Over the last week you can see it in real time, Trump meeting world leaders, the handshakes, the staged press moments, the ass licking, 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 nasty few we took as fixed are 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 one, this is history repeating. What once masked itself in the language of freedom, democracy, and human rights is shedding its disguise, revealing a rawer, more brutal face.

One of the most dangerous elements of this shift is the ideological bait-and-switch. The old liberal order co-opted the language of the right: securitization, market forces, meritocracy to maintain control. Now, the emerging #fascist path is playing the same game in reverse, adopting the language of the left to push far-right outcomes. Trump is 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 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 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.