Global Guerrillas

21st Century Authoritarianism

Here's a question you should be asking yourself:

What does 21st Century authoritarianism look like?

Given what we've seen so far, it isn't likely that we're going to see a return to the 20th Century model, with its absolute dictators, industrial scale bureaucracies, paramilitaries, ideologies, ubiquitous/vicious secret police, relentless propaganda, etc... 

That model died when globalization and the Internet hollowed out the nation-state.

The new model of authoritarianism.  The model that is sweeping the world is very different. 

It's networked. 

These networks aren't formal constructs.  They don't rely on rigid ideologies or hierarchies.   They don't even use the left/right spectrum.

Instead, they are open, amorphous, and participatory.   Networks that are in constant motion...  nominally led by political showmen with little real power. 

These networks don't rely on government bureaucracies to coerce people.   They coerce bureaucracies. 

Moreover, they are more effective than bureaucracies in the elements of power that matter.

They are capable of spying on more people than the East German secret police and they can stifle free speech without recourse to a gulag.  

They don't have any need for state produced propaganda or the media to control the narrative.  They can produce a blinding blizzard of spin that can overwhelm official narratives.

In short, 21st Century authoritarianism is very different.   It's not what the experts and the media pundits are warning against and that's why it will sneak up on us.  

Sincerely,

John Robb

PS:  I'm digging into what makes these networks so effective in the next Global Guerrillas Report (as always, thanks so much for your support, it makes the work I do possible).

 

Long Night Update

Here are some notes tracking the arrival of what I’m calling the Long Night -- a world run by oppressive social networks that ruthlessly narrow public speech and behavior.   

Covered topics:  Twitter's bubble maximizer.  Enforcing limits to free speech in NYC.  Doxing protesters in Russia.  

How the EU could change the world through Data Asylum

Here's an interesting though experiment.

The EU's new data privacy law is just about to come into effect (May 25th).

That law makes it very hard for Facebook and other services to collect data on individuals because it has a very high privacy standard.

That's a problem for Facebook and many other Internet companies. 

Facebook, and other tech companies, set up a fake International Head Quarters in Ireland to avoid paying US taxes.

However, since Ireland is part of the EU, all two billion plus Facebook users now fall under the EU's new data protection law (GDPR). 

Facebook is now feverishly working on ways to legally transfer global users outside of the EU back to the US (the major region with the least protection for privacy) while maintaining the tax haven in Ireland.  

This vulnerability points to an opportunity for the EU to radically change the world.  

What if the EU offered to extend coverage under their new data privacy/protection law (GDPR) to anyone who requested it, no matter where they lived?    

Think of it as data asylum. 

It would cost the EU nothing to implement (in fact, just the opposite, it could net them lots of $$ in fines). 

It would also be easy to implement. 

All that is needed is a provision that any big Internet company doing business in the EU would be required to offer the EU's end user license agreement (EULA) as an option for all accounts, no matter where they lived. 

PS:  Or, it might be possible to get the same effect by switching your country of origin/location in Facebook and Twitter to Germany..

 

Lost Kinship

I did a long interview with Jack Murphy and Ian Scotto for SOFRep Radio earlier this week (the first 45 m or so prominently features my staccato/machine/Boydian gun style of thinking/speaking).

We talked about many of the topics I'm currently writing about in greater detail with The Global Guerrillas Report.  Topics such as China's tyrannical social credit system, open source political parties (they have already rolled the Republican party and they are about to do it to the Dems), how moral warfare works online (shaming and naming, etc.), and modern Tribalization.

In the last segment, we touched on something I haven't written much about yet: the potential for widespread civil conflict in the US and how that impacts our thinking on resilience.

Why so pessimistic? It's becoming clear that the US doesn't have a shared narrative anymore. A narrative, combined with rituals and traditions, that provides us with us the basis of fictive kinship.

• A kinship, not based on DNA, that allows us to trust each other rather than as strangers/enemies.
• A shared understanding of moral and ethical conduct (the soft elements that make it possible for a legal and regulatory system to work).
• An understanding that we are better off together than apart.

Where did our fictive kinship go?

We killed it. We didn't alter it, adapt it, or evolve it.  We strangled it and the rising sociopolitical incoherence we are seeing is the result.

The big question is whether we can survive the future without it? I suspect the answer to that is more no than yes.  If that's true, it makes civil collapse a very viable future.

Sincerely,

John Robb

PS: I'll be writing about the potential for civil conflict in the US and how that impacts our thinking on resilience in a future Global Guerrillas Report.