If the Twitter/X thing teaches you one thing, let it be this: Twitter was a neoliberal place. Then Elon Musk made it into X, a fascist place. Once again, neoliberalism laid the foundations of fascism. But that’s not the (whole) lesson… Neoliberal folks are still using X, calling it Twitter to make themselves feel better, and pining for the good old days. And there’s the real lesson: When neoliberalism turns into fascism, neoliberals will adapt to life under fascism. Right, class dismissed.
The conclusion is moot when the premise itself is wrong. Twitter was only "a neoliberal place" if you're only looking at the neoliberal part of it. It's like saying "YouTube is a site about sports highlights" because that's all you watch.
If you used Twitter and only saw neoliberal garbage, that's on you for following neoliberals. It completely ignores the majority of communities.
When I was active on there, if I saw a political tweet it was pro-socialist 95% of the time.
He’s also saying neoliberals/centrists are largely performative, and they are fine with fascism. It’s a variation of the Nazi bar story.
There were always problems with Twitter’s moderation as it was lighter on the right than the left. The famous comment about not banning Republicans congresspeople comes to mind. It was never as right leaning as Facebook though.
I am a proponent of the fediverse as well but I do it without disparaging the people on X who are still there because the community they've been a part of for 2 decades is still there.
i think youre misunderstanding the point they're trying to make, but then again they're not expressly clear who they're talking about either and "neoliberal" is a term that means different things based on how we've been using it etc etc.
If the Twitter/X thing teaches you one thing, let it be this: Twitter was a neoliberal place. Then Elon Musk made it into X, a fascist place. Once again, neoliberalism laid the foundations of fascism.
I suggest they're referring to the ownership of Twitter, not twitters users here. Twitter was owned by neolibs (they assert) and sold to Elon. They're saying Elon is making X more fascist, not speaking about the userbase.
Neoliberal folks are still using X, calling it Twitter to make themselves feel better, and pining for the good old days.
And there’s the real lesson: When neoliberalism turns into fascism, neoliberals will adapt to life under fascism. Right, class dismissed.
Now he's moved to the userbase, which is confusing and muddles things up a bit. but his point here is the neolibs are the ones who stayed on X even after fascist users started coming in due to a fascist ownership. They complain, but they get by, because (and this may now just be my projecting my own thoughts) neoliberals have 0 morals and 0 insight.
You said you aren't there anymore. I think this means you're exempt.
I stopped being active on Twitter long before the sale for unrelated reasons but I've popped on from time to time because I still have friends on there who don't use other platforms.
I take issue with the "everyone who stays is complicit" argument in the same way I have issues with the "everyone in Alabama is a racist magat" because it completely ignores why people actually stay - community and connections.
Unless you can convince your entire circle to switch to a different platform all at once, the move is painful. I get it.
The users on it might "do socialism" but the owners, curators, and managers just saw that as a product for them to sell ads next to. The socialism is sort of bait.
Having a show featuring socialists or with socialist themes doesn't make your network socialist.
He bought it because even though he has more money than he could ever spend, all his small mind craves is other losers thinking he's cool. He was granted extra money when he bought it by people who hated the fact Twitter was used to support revolution in the Middle East and wanted to ensure if that ever happened again, they would control the person who could shut it down.
It says the same thing about TERF. When people find accurate, clinically boring descriptions of themselves offensive, it's not the term that's at fault.
Neoliberal is an accurate descriptor for most liberals, progressive or conservative. The politics they support are similar more than they are different. The strong social safety net libs are social democrats who are either confused or in denial. I can't fault them too much, good political education is basically non-existent in most schools. That still doesn't mend the whole "caving to fascism" thing, social democrats still advocate capitalism. See how Sweden or Finland have been doing lately for a prime example
A political ideology or ideological trend based on neoclassical economics that espouses economic liberalism, favouring trade liberalisation, financial deregulation, a small government, privatisation and liberalisation of government businesses, passive antitrust enforcement, accepting greater economic inequality and disfavouring unionisation.
The Spanish polisci professor Juan Carlos Monedero explained the utility of the term this way: "Classical liberals challenged the status quo because the status quo was antidemocratic. Neoliberals challenge the status quo because they want the state to shrink."
In US terms, both the Democrats and the Republicans have neoliberals, although both wings are shrinking in favor of progressives and ultraconservatives, respectively, in the last few years.
I'll agree that Twitter is a mess right now, but fascist? I think y'all throw the word around too much, and risk making it lose its meaning.
Fascism is not everything evil. Fascism is a specific flavor of evil. It's only fascism if it:
Has a dictator with absolute power
Is militaristic
Suppresses opposition with force
Has a social hierarchy
Prioritizes the nation over its members
Has strict rules for society and the economy
Otherwise, it's just sparkling authoritarianism. Don't get me wrong, that can still be just as evil or worse depending on how it's done, but spreading misinformation is not automatically fascism.
Frankly, I don't have a real issue with calling it fascism if it only meets some of the points above, but if it doesn't even meet half, I think you're stretching.
They're using the adjective to describe it as platform used by fascists and that promotes fascist content. Obviously Twitter is not a fascist government any more than a fascist bar or fascist newspaper is.
Fascism is a political strategy that seeks to preserve, create, and entrench structures and relationships of power imbalance by means of promoting and facilitating mass, broad-spectrum chauvinism in ways that are likely to encourage widespread individual and systemic violence.
"Chauvinism" here-in refers to an irrational belief that one's own identity makes them superior.
Note that this definition essentially covers the 14 characteristics of fascism as detailed by Umberto Eco, and generalizes them. It is not, as you imply, a type of governance nor is it a coherent political philosophy as so many seem to think. Under this definition, the conduct and statements of Elon Musk in general and his management of Twitter in particular certainly qualify.
Thanks for mentioninng Umberto Eco's 14 traits of fascism. I hadn't seen them before, but the summary was a good read. I'll list them out here, with a few tweaks to the phrasing because I'm like that:
Tradition has all the answers.
Rejection of modern culture.
Action for action's sake.
Disagreement is treason.
Fear of difference - and different people.
Middle class vs lower class.
The enemy is always scheming something.
The enemy is both dangerous and weak.
If you're not fighting, you're with the enemy.
Chauvinism.
Everyone must be a hero of the cause.
Machismo.
The common will, as interpreted by the leader, subsumes individual opinions.
Control of language to control thought.
I can accept this definition. It's notably not meant to say "it's only fascism if it covers all 14 points." Eco states that fascism might coagulate around only one of these points, but I don't think that should be taken to mean "if it meets one point, it's fascism," just that it could be. Otherwise, an order of knights is a fascist regime for meeting point 11.
I think it's also valuable to take these points and do a little introspection to make sure you're not being fascist (or fascist-like) yourself. I know my beliefs can be construed to hit around 2-5 of the points partially.
All that said... What you defined is violent systemic chauvinism (I'll call it VSC for short.) There's definitely major overlap between that and fascism, but I don't think it covers all of fascism, and I think it covers things that are fascist-adjacent without technically being fascist (even though they're still very evil.) For example, you could have a more communist flavor of VSC where the majority demographic of the middle class actually rules themselves and gets violent against anyone else, but it's not fascism because there isn't a placable dictator or even oligarchy. Or you could theoretically have a fascist regime without chauvinism, which doesn't meet VSC.
I meant that if it had been bought up by someone favouring socialist users and wanted to further that ideology, it would seem a bit strange to me that someone's takeaway would be that neoliberalism laid the foundations for socialism.
It's a website that got bought. If you meant that "money rules the world" is capitalism or neoliberalism then their point becomes a bit muddled, with capitalism laying foundation for capitalism or neoliberalism laying foundation for neoliberalism. What would that even mean?
I don't see any sort of ideological struggle or laying foundations. It was just a purchase. My friend didn't lay the foundations for me to drive to places when I bought his car and used it to drive places hah.
not a meme, please use the sister communities for content like this
(I hate to do this bc I agree with it, but my brain hates twitter posts or just generally walls of text in a meme community)
What a weird and stupid conclusion. Always hated Twitter, barely used it, hated every second. Now it's ten times worse. I would never consider viewing any X content by choice.
But yes the thing I said that in no way relates to Twitter means I love to suck musk dick all day long.
(not OC) I'm not on X but I will still defend Twitter because it rocked. I "curated" my timeline to be just friends, musicians, and comedians so I rarely saw politics...instead I got a steady feed of one-liners. You know, those screenshots that get spread around every other site to make us laugh?
Twitter had one of the most diverse userbases of any social media site I've ever used. No matter your interest, you could find a circle to run with. Science Twitter, sports Twitter, weird Twitter...take your pick. Don't follow capitalists if you don't want to see capitalist tweets.
140-char Twitter was amazing, 280-char Twitter was pretty good, and X sucks ass.
Libs love fascism but Twitter could be turned into X and made fascist isn't an argument for that. Maybe on the extremely loose way that private property allows this to happen.
About ten years ago Twitter was actually a place for Canadian politicians and journalists and average folks with interest in politics of all views to converse and joke around together. It actually was very fun and despite the fact we didn't agree, stuff like the Tell Vic Everything hashtag ended up being a very organic movement of sorts where a conservative idea for dissolved into humour. It really was rather non-partisan and enjoyable and I'm always sorry it changed.