October 7th and the internet
It’s October 7th. Year two. I felt like I should write something but to be honest not much is coming out. What else is there to say? Too many words have been written and too many murders have been witnessed online with little impact. I wrote on October 9th two years ago that Israel and its supporters would very likely take the path of genocide…and indeed they took it.
From the vantage point of being here in America, the slaughter in Gaza is just a particularly grisly example of the many demons that plague this empire/managed industrial democracy — demons that not only drive the genocide but touch almost every part of life…ecological, financial… We are all too far removed from issues that matter most to us and have no power over the forces that govern our lives. And so everyone’s political energies are directed into the Spectacle — to bear witness, to rage, to comment, to learn, to obsessively read, to mock, to argue with people on line. In fact you could say the lack of political power is inversely proportional to the amount of time we spend in the Spectacle. The Spectacle gives us the illusion of power…of doing something…of projecting our will and being into the world.
I’m not on social media as much as I used to be but its interesting to watch as more and more people turning to AI not to have their questions answered but to mediate their interactions with other people online — they can’t do it themselves anymore…they need the computer to interpret the social world now, too. The Spectacle is folding in on itself, requiring more and more mediation from the Spectacle.
With Gaza, I can’t help but think about the internet. The internet was sold to us as a technology of personal empowerment. And yet in Gaza we are seeing the first live-streamed genocide with the most grizzly murders brought to us in HD video. Billions of people know what’s happening there. It has turned many against zionism and Israel and America. And yet the slaughter and the starvation continues. Gaza has confirmed what has long been obvious to me: information is not power. Organization is power. And the internet, as far as we its users are concerned, is anti-organization. The internet is an atomizing technology. It’s not a surprise. It was, after all, developed by the Pentagon for pacification — a tool to centralize power in the hands of America’s military technocracy.
I believe that internet is a vampiric force — even the good things it gives us come with a hidden cost. It’s a poison chalice, no matter what you pour into it. I also believe people will need to radically minimize their contact with the internet — to figure some balance between the virtual and the real…a balance that tips way more towards the real. The internet is designed to funnel vast amounts of information into our minds to the point that information has become necrotic. Peeling ourselves away from this technology is not going to be easy. This tech was created to be addictive — it was created to replace real social interactions…to make the virtual seem more real. And so we won’t be able to dump this parasite individually. It’s a social parasite so we’ll need other people. But it will have to start at an individual level. The realization and the desire and the initiative will have to start with you and me. We’ll need to want to leave. Wanting to leave is the first step.
Anyway…Stop the genocide, free Gaza, and free the Palestinian people. I write these words as they go out in the Spectacle, convincing no one that doesn’t already agree.
—Yasha
INFORMATION IS NOT POWER. INFORMATION IS PACIFICATION.
Procrastinating while I’m supposed to be working on Episode Zero of Vampire Valley…so I wrote this to add to the general theme. Gather around everyone because I’m going to talk about something that’s taboo among the political influencer class. I see myself as a whistleblower…a traitor to my own class. Who knows…
I went to a rally/march last weekend. I got the date/time from the local Palestine coalition's IG post. There were a couple/few hundred at the rally. The subsequent march crossed a pedestrian mall that was having its grand opening after a long construction closure - there was booths and bands and food and a bit of a crowd - our march stopped dead in the intersection and nice speeches were made by JVP reps and Palestinians while the normies had to walk through it or just watch. It was fucking awesome, but it was no less a nearly impotent spectacle the same way hero-posting for Gaza online is. The only real diff was one was RL and somebody probably got HSV or covid and everyone got some exercise.
I watched Sumud Flotilla for hours and hours on the livestreams as they sailed the final stretch to Gaza up until they got water cannoned and boarded and the streams went dead. The action was important to me, I helped sponsor at least one boat through financial donation online, it represented a tiny point of light in the dark sky of humanity's failures. Then I watched the videos each sailor had made to be posted once they were taken prisoner. As they requested, I contacted gov't reps and the state dept demanding action towards freeing them, this being somewhere north of the 20th time haranguing them re: Palestine. I'll do it all over again with Freedom/Thousand Madleens. Yet, again, just more spectacle, until I'm on a flotilla myself, I suppose, and even then...
Some of the flotilla sailors were released. I wondered if their experience and efforts were also just pointless spectacle (just a publicity stunt, per zionists, until they were reduced to calling them hamas per usual). Then a rumor surfaced that their presence distracted IOF enough that Gazans were able to fish. That seemed like something, if it wasn't fake. Some thanked their followers through the internet for their efforts in contacting authorities to get them out. That also seemed like something. And the Italians got pissed enough to strike. There's probably many little somethings that have sprouted from the flotilla, but also a great expanse of nothing but spectacle.
I'm not entirely sure what my point is with all that story, it's mostly just a general lament. For Gazans, nothing would be better for them without the internet. Maybe not that much worse either. Fuck.
Without the internet I may not have become the person I am now. For many of us this is the case. Some of that is good and some of it is not. Occasionally I wish I wasn't so self-aware and in my head- it makes enjoyment difficult.