My state (Baden-Wüttemberg) has recently signed a contract with Palantir to use their AI for police work. And yes, this is the Palantir that is owned by the American fascist Peter Thiel, who has made it his explicit goal to get over the burden of democracy and isn’t quite sure, if he thinks humanity should endure. Seems like a great company to handle our most sensitive police data.
What I found even more interesting than how bad of a decision this was, is the way, in which it was passed. In Baden-Wüttemberg, we have a coalition of the CDU (conservative party) and the green party. That the CDU supported this measure didn’t surprise me in the least, considering the shit they are currently doing in our federal government. But our green party has many times explicitly stated, that they are against mass surveillance and want to eliminate the use of American proprietary software in government in favor of Open-Source solutions. So after the CDU signed a contract with Palantir without any legal grounds or even talking to the greens, they were initially outraged. A few months later however, they just rolled over. They made a “deal” with the CDU, that they would support this measure, if they agreed to slightly increase the area of the national park in the black forest in Baden-Wüttemberg. They traded away our rights for a fucking national park.
That’s not even considering the fact, that I am pretty sure, giving away personal data, that the government has collected to private companies is illegal according to our constitution.
But that’s beside the point. I am pretty sure, no voter really wants this, but regardless, this kind of surveillance is being rolled over all over Europe and the US. Just look at Britain. Stalmer, it seems has stopped caring about his approval and just started steamrolling Britain into shit at a record pace. The justification for surveillance is always either “think about the kids” or Israel. But if all these politicians, regardless of if they claim to be liberal or conservative don’t act in the interest of their voters or even try to increase their popularity, then what is even the point of democracy anymore?
These days, the distribution of power and wealth has become so unequal, the inertia of capital so great, that every politician, regardless of how well meaning they are can be bought, weakened or made ineffective by some obstacles being placed by the system in their way. Why else would literally every western nation slowly slide into fascism at the same time. Why else would there never be a long-term popular wave of extreme leftism?
How did this happen?
I think, what is currently happening was pretty much an inevitable outcome of capitalism. Since the second world war, we (in the western countries) have enjoyed a relative era of peace and prosperity. We were happy in our suburban home with a big car, voting every now and again, achieving small victories or suffering some losses. We didn’t notice our wealth slowly but surely accumulating at the top, important industries slowly being privatized and social services being cut. The wealth distribution seemed at least somewhat justified, or at least we didn’t mind the exploitation, because we thought we might some day be able to exploit others ourselves. We also achieved some big victories in LGBTQIA+ rights, women’s rights and black people’s rights and the system managed to convince us afterwards, that these things didn’t happen inspite of it, but because of it.
But now, that wealth inequality is so insanely high and social mobility is so low, that it becomes increasingly difficult to justify this inequality. People aren’t passified by the status quo anymore, they are realizing, that working harder won’t solve their problems, because they are already at their limit.
So the system needs a new solution to continue the status quo. The wave of fascism, we are seeing now is the system violently trying to reinforce itself.
“You aren’t poor because you are being robbed by your employer, it’s just the immigrants. And all your problems can be fixed if we just kill a few more brown people.”
Where this isn’t working, the new plan seems to be reintroducing soviet-era surveillance but with AI instead of humans. The reason, all of these politicians can implement these measures, even though nobody voted for it, is because our systems are built in a way that fundamentally serves the interests of the ruling class and not of the working class. We cannot vote our way out of this, because even if we win for a time, all our achievements will be slowly eroded by the inertia of capital.
What to actually do about this
To be clear: I am not trying to discourage anyone from voting or getting involved in electoralism. There are still great things to be done through politics, especially locally. I mean, just look at the amazing things Mamdani has done since he took office as major of New York 5 months ago. I am calling it, democratic socialists are the actual liberals, if you mean by liberalism what it used to mean (being in favour of individual liberty) and not continuously enabling fascists (which is what current day liberal politicians seem to think liberalism means). What I am trying to say, is that voting is important, but you should never stop there.
My first principle would be to make it as hard as possible for governments and cooperation to track you. Either get into self hosting, if you feel comfortable with that, or switch your online services to new ones, that have robust and verified end to end encryption. Preferably open source. A good starting point would be the Proton or the Tuta ecosystem, because they offer you a ton of services for a single monthly subscription and have good encryption. A great place to look would also be di.day, they give you ease step by step “recipes” to get away from big tech and everything is illustrated very nicely. It’s also a good idea to get into Linux, as it’s really user friendly these days and will make it easier to discover and get into other FOSS software.
Other than that, it’s always a good idea to go to protests and join local leftie organizations. If are interested in the ideology, which I believe in, anarchism, this video should be a good introduction.
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