cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/24802818

Just after Trump’s re-election in November 2024, I wrote a column headlined ‘How to Survive the Broligarchy’ (reproduced below) and in the three months since, pretty much everything it predicted how now come to pass. This is technoauthoritarianism. It’s tyranny + surveillance tools. It’s the merger of Silicon Valley companies with state power. It’s the ‘broligarchy’, a concept I coined in July last year though I’ve been contemplating it for a lot longer. Since 2016, I’ve followed a thread that led from Brexit to Trump via a shady data company called Cambridge Analytica to expose the profound threat technology poses to democracy. In doing so, I became the target: a weaponized lawsuit and an overwhelming campaign of online abuse silenced and paralysed me for a long time. This - and worse - is what so many others now face. I’m here to tell you that if it comes for you, you can and will survive it.

This week represents a hinge of history. Everything has changed. America and Russia are now allies. Ukraine has been thrown to the dogs. Europe’s security hangs in the balance. On the one hand, there’s nothing any of us can do. On the other, we have to do something. So, here’s what I’m doing. I’m starting a conversation. I’ve recorded the first one - a scrappy pilot - a podcast I’ve called How to Survive the Broligarchy and I’ve re-named the newsletter too. This first conversation (details below) is about how we need a new media built from the ground up to deal with the dangerous new world we’re in. That can only happen, in partnership with you, the reader. The days of top-down command and control are over. Please let’s try and do this together.