“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel… I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of..
“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel … I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose,” declaimed the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace , 21 years ago. Welp. That did not go quite as intended. Instead the Internet seems to have brought us new, networked forms of fascism.
The Internet was supposed to dissolve national boundaries, and turn the world into a global village — but that village wasn’t supposed to be run by racist bullies. Alas! The first successful networked, borderless, transnational political coalition has arisen, and guess what? It’s composed largely of “ethno-nationalists,” aka “white supremacists.” Joke’s on you, John Perry Barlow.
I’m talking, of course, about the Brexit braintrust; the Trump administration; Vladimir Putin’s kleptocracy; and various lesser hangers-on, such as Holland’s Geert Wilders, France’s Marine le Pen, Austria’s Norbert Hofer, Germany’s AfD party, and (sigh) my homeland Canada’s Kellie Leitch.
Of course the irony is that all of the above claim to be in favor of national sovereignty, and stronger nation-states. But this is clearly only a means to end, that being: drastically reducing nonwhite, and especially Muslim, immigration to their white nations. They’re all on essentially the same team. As Josh Barro puts it : “For members of a movement that purports to focus on putting American interests first, American nationalists seem to spend an awful lot of time obsessing about Europe.”
It’s not like this coalition is in any way secret.
