Facebook Is Dangerous

It's rare for me to link to an article without having much more to add, but Tom Hodgkinson in the Guardian does every human being involved in internet anything (and possibly more people than that) a massive service by writing this article on Facebook. It's a superb exposé / deconstruction of the reason for Facebook's existence, it's modus operandi, and the scary political vision of Peter Theil, the "real face behind Facebook".

This little taster from their website will give you an idea of their vision for the world: "TheVanguard.Org is an online community of Americans who believe in conservative values, the free market and limited government as the best means to bring hope and ever-increasing opportunity to everyone, especially the poorest among us." Their aim is to promote policies that will "reshape America and the globe". TheVanguard describes its politics as "Reaganite/Thatcherite". The chairman's message says: "Today we'll teach MoveOn [the liberal website], Hillary and the leftwing media some lessons they never imagined."

So, Thiel's politics are not in doubt. What about his philosophy? I listened to a podcast of an address Thiel gave about his ideas for the future. His philosophy, briefly, is this: since the 17th century, certain enlightened thinkers have been taking the world away from the old-fashioned nature-bound life, and here he quotes Thomas Hobbes' famous characterisation of life as "nasty, brutish and short", and towards a new virtual world where we have conquered nature. Value now exists in imaginary things. Thiel says that PayPal was motivated by this belief: that you can find value not in real manufactured objects, but in the relations between human beings. PayPal was a way of moving money around the world with no restriction. Bloomberg Markets puts it like this: "For Thiel, PayPal was all about freedom: it would enable people to skirt currency controls and move money around the globe."

Clearly, Facebook is another uber-capitalist experiment: can you make money out of friendship? Can you create communities free of national boundaries - and then sell Coca-Cola to them? Facebook is profoundly uncreative. It makes nothing at all. It simply mediates in relationships that were happening anyway.

This social media revolution is all about "sharing" we are often told, but what does that mean? As Tom says, "Share" is Facebookspeak for "advertise". In this context, share is all about survival of the kind of open society we enjoy - read his article, come to your own conclusions.

I previously wrote about Facebook here. I collect links on Facebook here: http://del.icio.us/deekdeekster/Facebook/

Fascism 2.0

Recently I've been observing the strange resurgence of fascism on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. First was the shocking to some (but utterly predictable) outbreak of Israeli fascism in Petah Tikva. Eight young men of Russian origin are said to have filmed themselves carrying out hate crimes, wearing Nazi insignia and proclaiming their allegiance to Adolf Hitler.

Why predictable? Because theocratic Israel has always encouraged aliyah (Jewish immigration) regardless of any other moral considerations or political persuasion, in its constant, apartheid-style attempt to marginalise and repress the indigenous Arab population. It matters not to them whether you are ultra-right or just plain evil, just so long as you are Jewish, or at least, one of your relatives is Jewish. These poor but often highly educated Russian emigrants replaced the Arabs in the worst jobs, taking their place at the very bottom of this divided, stratified society, doctors and dentists finding themselves doing humiliating menial labour. Ironically one of the targets of this reprehensible group of thugs were ultra-orthodox, often right-wing religious Israelis, who were viciously attacked along with the usual fascist victims, people with dark skin, and homosexuals.

Secondly, in Greece, that beautiful, fire-ravaged, burnt land, the place which, when I first visited its shores, I understood how humans could look upon landscape and consider it the handiwork of God, I read that the far right political group, with their simplistic, populist solutions in a time of great trauma, are likely in their general election to exceed the 3% of the vote necessary to enter national parliament.

As I was entering adult life in the late 1970s there was briefly a resurgence of British nationalism, led by the long-since discredited National Front, and since replaced by the British National Party or BNP. Millions of people of conscience - the same kinds of Brits who marched against the Iraq war - joined the Anti-Nazi League and attended Red Wedge concerts in mass, voluble, visible protest at the rise of intolerance and violent bigotry.

Racism still simmers in parts of the UK - in Bradford, in Essex - places where a poor white underclass is ripe for exploitation. Glad to say we've kept our Nazis excluded from all but the smallest showing in local councils, but they still exist, although thankfully we're more resistant to them than our French neighbours across the channel.

British fascism is relatively clever though, it likes to sneak in through the back door. Many of the policies adopted by Thatcher in those dreadful Conservative years were fascist - like cancelling elections, for example. Thank God we've moved on; and let's be sure not to go backwards in forgetfulness and ignorance.