Digital connection, Disability and techno-fascism

It is likely fair to assume you’re reading this on a mobile device, laptop, or desktop computer.

In just the last week, an article here on Freedom by a comrade I’ve known for several years recommended keeping your phone in your pocket “in favour of engaging directly with real human beings”; meanwhile the Autistici/Inventati hacktivist collective decided to shut down, telling people to “turn off your PCs, get out of your homes, struggle, hug each other and keep on smiling…stay human.”

Are they right? Did we become somehow less human for connecting via the internet? Do we find ourselves at a turning point in history? Has the time come to destroy the machines?

Before you reach for a hammer, let me offer another perspective.

Since you’re here reading Freedom, whether you’ve had anarchist leanings for months or years, you’ve probably heard it many times already: “Oh, you call yourself an anticapitalist, eh? And yet you’ve got a smartphone!” To which my partner, Jane, would reply: “Okay, you’re confusing production with the means of production.”

Jane was a fit, fairly healthy athlete – in the gym three times a week alongside training and playing for an antifascist football club – when Covid hit. As soon as March of 2020 our hectic community work meant we inevitably contracted large, and likely multiple, viral loads, followed by our projects and related income being obliterated as our mortgage-relieved landlords at the time ignored our request for rent relief and instead hiked it up. With our anarchist union the IWW offering us some of the only support we had, we endured the added stresses of having to rethink and regroup while sick with Covid. As far as I know, I would recover as best I could hope for. Sadly, Jane would not.

There have been few better advertisements for anarchism than the brutality and chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic: as the same right-wing interests behind climate denial began to apply their resources to promoting Covid denial, not only were large swathes of the population distrustful of profits-dependent people in power implementing stop-start “lockdowns” and then incentivising us to “eat out to help out” capitalists, but mutual aid became mainstream. A global network of mask blocs emerged – and many continue to this day – taking requests through online forms and distributing high-filtration masks and Covid testing kits to people for free, no questions asked, while it was the anarchist bookfairs – at least initially – that requested masking to not only slow the spread of the virus but also protect the most vulnerable among us, because, after all, none are free until all are free.

Jane’s initial experiences with the inadequate systemic response to “Long Covid” shone a light on the related myalgic encephalomyelitis (M.E.) community who have been gaslit and denied sufficient state care for years, despite experiencing a quality of life worse than people with cancer, stroke, and renal failure – with an anarchist spirit, they have largely relied upon each other for support and information through internet-connected devices, especially since many are completely housebound.

Today, because of herself having what turned out to be M.E. caused by Covid, Jane is bedbound, largely dependent on a text-to-speech app to communicate with me. Like her smartphone itself, I am her conduit to the outside world. While caring for her, I still try to avoid sickness, masking up when I can, so that I can continue to provide such care, as well as avoid passing on an infection that could worsen her condition to higher levels of grave illness.

Having said that, I wasn’t always so understanding: I personally grew up around the normalisation of ableism; the false assumption that some of us are more resilient to ill health than others – after all, health supremacism links to both male supremacism and white supremacism. When I met her over fifteen years ago, Jane was already well-versed in Disability politics, and she introduced me to the Social Model of Disability.

Of course, Covid has also been a harsh teacher. When the pandemic began, many of us promised to learn its lessons: trips to meetings that could instead take place online; not “pushing through” and spending time with others while sick; making spaces more accessible. Sadly, only some of us have kept such promises. But we can all do better. And it’s never too late to start.

It is way past time, however, to stop denigrating online spaces and their potential for information and organising. It’s sad I must write this reminder, but like many of her Disabled comrades, Jane is no less human, and no less of an anarchist for now being bedbound, unable to “go touch grass,” only perhaps one of the forgotten anarchists. These are anarchists who remember the initial anarchistic potential of Indymedia and the blogosphere and recognise that it was never technology itself that we hated, but simply capitalism – and its inevitable enshittification of the web. This is a hate reserved for the fascists of Meta, X, Google and Apple, who were each represented at the highest levels at Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential inauguration.

The hate can be harnessed – and turned into an antidote to such techno-fascism. The examples are numerous, from Linux operating systems to de-Googled smartphones. Then there’s the promise of an entire federated universe of interconnected platforms – or, the “Fediverse.” It’s like if you could use your Twitter account to comment on a YouTube video while having followers from Instagram…but without the Big Tech owners, advertising, or fascism. Sounds good? It already exists.

Most anarchists share a desire for a decentralised society. Sure enough, the Fediverse has emerged as a decentralised social network bereft of billionaires, cynical algorithms or ads, with entire servers dedicated to anarchist thought (Freedom has an account on one!) As a result of this actual social media rather than corporate-controlled algorithmic so-called social media, Jane and I have been part of radical communal care collectives, connecting us with Disabled comrades and carers from different countries, sharing invaluable information, support, and resources.

The anarchist movement is proudly comprised of a wonderful diversity of people: people of colour, trans and non-binary folks, immigrants, disabled people, to name a few – their experiences of marginalisation providing lessons to learn from, their comradeship knowing no bounds thanks to the wonders of modern technology. We can think globally and act locally, yes, but we must never prescribe only one form of praxis. So with that in mind, let’s finally drop the outdated and ableist “IRL” rhetoric – and seize the means of social media.