in #stockhom #sweden #sverige, what was broached in #dublin #ireland in 2016 is now possible here.
and i feel like it is new; not returning to an awful toxic past and having to pay every day for it, as it remains close and clammy to the touch.
no.
not that.
solving the putin problem
i was asked on the train today what the keys are to solving the #putinproblem.
the #putinproblem includes #trump, and #brexit, and #facebook escaping with virtual murder as #cambridgeanalytica became the fall guy for the inevitable outcome of #zuckerberg’s choice of business model: this outcome being the savage and unremitting dismantling of citizen agency in modern western and associated democracies.
it includes everything that means even professionals will think, when they take a life-changing decision on someone in their life-changing nominal charge, they do so with this agency i mention: no one else is furtively intervening. and god forbid that those intervening might be criminals on the scale of #putin’s #russia.
so the keys to solving these #complexproblems longitudinally and long-term are …?
first: accepting how we’ve been part of the problem
first, everyone who wants to join me in this battle in favour of a new democracy and against the #tech-driven #gaslighting that has been designed, developed and implemented over decades must accept they both tolerated and in some senses embraced #neoterrorismontheindividual because they used it themselves to shape their societies. they must take it firmly on the chin, as i do, that we are still part of the problem.
and whilst they/we were better at it than the enemy — #russia, a #badmoney without sovereign frontiers, #bigtech in practically all its manifestations — all was kinda ok. people like myself did get improperly incarcerated by proficient users of symbolic communication such as the #british, and by extension the #irish, but those of us who had to suffer such indignities and injustices were relatively small in number. i suppose.
second: how we’ve enabled the enemy
the problem is when the enemy gets better than you could ever imagine at this #neoterrorismontheindividual i uncover. and an even bigger challenge: when you simply have no inkling that they have got so much better than you, nor indeed for how long … nor when it all started to go belly-up.
this is what i say has happened already. i was saying it somehow in my #criminaljustice dissertation back in 2017. i realise in hindsight now that both the #british and #irish agreed and were as one: i had to be scoped out of academic circulation. symbolic language is a mark of the #british security state’s capacity to control a society without ever taking ownership. (the #irish — suffering the colonising #english — had to compete against this: and we know the #tech adage about being careful who you compete against because, one fine terrible day, you’ll become just like them.)
and so see how cozying up to these #espionage ways and means enabled deep #russian interests close to #putin to embed themselves in #uk football clubs, financial institutions and other channels where money flows freely and conveniently.
third: symbolism as a cancer to democracy
wherever a country prefers to use #symbolism to rule we have a cancer: a cancer on democracy; on the opportunities for democracy to flourish; on the chances that democracy might sustain and renew itself where needs be.
‘question is: are the upsides of using #symbolic systems worth the downsides? maybe they are: #espionage is a common thread throughout #human #history. so maybe all ok in this sense (despite the occasional collateral damage such as myself back in 2002-2003 and then again in 2004, and in 2017 … and many more times i guess even i haven’t yet sussed).
but it’s NOT ok when the genie whose bottle we uncorked centuries ago becomes owned by the enemy under our noses.
so to answer, finally, the question i was posed on the train this morning: if #zuckerberg and the illegitimate influencing of democratic discourse … if #brexit … if #trump and insurrection … and ultimately if #putin’s three wars in fifteen years culminating in his unforgivable invasion of #ukraine … if all this doesn’t provide the evidence we need in order to say we’ve currently, deeply, awfully lost the war of #espionage; that our enemies far outplay us; and that tolerating and even embracing the tools described in my slide-deck below are something we can continue to do … you really really do, sadly so too, have zero self-awareness.
fourth: solutions and caveats
and i’m not saying don’t use the tricks i define in the slide-deck. i’m saying:
1. if you do sanction their use, do so legally.
2. if you do sanction their use, then do not do so against your own, just because they’re inconvenient voices and thinkers. (that leads to a dismantled democracy from within, and thus supports the enemy even more profoundly than they could hope for.)
3. and last but not least, if you do end up seeing no alternative, never never never show by default or inaction that you underestimate the enemy because #bigtech #corporations tell you that you have all the tools you need. and all the tools the enemy might have.
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