces that do not have our best interests at heart. We need to keep striving to make the invisible visible, to reveal the ideological underpinnings of the systems we interact with daily.
This is a needed, but difficult story, the story of digital addiction and the #deathcult. It requires us to confront uncomfortable truths about how we live our lives online and how we’ve allowed ourselves to be manipulated by the tools that were supposed to set us free. That the way we engage with technology is not personal choice but is shaped by the economic and ideological systems in which we are all a part. It’s a story that needs to be told from multiple perspectives, not just those of the chattering classes or the narrow liberal media belief frameworks. A story that should include the voices of activists, technologists, and everyday people struggling to reclaim humanistic paths.
In the end, if we want to have any future, let alone one that is truly open, decentralized, and free, we need to recognize the dangers of digital addiction and the ideologies that sustain it. We need to support the #openweb and the technologies that empower people rather than control them. This is a first step to break free from the #deathcult mentality, creating an online and offline world that we might like to live in #KISS
