Social media is the house that always wins
On taking our resistance offline
I want to write to you about seeing people treated like animals as they’re kidnapped. I want to write to you about ICE illegally creating warrants after detaining a man in Chicago. I want to write to you about fascists dehumanizing and abusing our neighbors. I want to write to you about the White House releasing a sickening, gleeful video about people being disappeared to El Salvador while Trump’s Press Secretary smugly talks about violating human rights and ignoring judges’ orders.
And maybe I will. Maybe I will write about this unfolding nightmare. Maybe I will write more about how a U.S. citizen, a man born in Chicago, was among those ICE abducted in a recent raid. Maybe I will write about how they didn’t even ask him his citizenship status. And if I don’t, I’m sure someone will.
But I’m afraid. There’s plenty to fear, but today I’m afraid of how inclined we are to write and write, to post and post, without mustering the real resistance that is so clearly demanded of us at this moment. I’m afraid of how many of us still think social media, analysis, and critique are the proper forums for fighting back against a fascist onslaught.
I’m tempted to analyze the aesthetics of the nightmarish videos Trump, and his partner in El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele, are releasing of men who have been kidnapped and sent into prison slavery without just cause or due process. And maybe I will, but I will not confuse that with resistance. We’ve been conditioned to respond to this crisis in essays, in posts, in videos. We’ve been conditioned to post and express rage and raise awareness. We’ve been conditioned to consume more and more media. We’ve been conditioned to confine our resistance to social media.
The hard truth, as I’ve said before and will say again, is that consuming information is not resistance. Posting is not resistance. Some good can come from spreading information, but it’s not the resistance we desperately need. The hard truth is that the house always wins. The game is rigged in Vegas, and it’s rigged on Instagram — we can’t beat back this fascist onslaught on their turf. Algorithms across platforms are controlled by billionaires, and if we focus our energy too heavily on social media we risk becoming controlled opposition. We risk venting and feeling like we’re fighting the forces of evil on our phones and computers and maybe even getting some catharsis out of it, all while changing little or nothing.
Don’t get me wrong, movements have been sparked online from time to time, people have learned and been radicalized, and donations have been facilitated. Folks shouldn’t stop raising funds for Palestine and victims of climate disasters and more as long as they remain on these platforms. But our vision of what constitutes resistance to fascism should rapidly decenter the online model.
The necessity for this change comes to the fore every time we witness another fascist encroachment. When ICE kidnaps someone, when DOGE attacks another agency, when Republicans pass another atrocious law we see the outpouring of righteous anger, of informative perspective, of calls to resist on social media. And in the streets? In the streets we have yet to see the true manifestations of our righteous rage.
Right now some people are better positioned to disrupt the status quo and foment real resistance than others. They’re most often the people who have been working on these issues for years and decades, and who are considerably less online. The people who identified prisons, the slave labor that happens within them, and the oppressive system that in many cases already locks people up without due process across the United States have, in many cases, built long-term organizations. The people who identified the immigration system of this country as being unjust, violent, and inherently fascistic have been organizing people for years and years. Typically these folks aren’t broadcasting everything they do on social media, and they typically aren’t directing a big chunk of their precious time, energy, and money to a media operation.
This is not to say we should abandon the entire media landscape to the right. Multiple organizations are amping up their efforts to compete with fascist influencers and their vast influence. It’s uneven and imperfect and an uphill battle, but folks are trying. The thing is, they’re trying in an organized fashion. The media efforts with a real chance of meeting this moment are funded and structured and have full-time people working for them, just like the right.
Part of the reason the right has had so much success in this arena is that these big influencers like Rogan, Shapiro, and Peterson talk endlessly. Specifically, they host podcasts and streaming shows that go for hours and hours. The smaller blue circles above often do the same, but ordinary people can’t do this stuff. We can post our posts, and even write our newsletters, but we can’t spend countless hours talking to folks and weaving in political messages between our talk of sports and current events and cultural moments.
All of this is to say that social media is not our playing field. It never was, but with Musk capturing Twitter, Zuckerburg running far to the right, and well-funded far-right influences dominating much of the landscape we’re at more of a disadvantage than ever. And, yet, all is not lost. It never is, as long as we remain in this fight.
We do have a playing field. Our turf is our communities, our workplaces, the real world. There is work to be done in the streets, at our jobs, in conversation with our neighbors, and everywhere where our interactions are not ultimately under the thumb of billionaire’s algorithms. When we’re so used to responding to the horrors of fascism online it can be difficult to even conceive of how to move our resistance to three dimensions. The first step is shifting our approach from reacting to individual events to identifying patterns. I’ll explain.
Media, both social and conventional, typically broadcasts every atrocity in isolation, one by one. To conduct an effective resistance to fascism we first need to pause, stop seeing and absorbing every single event as an isolated, individual occurrence, and identify the patterns. Then, we need to move from identification to an analysis of the power structures holding up fascism. Finally we need to figure out how to take action, and take it.
It’s easy to get bogged down at multiple stages in this process. I’ve spoken primarily about getting caught in the relentless bombardment of events, but we can get stuck in the analysis too. Social media, especially in the form of newsletters and Substacks, can become endless analysis and critique. Nuanced breakdowns are important, healthy criticism is important, but this still is no substitute for action. Analysis is still not resistance. It’s necessary to identify trends and land on an accurate assessment of our conditions — necessary, but not sufficient. We must then move forward into real organizing and fighting back.
I’m not saying we should never post, I’m saying we should not mistake the catharsis we might briefly feel on social media for the work that needs to be done. Trying to absorb every news item, being pelted with one current event after another, all of it can be immobilizing, can stop us from clearly identifying what’s happening, and can stop us from taking action. A tipping point, a crisis, can be missed in the constant fire hose of information.
Right now we’re at risk of exactly that. Trump’s “flood the zone” approach is causing some people to constantly move on to his next move rather than sitting with the fact that he has now crossed the Rubicon. His administration is defying the courts to illegally deport people based solely on unfounded allegations. We’re here. The crisis has arrived.
Don’t scroll to the next post, the next tweet, the next newsletter. Instead, figure out how you can plug into real resistance during this pivotal moment in our lives. Take the time to step back from the playing field of fascist billionaires and sort out how you can get together and organize with other people who are determined to fight back against this authoritarian regime. We need each other, now more than ever, and we need to act.
First, resources for folks who might have trouble attending in-person events. The following groups have hybrid and Zoom meetings, calls, and more:
The Debt Collective: https://debtcollective.org/
Indivisible: https://indivisible.org/
Resources that are more in-person focused, although some of the following organizations also have remotely accessible events:
Unionize your workplace: https://workerorganizing.org/
Talk to your neighbors and form a tenant union: https://tenantfederation.org/tenant-unions/
Federal workers (and others) check out the federal unionists network: https://www.federalunionists.net/
Organize against the war machine: https://wearedissenters.org/
Take Down Tesla: https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown
People Over Profit: https://linktr.ee/putplanetoverprofit
Dream Defenders: https://www.dreamdefenders.org/
And please remember that disabled people exist. We can't always or sometimes ever be involved in resistance if people aren't being inclusive and masking. Our lives are dependent on everyone else right now.
Great messsage… let’s share and share and restack!!
I restacked with this quote: