We Don't Need No Stinkin' Internet.
Let's build an egalitarian revolutionary movement that's based on face-to-face, not on Substack or Zoom or FB or TicTok, all of which can be turned off whenever the ruling class wishes.
Recently I shared a post by Miri about how we can’t rely on Substack. She made good points. But one thing she said seemed wrong. She said that she absolutely required the internet to connect with people who agreed with her unorthodox anti-establishment views. She seems to think that the people who share or would be interested in her anti-establishment views are rare and thinly scattered around the world.
On the contrary, I think that our neighbors—the people who shop where we shop or who live on the same street where we live or who may work for the same employer, and so on—are exactly the right kind of people for us—people who want an egalitarian revolution—to be talking to and when we do we’ll find them to be in fundamental agreement with us. This is what I find over and over again, as I have reported on here. And here is where I discuss how YOU can find this out for yourself.
Miri talks in her article about the advantages of Zoom for at least being able to tell if a person is a real person or not. True (at least true until AI gets a bit more sophisticated.) But even Zoom, for all of its convenience (which I do not deny) is in my view a danger rather than a solution when (as is too often the case) it is used as a substitute rather than a complement for creating face-to-face connections (egalitarian revolutionary connections) with the people where one lives or works.
When there are not face-to-face connections but only zoom-call connections or Substack connections (or Tic Tok or FB, etc. connections), then what seems like a substantial social force can vanish the instant the ruling class turns off the internet, which it absolutely can do.
Once we have robust face-to-face connections with our neighbors and/or co-workers then we can figure out ways to communicate with other face-to-face connected people far away, ways that do not rely on the internet. People used to do this all the time, don’t forget.
The ruling class can’t shut down ham radio, for example.
I heard an airline mechanic explain to me that, years ago, he and other mechanics all over the world communicated secretly with each other (even about things such as strike tactics) by placing messages hidden under the bellies of the jet planes.
I’m sure we will be able to come up with lots of ways to communicate that the ruling class can’t shut down, once necessity becomes the mother of invention.
Print newspapers or magazines (or what were called zines) once provided the means of discussing things in depth with other people. The internet has pretty much displaced such things, but we might want to go back to using them one day when the internet is no longer reliable. Before the World Wide Web took over I remember in the 1990s using the postal system to mail a newsletter to subscribers around the country. If the postal system is denied us then it’s back to the “bellies of jet planes” and so forth.
In the 1960s I and some others learned how to operate an offset printing press that we obtained, and used it to print anti-Vietnam War pamphlets that we handed out in large quantities.
Students for a Democratic Society—the big anti-Vietnam War student organization in the 1960s—was based on face-to-face local chapters, but they met in national conventions too. The absence of the internet did not stop us!
The IWW “Wobblies” were terrific, without the internet.
The Seattle General Strike was face-to-face. So were all of the mighty labor strikes in the 1930s that won all the New Deal reforms such as Social Security.
If you think that it’s not possible to build a face-to-face egalitarian revolutionary movement with your neighbors, then you need to talk to your neighbors as I implore you to do, and find out what the truth is.
You will be surprised! You will discover that the vast majority of people would LOVE an egalitarian revolution (even if they currently think it is impossible because they wrongly think hardly anybody else agrees with them.) But you will never discover this truth if your activism is only zoom call activism or Substack activism or FB or TicToc activism. Never!
Most people—your neighbors who would love an egalitarian revolution but who think it is impossible—are going to want to hear what you have to say (and read what you may have written) and think about it and ask you questions and think about your answers for quite a long time before they decide to join a more formal face-to-face group of any kind. Creating a local face-to-face group thus takes more time, and a different approach, than getting some activists on a zoom call from all over he world. We need to do it anyway!
Remember that the rulers can turn off the internet when they wish. When they do so, what happens to our revolutionary organization that depends on it?
An important ingredient that internet communication does not have, sometimes a deal-breaker even... is TONE.
Agreed John. The internet has provided a means of communication but at the cost of interaction in the fullest sense. We have a convenient media to exchange ideas but not the physical presence to enforce them. Once the authorities shut down the media we shall have to establish afresh the sense of solidarity and commitment that a person to person exchange alone can bring.