Tag: fascism

We Must Open Our Eyes and Choose to See

Painting by artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude, showing a mostly black sea of adult legs in pants and shoes, walking by. In the centre of the image is one lit person: A small child in a party dress and hat, fists clenched at her sides and her face looking stern and perhaps horrified. She looks out from the sea of passing legs with indignation. The title of this life-size painting is "Did you shuffle of the pavements just to let your betters pass."
"Did you shuffle off the pavements just to let your betters pass?"
Oil and graphite on canvas. Artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude

Thijs’ face remained open and calm as he described his childhood memory of his Jewish neighbours being removed to whatever fate they met: “I remember the SS or Germans going upstairs, kicking them down the stairs, so they rolled right on our sidewalk, in front of our door.” I was interviewing him for an installation about the concept and feeling of ‘home’, and this was part of his response. I think that I, too, looked unphased by this story. We both have lived so long in a society that treats such traumatic experiences as passing news, and turns to chemicals, distraction, or denial to keep from dwelling on the horror.

But it IS horror. It’s horror every time a starving Palestinian child tries to get food and is blown to pieces, but still alive, briefly, to witness the cries of his mother. It’s horror every time a child holds the dead face of his parent, living only in terror, oblivious to what life will be like as an orphan of genocide, however short that life may be. It’s horror every time a girl, a child; a desperate woman is captured, owned, and brutalized to feed some sick person’s illness, and then silenced, for the good of the nation, or at least for the benefit of those profiting off the nation. It’s horror every single time a person of colour, an indigenous person, a woman, or a poor person is kidnapped by brutal masked agents of terror, hiding behind anonymity and the letters I, C, and E, or simply balaclavas. It’s horror while these people sit rotting in internment camps created with the intention of brutalizing their bodies, minds, and futures. It’s horror when a child is raised with such depravity that they applied for the jobs that mean brutalizing their fellow citizens; that they are willing to create more such depravity in hopes of rising above it, for the good of the nation. For the good of the family. It’s horror when we turn away, because it hurts so much to see, and blindly, through chosen ignorance, raise our own children to be unphased by the horrors that we condone, for the good of the family.

It’s easy to buy cheap milk eked out of tortured beasts on tortured stolen indigenous land because my children need calcium, to bubble their water with a machine made on stolen Palestinian land, and to turn their eyes away from the news, towards a screen filled with shiny ads. To turn my own eyes away from how those ads are harming them, because I need time to make their dinner, and it's easier. It’s easy to allow the fascist few to benefit from our choices, for the good of the family. For the good of the nation.

What family?! What nation?! What kind of monsters are we that we can look but refuse to see?! I hear a siren right now outside my window, and I’m scared because I know that siren means someone in my community is scared, too, right now. 

I can’t turn away. I can’t be the person who allows these horrors to happen, while I avert my eyes. Neither can you. I know that, because you probably looked at the news, today. You’re reading this, right now. Not to numb yourself, not to bolster ignorance, but to SEE. You’re trying to see. You’re looking to bolster community by being willing to share the suffering of others.

We know we’re bound to each other as humans. We know each child stripped of dignity, health, safety, love and life by the greed of the tiny fascist few is a part of us. We know, even, that those greedy few are part of us, so like we need to weed them out of our society, we need to weed the tendency to greed and ignorance from our own psyches. We need to rise up as individuals to save the whole of us.

I know this all sounds very big-picture. Very abstract. We want something actionable. We want to reject the rise of greed, hate, and fascism. But how? I’m working on that. I can’t say how it will look for you, but I can, at least, describe what I’m doing, and hope it helps inspire you to make whatever choices make sense in your life.

Ending Reliance on Fascist Corporations

Those photos of Trump surrounded by the tech billionaires whose private jet flights we fund with our digital existence were very enlightening, to me. I can no longer pretend a single one of them is good. Not even if they tout vaccines for impoverished populations or free transit. They’re a huge piece of the fascist landscape, and I can’t be supporting them. Obviously, it’s difficult to just quit these giants in a world that they’ve carefully arranged to be mandatory opt-in. In fact, we pay for the right to use these systems that we’ve been convinced we can’t live without!

Well, I’ve been dumping the tech giants at a steady pace for about six months, now, and I’m here to tell you it’s not only less daunting than I feared; it’s liberating!! It feels wonderful!! So here’s a list of the great alternatives I’ve found. And of course there are many more! Luckily, we live in a whole world full of caring, creative individuals, working in community to build a better world.

*NOTE: Rebel Tech Alliance, one of the groups building this better world, recently contacted me regarding this article, so point me to their amazing resource for this exact information! Do check it out; they've compiled a very useful list of options! https://www.rebeltechalliance.org/stopusingbigtech.html

…and here are my choices:

Facebook/Instagram/Twitter ⟶ Mastodon 
Mastodon, with it’s cute little Elephant logo, is wonderful for connecting to like-minded community. A bit of an adjustment in terms of how posting works, but not difficult, by any means. Yes, it’s part of a whole landscape of options, but you don’t even need to understand that to use and enjoy it!

WhatsApp ⟶ Signal 
For some reason I had the idea that Signal was for right-wing people. (?) Once I joined, I discovered that wasn’t true at all. It’s just for people. Some might be right-wing, but I wouldn’t know, just like you wouldn’t know that about your phone contacts list. It is, after all, just an app you can use for free video, phonecalling, and messaging, that uses your contacts list. But it’s an app that’s not stealing and selling your data. And yes it’s free.

News sources ⟶ Al Jazeera and local sources
Obviously, this depends on where you are. But Al Jazeera definitely has a more open view of world events than any mainstream North American news sources I’ve looked at. And I augment my news intake by subscribing to local and indigenous sources that have more to say about my specific local interests.

Blogger/Website ⟶ Autistici/Noblogs 
Yeah!! I haven’t moved my domain name over yet, but I was honoured to be accepted by the good people who create and maintain Autistici. I’m slowly transferring all my previous content to my site there, and will redirect my domain name when I’m ready. This (moving all my content) is definitely the most daunting task I’ve undertaken, but it’s worth it, not to be chained to Google/Blogger.

Web/Chrome ⟶ Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla is an amazing group of people fighting very hard to maintain fair and open internet. They make Thunderbird, which is a great email reader/system (I’ve been using it for decades), and Firefox, which is possibly the best, safest, most versatile web browser out there. Yes, it’s WAY better than Chrome!! Mozilla’s browsers are free, but you can donate if you want to. Of course the US fascist regime has cut their funding, so now is a great time to donate to such things!!

Gmail ⟶ Autistici
I got a free email account with Autisici too, and use Mozilla Thunderbird to access it.

Spotify ⟶ Bandcamp 
I never used Spotify to begin with because the musicians I know were losing out to it from the beginning. But Bandcamp is where many of them publish, so that's what I use, or (for big-name musicians) I buy directly from their websites. Also, Bandcamp makes an expressed point of banning AI. Right on!!

YouTube ⟶ MakerTube 
Part of the PeerTube system, MakerTube allows creatives to upload very similarly to YouTube, but without the ads, constant AI spam, and data domination. And free, too, of course! I’m also slowly migrating my content to my new MakerTube account: https://makertube.net/c/emilyartist/videos
(For video-watching, PeerTube definitely doesn't have the amount or variety of content that YouTube has, yet, but it's increasing every day! And it's real, unlike the AI dumping-ground that YouTube has become.)

Google ⟶ Ecosia 
On both phone and laptop, I search with Ecosia. I’ve installed it as the default search engine on my Firefox browser. While Google uses ads to raise their already astronomical profits and fund fascism, Ecosia provides the same search, but uses the ad revenue to fund reforestation. I am, however, increasingly irritated by Ecosia's deep dies to AI, and the increasingly useless search results. I may end up switching to something like Duck Duck Go.

Windows ⟶ Linux Ubuntu
This was the scariest change for me, but it turned out to be both simple and amazing!! Not only are there incredibly robust and useful (free, open-source, decentralized) alternatives for every single application I previously bought or subscribed to, but the platform itself is only slightly different from the platforms we’re used to. Also: There’s an amazing community of Linux users ready to help me when I have a question! 

Next I plan to replace the Android on my phone with Ubuntu touch, which will apparently relate seamlessly with my laptop, and be free (from costs, data insecurity, AND fascism!) I’m also going to get a fully repairable Fairphone. 

Here are some of the apps I use, on Ubuntu. They're also available for use on Windows. Every single one of these is actually better than what it replaced for me. And free.

Word/Spreadsheet/pdf Processor ⟶ LibreOffice
Image Editor ⟶ GIMP
Video Editor ⟶ Kdenlive
Audio Editor ⟶ Audacity
Video Player ⟶ VLC (plays all kinds of things that popular players can’t)

There was one program I couldn’t get an alternative for, which is Blurb’s BookWright app. This worried me, because I do use it frequently. But it turns out there’s an easy fix for this issue! I installed Wine from the Ubuntu store, which emulates Windows, and thusly runs BookWright for me, effortlessly. That’s what’s going on in the background. What I see is just the BookWright app logo on my desktop, and it runs like there’s no background at all. 🙂

Freedom and Human Rights

At some point I realized that in almost every country, it’s illegal to live without buying or renting space on the planet. Sure, there are organizations trying to help those who can’t afford the luxury of shelter, but their goal is still to get people earning enough money to rent space. Eating is the same. You must make enough money to pay someone else to produce food, because growing it, while not always illegal, is at least only available to those who pay for space to grow it. As corporations like Nestle commandeer water resources, and municipalities begin taxing citizens for water-use, but not corporations for draining aquifers, many are now also unable to afford water. We always have to pay for our right to live. And who makes that money? Those depraved billionaires, of course. The only way to keep the basic human rights of taking up space, eating and drinking, is to exercise those rights.

I’ve noticed, personally, that when I go into the city, I feel like I need to pay for food or entertainment, if I want to sit down. To buy a cookie if I want to use a toilet. Cities offer parks and benches, of course, but I feel like there’s a growing expectation that if we’re using the spaces, we should be paying someone. The right to simply rest should not belong to the wealthy.

So taking up space is part of exercising our rights. Drink from the creek. Begin to care where it’s coming from, and who’s polluting it. Sit on the sidewalk and learn to see your neighbours. Encourage them to sit on the sidewalk, too. Plant food crops in disregarded soil. We have the right to live a good life on this earth, with the gifts this earth gives to all animals. Live it.

Activism

I’ve been severely limited by disability these last few years, and haven’t attended a single protest. Luckily, protests are not the only way to act against tyranny! They may not even be the most effective way! My auntie reminded me of this when she sent me this poem, yesterday. With a dizzying array of health problems like strokes and pneumonias that have put most of her career as a poet, performer, educator and author on hold, she still managed to write this poem, record it, and send it out. So I took one minute out of my morning and shared it on my MakerTube and Mastodon! We can ALWAYS do something. 

Maybe the something looks like growing our own food, and sharing the bounty with neighbours. Maybe it looks like writing to people in position to make political or corporate change. Maybe we can make change by choosing how and where we spend our money, or earn it. Maybe we reject industries and products we know to be harmful. My son messaged me yesterday to say he sadly forgot to ask for oat-milk in his cappuccino. Why? I asked him. His answer was that the dairy industry is terrible. We didn’t talk about the coffee industry, but it’s a small thing to request oat milk instead of dairy. Maybe coffee is next. We make a journey by taking one step at a time, and every step matters.

The solution to so many of the world’s problems seems to be thoughtfulness. Awareness. Like when I talked about drinking from a stream, to allow us to take stock of who’s polluting that stream, we need to go through our lives with our eyes open, so that we are compelled to make the changes necessary to live well.

The people who profit off of our ignorance pay big money to maintain that ignorance. But we still have the power to open our eyes. To witness and make choices. When Thijs watched his Jewish neighbours rolled out onto the street he didn’t look away. In fact, eighty-odd years later, he’s still telling the story. Still using his traumatic experience of witnessing genocide to educate; to help all of us to open our eyes. 

We’re all witnessing genocide, today. We’re all witnessing a rise of fascism that is stunning in its similarity to what Thijs and many of our elders experienced less than a hundred years ago. It’s up to each of us to not turn away. To not accept. To not condone. To not support fascism. 

I know it's not so simple. We're funnelled into supporting fascism with every breath we take. But this is war, now. We're dying from our apathy, and the only thing that will save us is taking responsibility for the change. Nobody else is going to do it for us. As Sinéad O'Connor sang in "Drink Before the War", "Somebody cut out your eyes, you refuse to see". They can force us all they want, but the choice to see or not to see is still ours.

It’s up to each of us to build the world that feeds the many instead of the few. It’s up to each of us to look at our own hands and be sure they’re doing work we’re proud of. It’s up to each of us to open our eyes and become aware of the consequences of every action we take, and only take actions we’re proud of. For the good of the family. For the good of all people, and the future and ecology that feeds us, we must open our eyes and choose to see.

An abstract oil painting in red, orange, yellow, green brilliant blue, dark blue and black. It is reminiscent of explosions and fire in the night, with many crossing lines, a bit like a landscape. Named after Sinead O'Connor's song, Drink Before the War.
"Drink Before the War" 
Oil and graphite on canvas. Artist Emily van Lidth de Jeude

Taking the Leap (away from fascism)

A red and orange and yellow background with a giant swoosh of white abstract paints and pencil lines and scratching that vaguely resemble a leaping bird wing.
"Escaping the Nest" (detail), by Emily van Lidth de Jeude

You can only get pushed and pushed and pushed to a certain point, and then it becomes easier to take a leap to somewhere else. That happened to us with our first child, as we tried to find his place in the landscape of school options, and nothing–just nothing–felt good to him. We had heard about some mysterious people who just didn't send their kids to school at all: unschoolers. Terrifying. But after some research, I timidly told our son's Kindergarten principal that we'd be joining the unschoolers. And to my shock, he agreed it was a good idea for our boy! I was scared, but we jumped. And suddenly we felt so free.

So the thing about jumping is that you do get this feeling of freedom, but then you have to land, and land running. I guess we've mastered that, now. We embraced the landing of our unschooling choice, and took step after stumbling step over the next ten or so years, until we discovered our kids (because our daughter chose to unschool as well) were fully capable teens running their own show. And now they're happy, independent adults, still running their own show. We made it! But it wasn't just lucky. It was planned.

You don't jump out of a plane with no preparation. Or at least I hope you don't. I jumped into the unschooling world after a bit of research and some deep heart-searching, because I needed to be sure I could give up my career for this. And I did. I bit the bullet and did it, and we're all OK!! The thing is about making big life-changes: you have to run with it. Don't go timidly. You go with intention, and determination to keep taking the next step, even as you're just starting the first one.

Same for getting married, for maintaining what has sometimes been a difficult marriage, for buying a new car, for taking a huge road-trip with the kids, for some of my biggest art projects, for growing our own food, for my kids when they decided to move out and support themselves, and now… for leaving fascist media in the dust, even though it feels like the whole world depends on it.

Yep. This week I spent every spare minute researching and planning for my leap away from Meta, Paypal, Amazon, and Windows. (I never used X to begin with.) Poof! In two weeks I'll be free of all of them. And yes that includes their hard-copy shops like Whole Foods. Done.

Is it scary? YES!! Especially because most of my friends and even my own kids are not following suit. I've only managed to find a few dozen of my community members on BlueSky, and even fewer on Mastodon. But I have faith that number will grow and, on the whole, I feel delighted. (Edited a year later to add: While there are indeed more locals on BlueSky, I have basically abandoned it now, because Mastodon is far better, and far more open-minded.)

I think I'm in the free-fall stage of taking a leap. I'm buoyed by that feeling of weightless joy that I feel at the top of a swing's arc. I made profiles on BlueSky and Mastodon, and spent two days messaging contacts on Meta and asking for their email addresses and phone numbers. My Contacts folders are now a thing of beauty. 

But the best part is that I've had a few really wonderful conversations (by text and email) with some friends I've not spoken to in years. It turns out I was seeing almost nothing of what my friends posted on Meta, and now I'm finally connecting with these people! Even my European cousins are jumping off WhatsApp and we've moved our cousins-chat to Signal. With a little faith, all this turns out to be easy. It's like a refreshment for my heart and mind! Remember when we used to just call each other for a visit? Or simply drop by? I hope that becomes normal, again.

So, I need a parachute, right? That list of friends' contacts is my parachute. I spent a good long time creating it, and I trust that it will hold me. I've been researching where to get goods locally to replace the things I shamefully relied on getting through Amazon. Additionally, I'll have to learn to use a Linux operating system. That's going to be my next big task. Thankfully I live with a man who has some experience with it, so I know I'll manage. And even one of the locals who's also migrating off of Meta has offered to coach me. We have a beautiful community.

I guess the thing about taking a big leap is to just do it. In all of these situations I got pushed so far I couldn't not jump. In this case, I just know that there is no possible way I can live with myself if I support or am even associated with fascist companies. Being confronted by the irrefutable fascism of these people has pushed me off their platforms. Period. Now I just have to hit the ground running, and I think I can manage that. See you on the other side!

*I'm aware that many people feel we have to stay on these media to transform them. But that's just not me. I like working from the ground up, and now I'm off to help with building something better. For more details on why I'm leaving fascist media, etc. please check out my previous post: My Grandmother's Cocoa and How We Overcome Fascism

My Grandmother's Cocoa and How We Overcome Fascism

A hand lifts the lid of an antique Droste's Cocoa tin. There is red dutch-processed cocoa powder, inside.

On my shelf is this old can of cocoa. It says "Droste" and gives a weight "For Eng. and the Colonies". For me, this can of cocoa carries more than 1lb of memories and warnings.

When I was in my early teens I went to the kitchen of our double-wide trailer, stood at the upper extension of my tip-toes, and slid this red and blue metal can off our harvest-yellow fridge. It had been there as long as I could remember, and I'm not sure why this day, of all others, I finally made hot chocolate for myself, but I did. And since I'd looked in that can many times, I knew where to find my ingredients. 

Maybe fifteen minutes later I sat on the couch, fully proud and enjoying my first self-made hot-chocolate. I found something crunchy in my mouth and, already a fan of chocolate-covered coffee beans, I crunched away at the small bean and said, "aw, Mum! You got your coffee beans in the cocoa." 

"I can't imagine how," she said, disinterested. And I began to crunch another. But I thought better of it, and took it out of my mouth to see. It was a beetle! A small, black, coffee-bean-shaped beetle, desiccated and swirled with all its brethren into my hot chocolate.

"Gross!!" I yelled, and hurried to the kitchen to begin rinsing my mouth and spitting vigorously into the sink. 

Mum followed me. "Where did you get the cocoa?" She asked, with a wry smile.

"From the cocoa can! On the fridge!"

She began laughing. "Oh that's Grootmoeder's. From before the war!"

'Before the war.' Or, in Grootmoeder's words, 'in former days'—this was a topic we all heard about quite often, as storytelling was part of the way my grandmother dealt with her trauma from that time, along with keeping mementos. Our cocoa can was apparently one of those mementos. It was a reminder to her and to future generations of the terrifying shaking of planes overhead, of a deep gnawing in her empty stomach and a deeper fear that the baby in her arms would die of starvation. It was a reminder of the days she slipped under cover of night over rubble and into farmers' fields to steal tulip bulbs to stay alive, but never ever ever used the cocoa. Why? Because she needed a sign of hope that one day cocoa would not be just a relic of 'former days'. 

"Former days' were when Grootmoeder made chocolate treats for my grandfather, read the news and medical journals as compensation for giving up her dream of becoming a doctor in order to get married. When personal sorrows such as hers competed for space in her mind with the news telling of Hitler's determination to invade Poland, and other such worrisome things. I mean, it wasn't as though Hitler was actually new news. His rise to power began the year Grootmoeder was born, so to a young woman on the verge of starting a family, it wasn't exactly alarming. And besides, who wants to be alarmed? Who wants to set aside the demands of daily life to fight for something that may not be such a big deal, especially to a young, privileged, non-jewish Dutch woman? And what could she, a nineteen-year-old, possibly do to help the situation, anyway? She wanted to, of course, but her dream of becoming a doctor was in the process of being shoved under the carpet, and even if war should happen, she wouldn't be tending to injured soldiers.

Five years later she was nursing a baby from her own starving body, while trying to cook tulip bulbs on a dark, makeshift flame, while the buildings around her crumbled. And hidden away with other treasures was a can of cocoa that said "For Eng. and Colonies Net. 1lb." The fact that that cocoa came from a vast landscape of colonial murder and exploitation on the other side of the world, just to be processed and sold not only to my privileged grandmother but also back to the people still colonizing the out-of-sight-out-of-mind Americas was, truly, out-of-mind, to my grandmother, in former days. She had other things to worry about.

As Canadians, on the day after the new regime in America started Nazi-soluting their crowds, freeing violent fascist leaders from prison, and declaring their intentions of annexing various regions of the world, including Canada, we may feel similarly. Maybe it's more important to get our kids to school, today; to keep the peace in a community that's feeling the climatic and geo-political stresses and starting to fray at the edges. Maybe we're too stunned by the US government's sudden and bold conversion to what looks very much like a dictatorship (sweeping unilateral powers handed to the President, reworking of the official government website to remove the constitution and replace it with military imagery, declarations of intent to take over other territories, and commentary about there never being another election). Maybe we Canadians have our own pending elections and fascist contenders to worry about, and, like in the US, where about a third of potential voters didn't vote at all, the silent many could very well determine the outcome. And besides, our neighbours are all angry with us for not speaking up about their causes often enough.

Maybe it seems all hopeless and we just curl up with a hot cocoa for some Netflix hygge time. Maybe you don't want to hear me compare this Canadian moment to that time my grandmother was turning twelve and the Dutch National Socialist Movement was founded, in her country. Because did that really matter, compared to what was happening in Germany? And it was all just "news". What could she have done, anyway?

And here this can sits, on my shelf in Canada, with fresher cocoa in it, and I am self-medicating my very real personal traumas and fears about the future of my world with cocoa that, while supposedly ethically farmed and produced, hearkens back to pre-WWII and reminds me that we're all making choices in all our various moments that may be the difference between eating cocoa and eating tulip bulbs.

We have mundane obligations—yes. We do need to keep ourselves fed and our minds and communities peaceful. And we have opportunities in every action we take to courageously love through our fear. My teenaged grandmother watched the rise of fascism in her country and I'm watching it now, in mine. And all of us have, I feel, the responsibility to work to end short-sighted, morally blind, and greed-motivated thinking in our own communities. Because all fascist leaders began as children in communities, somewhere. All of us have influence on people who may one day oppress us or our loved ones. So that's where we need to do our work.

For me, the work looks like this:

  • Educating myself (with factually and ethically sound sources) on everything I can possibly learn, but especially the functioning of our current society, so that I might better understand the implications and consequences of my daily actions. 
  • Deleting my accounts (and thus no longer supporting or being exploited by) Amazon, Twitter, Paypal, Meta, Oracle, Microsoft, and anything else I soon may find to be associated with the group of mega-billionaires now running the fascist uprising.
  • Seeking to understand and have compassion for others, while still speaking out (gently) when others are causing harm—especially if they don't see it, themselves.
  • Building community: volunteering and supporting others who volunteer in my community. Being engaged in public processes and informed about past, current and future events.
  • Spreading factual information (hopefully non-combatively) in every way I can.
  • Voting at all levels of government. And encouraging others to vote, as well.

I posted recently on a home-canning group I'm a member of, and mentioned something about "hard times ahead". Instantly a bunch of other canners jumped on my comment with laughy-faces and remarks about the coming golden age of America, promised by their newly-elected leader. They were obviously canning the Kool-Aid. 

Let us not be fooled by a smiling face on a can of cocoa or a militarized website. I'm the granddaughter of a Dutch woman who nursed her baby from a starving body, and I'm married to the grandson of a Nazi soldier whose family was impoverished, shunned, and living in extreme fear, after the war. Both of our families carry immense trauma from that time. The last time fascism took hold like it is right now, everybody on every side of all the borders suffered, except the richest few. That's always the way. 

This coming 'golden age' is not for America, it's for the richest few. It's a return to feudalism, and we are the exploited masses. (Watch Yanis Varoufakis explain this, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3FdIyNMaFY) If you're reading this, you're unlikely to be one of the richest few, so we're all serfs in this boat, together. It's not the 'other people' (however you want to define your personal xenophobic preferences) who are causing the problem. It's the people massaging our fears. And together with the diversity of all the other serfs, we're the majority. We can build the future we want to see. 

We are not powerless. We overcome the fascism by refusing to fight, vilify or other our fellow citizens. We overcome the oppression put upon us by creating local abundance and resilience in our own communities. We overcome the fear used to control us by opening our arms to embrace each other. That is how we win.

…
…….
…
Editing this post to add relevant links, for those wanting to understand more about the current regime:

What is wrong with Stargate: https://www.devx.com/experts/matt-wolfe-explains-project-stargate-and-their-500-billion-dollar-plan/

Why leave Meta (beyond their end of fact-checking, diversity employment, and their permissive stance on hate-speech against lgbtq and immigrants (yes–it's worse!)): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3FdIyNMaFY

How AI can be used to support fascism and looking into how to resist that (podcast): https://researchpod.org/university-of-bristol/transforming-society/developing-anti-fascist-ai

Forbes' explanation of the new DEI rules: https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/01/23/trumps-diversity-orders-rattle-ceos-what-companies-should-know-about-new-dei-rules/

Health and Science devastation: https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-hits-nih-devastating-freezes-meetings-travel-communications-and-hiring

Something more hopeful: Elisabet Sahtouris (evolutionary biologist) on the evolutionary inevitability of cooperation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMAPIlUJwmQ

Disinformation and Meanness: What is going on?!

A giant white bird flies upward off the canvas, semi-abstracted, belly in full view, head cut off by the top of the canvas, and feathers disintegrating into the red background, which fades away to black, at the bottom, mirroring the bird's small black feet, pulled tight against its tail.
Escaping the Nest (middle of triptych), by Emily van Lidth de Jeude

It just hit me that maybe ten years ago I was worried about the rise of misinformation on social media. I saw it once in a while; people posting things from known biased sources, or just stating information they assumed was correct but wasn’t. Extensive fact-checking became more necessary than I had felt it was, before, since even trusted sources seemed infiltrated with presumption and error. Or maybe I was just becoming more aware. 

Recently, though, it feels like disinformation is the norm, and complicated with some serious cruelty. On the bigger social media groups I’m a part of (chicken-keeping, canning, foraging, mushrooms, birds, education, etc.) it’s just absolutely normal for somebody to post a question and receive 30–70% wrong answers. It seems people have just become accustomed to stating an uneducated guess as fact. (And seriously — for canning, foraging, mushrooms, chickens, and schooling, this can lead to disaster, for example when someone asks for ID on a poisonous mushroom, and half the responses say it’s edible, and most of the other half are phallus jokes.) And then there are the people berating each other, not just for being wrong, but for correcting the mistakes, as well. Or for totally unrelated things. Like when said phallus jokes become linked to anti-trans attacks. It gets awful out there.

THEN there’s the morality war. There is a propensity for people (mostly white men, I’m sorry to say), to stick their uneducated opinions into posts about LGBTQ2IA+, indigenous, children’s rights, women’s rights, and BIPOC issues… again, as facts. Many of these “facts” are colonial constructs held by our society because they keep white men in power (and because the rest of us think they ensure our continued prosperity). But many are now also just lies made up by conspiracy theorists (like all the supposed chemical, psychological and media conspiracies to make our kids gay or trans or supportive of minority rights…) Sure, there are many sides to every story, but some things are actually not happening. I’m not even getting into the massive quagmire of people in power (often leaders of large corporate enterprises, politicians and religious leaders) using minorities as stepping-stones to more power. Some of us use these crimes as security for our privilege, without ever questioning ourselves.

In my art life this takes shape as criticism and fear: Am I appropriating symbols that are proprietary to a marginalized group that I’m not a member of? Rainbow spectra and feathers were important in my work before I became aware of appropriation, and it’s been hard to sideline them, even though I know how important it is. Even harder was the bickering between artists and members of the LGBTQ2IA+ and BIPOC communities. Oh yeah, and the outright hate-filled rhetoric between some feminists of different stripes. These issues make communicating online really fraught, even without the added question of misinformation or disinformation.

What is going on?! Why is our culture disintegrating into this kind of nastiness and ignorance? As a long-time unschooling parent who notices the lack of this behaviour in the unschooling groups, it’s easy to feel like it might have some kind of relationship with our education system. Especially since unschooling mindset is one of curiosity, acceptance and learning, and unfortunately the compulsory, competitive nature of our school system can provoke a rebellion against curiosity and learning, as well as a propensity for bullying tactics. The rebellion against understanding and the bullying are apparent in a lot of the online attacks I’ve seen. But I think that, in the bigger picture, there’s a deeper reason. We’re experiencing a massive cultural shift. Our minds are opening. And that’s just messy.

We’re threatened from all angles as climate change changes every single foundation our cultures were built on (predictability of seasons, harvests, weather, migration, and therefore employment, finances, housing, healthcare, and even cultural norms). So in this state of growing societal panic, some people are trying to keep things as they were (ignoring the fact that the great majority of underprivileged people have already been suffering these unpredictabilities forever). Some are taking opportunities to fight for rights long-denied to them. Some, like me, are gleefully running headlong into the change, wanting to create a new and better world out of the chaos, and ALL of us are rather ungrounded in the process. There’s so much change, so much fear and threat, that we’re all just kind of scrabbling for understanding all the time. I guess it’s not surprising that a lot of people are confused about the facts, in this kind of chaos! I am too. Everything seems to take so much research now! And patience, tact, and caution! And in the rush of this change, and the feeling of urgency everywhere, it’s not surprising we don’t feel we have time to fact-check or to come to an understanding of the issues we’re talking about before making assumptions and proclamations. 

So it’s frustrating, and sometimes even extremely upsetting, when people resort to cruelty because they feel threatened or inadequate in the face of such big unfathomable change. But it’s necessary that we remain patient and kind, reminding ourselves that these actions are a part of our societal growth. And I’m choosing to see it as a great sign that big change is happening. As a woman with many friends and family in marginalized communities, I’m glad to see my own and other people’s rights have a chance to be respected. As a person living on earth, I’m glad we are making changes that might make our future survivable! Maybe we can all take deep breaths and remind ourselves that everybody is confused and frightened. And maybe saying lots of wrong things is part of our process. We’re learning to learn and communicate! Real learning with an open heart and mind is how we will adapt to our new civilization. It’s how we will all grow to meet the challenge of a world none of us have lived in, before.