§0.0 Digital-Fascism
Memetic-Current: Blockchain and Memes
§0.1 — One can conceive of a future, perhaps an already present one, in which the decentralization and proliferation of information lead to the fabrication of an innumerable set of self-validated world views. The information age or as what some thinkers have labeled the postmodern condition. In Baudrillardian terms, the condition we find ourselves in is that of the dominion of the Image.
§0.2 — The Image, in this case, refers to the fourth stage of sign order. The fourth stage is a pure simulacrum; the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. In this stage, signs refer back to other signs and no longer refer to reality (if they ever did). The saturation of images leads to a self-referential logic.
§0.3 — The self-referential logic is coherent within its own networks, but the “sign-chains” are unintelligible to an outside register. The logic of capitalism is of the Schizophrenic as a mode of thought. A signifier may not be inherently connected to its sign, but it still refers to the highly schizophrenic capitalist subject.
“Jameson writes that:
‘schizophrenic experience is an experience of isolated, disconnected, discontinuous material signifiers that fail to link up into a coherent sequence. The schizophrenic thus does not know personal identity in our sense since our feeling of identity depends on our sense of the persistence of the “I” and the “me” over time (119).’
According to Jameson, the schizophrenic lacks a personal identity, is unable to differentiate between self and world, and is incapable of experiencing continuity through time.” — Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Jonah Paretti
§0.4 — If the signs or images still refer, it is important to remember that it is not what they refer to value or use. Instead, the arrangement of these signs into coherent “sign-chains” within their self-referential networks. In other words, if technological innovation leads to sign compression and proliferation as part of a deterritorializing process, then the compensatory reterritorialization is the formation of new self-contained narrative structures.
§0.5 — The increasing emphasis of “free-independent thinking” on “the right” has led to rapid proliferation and aggregation of information. One of the primary examples of this phenomenon is observed in non-other than the Flat Earth Community. These individuals lack trust in a trusted third party that verifies and validates what is considered a “fact.” This has led to the proliferation of beliefs, methodologies, etc., which at the very least, are coherent within a particular framework or by adopting a set of assumptions.
§0.6 — The fragmentation of information has been instantly met with a rapid aggregation or centralization. The individual constituents form their own self-referential networks to help explain a certain set of phenomena. This is not a unique behavior to either the right or the left; it is not unique to any particular group. As a capitalist subject, everyone is a “schizophrenic.”
§0.7 — The United States’ polarization can easily be described as the over-saturation of signs and images. News, Media outlets, blogs, social media bombard and overstimulate our minds every waking moment. The restructuring of these Images into a coherent narrative was and to some degree is useful from an evolutionary standpoint. Aggregating information to produce pattern recognition to locate food sources and water niches are probably one of the most advantageous uses for this proclivity humans have to connect signs to a referent.
§0.8 — The Left and the Right have formed a schism due to completely separate world views from one another. This is exacerbated by mainstream media codifying certain behaviors to match the corresponding audience’s world views. The best, most recent example of this is how the media has portrayed the BLM protests in comparison to the recent pro-Trump protests and infiltration into Capitol Hill.
§0.9 — The Meta or the material substrate analysis would codify this as simply a material flow of capital. Woke or anti woke sentiment has become the most profitable mode of social clout for engagement on media networks. The amount of traffic a particular site gets based on viewership dictates the amount of ad revenue generated. If that ad revenue increases due to an increase in time spent on-site, then the algorithms used to keep one using the site or app will not only benefit from showing content that one engages with but will develop its efficiency in this process via positive feedback.
§0.9.1 — This can also be illustrated in terms of a libidinal impulse. If what is desired is that which triggers our pleasure receptors in our brains via social validation, then the most successful algorithms or structures of control are going to be those which keep us entrapped in a perpetual loop of libidinal intensification.
§0.9.2 — Capital aggregation itself not only creates a flow for the fragmentation of a particular narrative but simultaneously a niche is produced that creates a schism. As the schism grows, the aggregation of the information and, by extension, the aggregation of capital leads to the formation of a new “sign chain” which is intelligible to those who coalesced to the coherent self-referential network that renders their material experience coherent. In short, not only are the structures of control material structures that exist in a rigorous material sense, but our libidinal drives themselves form those structures. Therefore any analysis can not circumvent either framework.
§1.0 — What this entails is what we are currently witnessing. If postmodernity can be categorized as a post-truth time, then the Metamodern era is a time of the rebirth of truth. Truth not as objective reality or a transcendental object of some sort, but as creating new narratives, new values while simultaneously recognizing their fallibility. Digital Fascism does not look like 20th-century fascism because there are no territorial or national boundaries. If neoliberalism’s logic is the logic of globalism and multiculturalism, pluralism, etc., then Digital Fascism is a micro-fascism born in the virtual plane. It exists within Cyberia, connecting and forming “national” identities, not by shared ethnicity or love for the state but by a shared online community.
§1.1 What we desire is anything that appears solid and appears to persevere the corrosive forces of capitalism.
— To Be Continued
