Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Jay Baker (mediaactivist@todon.eu)'s status on Monday, 10-Feb-2025 18:12:15 JST Jay Baker

   There are some great points in the piece and validity around praxis: as a longtime activist, I've organised in squatted buildings, protested fascists, been chased by cops for demonstrating against the G8 and G20, marched against the invasion of Iraq on February 15th, 2003, organised antiracism gigs, participated in mutual aid, and yes, I recognise the value of these actions. Social media has often played its part in raising awareness of such campaigns, as evidenced - from Occupy to the Arab Spring - and many of us have since those times realised these online networks must also reflect our anti-capitalism and anti-centralisation principles. This doesn't mean the Fediverse is the end goal, just another tool in organising, yes, but there is a risk of ableism (exacerbated by Covid-era UK "antifascists" largely following fascist government rhetoric about the pandemic, and failing to continue to mask and retain other inclusive precautions in organising in-person) in the "touch grass" narratives that said article and similar articles perpetuate, dismissive of the role information dissemination and online organising can still play in the fight against fascism.

   • carl marks repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Jay Baker (mediaactivist@todon.eu)'s status on Monday, 10-Feb-2025 18:34:55 JST Jay Baker

     in reply to

     What I will also say about the Fediverse is how important it remains while it is dismissed because social media remains conveniently cringe-inducingly trivialised as (to quote the article) "moments spent goofing around with mutuals on Bluesky, or waxing romantic about the joys of human creativity and art-making in an increasingly AI-infested world" - this "awwshucks" silly fun little thing where it doesn't matter if the techbros your article is criticising own the social network you like to play around on. Sorry but this - the Fediverse - is praxis too, friend. That kind of disconnect, as I explored in this article, goes hand-in-hand with supposed antifascists' disconnect on Covid, following along with ableist and downright eugenicist fascist narratives that create barriers for Disabled activists to even be part of the process that becomes reduced to unsafe, unmasked get-my-face-seen photo-ops for clout-chasing "leaders of movements": https://www.mediaactivist.com/recovering-from-shock/

   • Embed this notice
     Jay Baker (mediaactivist@todon.eu)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Feb-2025 18:08:43 JST Jay Baker

     in reply to

     • inquiline

     @inquiline That's a great point!

   • Embed this notice
     inquiline (inquiline@assemblag.es)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Feb-2025 18:08:44 JST inquiline

     in reply to

     @MediaActivist Thank you. If information dissemination were so irrelevant to the struggle, they would obviously not be trying so hard to gain control of our options for doing this

   • Embed this notice
     Jay Baker (mediaactivist@todon.eu)'s status on Monday, 17-Feb-2025 02:14:24 JST Jay Baker

     in reply to

     It's still doing the rounds, shared by people with the best of intentions but who perhaps haven't considered the bigger picture and would be reluctant to do so uncritically if they had. So I'll clearly have to refer to it in an upcoming blog post. Subscribe for free via link in bio. Or don't - that's fine too, of course, but you may be pleased to know I don't post articles too often (usually every few months judging by past rates)!