Unplug Technofascism!
Mainstreamed digital technologies and the forces behind them are a direct threat to our planet, our lives and our dignity. As citizens around the world observe with apprehension how our fundamental rights, democracies and natural ecosystems are eroded by big tech companies and complicit governments, Code Rouge is joining the fight against technofascism.
Another technology is possible, but we must act NOW. Our future is being decided as you read these lines.
The tech industry is destroying human lives
The tech industry is deeply embedded within the military-industrial complex, and stands shoulder to shoulder with states engaged in imperialist violence. Their algorithms control autonomous weapons systems which are used for the indiscriminate slaughter of human beings in armed conflicts around the world, including the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The same technologies are deployed for mass surveillance and authoritarian repression, particularly migrants, asylum seekers, racialised communities, trans people, people seeking abortions, people who speak out against the genocide of Palestinians, and anyone that opposes states’ authoritarian policies. Governments use algorithms to shed accountability for their violence and discrimination by making it seem “scientific” and “rational”.
Instead of creating freedom and economic security, digital technologies are destroying working conditions around the world through new forms of automation and labour exploitation, turning ever more people into gig workers with increasing precarity. The algorithms themselves are built from massive intellectual property theft and exploitation of low-paid workers in the Global South. Platforms and algorithms are also an ideological weapon: a giant propaganda machine for advancing the racist, sexist, genocidal worldview of ruling elites, reinforcing historic racism, promoting anti-feminist and queerphobic discourses, and censoring anti-war, anti-genocide, anti-fascist narratives. The algorithmic mediation of society through social media platforms and chatbots causes immense social damage. These technologies alienate and manipulate people while at the same making them addicted and dependent. This causes the breakdown of social relations and solidarity, which only strengthens the ruling elites.
The tech industry is destroying the planet
Behind the algorithms that are destroying human life lies a massive physical infrastructure that is destroying the planet. Tech infrastructure consists of a vast global network of mines, undersea cables, satellites, data centres, power stations and consumer devices. This system consumes huge quantities of resources, causes immense ecological damage, and is entirely dependent on deeply entrenched colonial systems of exploitation.
Digital infrastructure requires huge amounts of land. Often this land is acquired through exploitative mechanisms which displace local residents and farmers, and destroys ecosystems. The hardware that runs the algorithms consumes huge amounts of electricity, often from fossil fuels. This puts local grids under strain, exacerbates the energy crisis, and accelerates the climate catastrophe. Huge amounts of water are required for mining operations, chip production, and cooling systems. This causes water tables to drop and creates water scarcity for local communities while intensifying climate and environmental issues. The huge quantities of rare earth minerals (lithium, cobalt and copper) for batteries, servers and consumer devices, are obtained from mining operations across Africa, Asia and South America. Their extraction often involves child labour, dangerous working conditions and environmental devastation. These critical minerals, which take billions of years to form in the earth’s crust, are used for chips which have a lifespan of just 1 to 2 years. The entire system generates mountains of toxic waste which gets dumped in the Global South causing ecological and social devastation for local communities.
Big tech is a Trojan Horse for technofascism
The immense damage to people and planet caused by the tech industry is legitimised by a twisted ideology. It insists that unregulated acceleration of technological development is a moral imperative and the divine right of the tech billionaires. They believe that technology can, and will, solve all the world’s problems so long as tech CEOs have the power to do whatever they like. They see human beings, nature, and society as programmable machines to be “optimised” by technocratic elites. This worldview harbours the fundamentally racist (eugenicist) conviction that human intelligence can be quantified and automated. The tech industry spreads their ideology through media corporations, think tanks, and politicians, which they influence using their enormous lobby power. False narratives about “efficiency”, “competitiveness” and “growth”, and the promise of individual liberation through technology, have become the justification for deregulation, the erosion of digital rights, and the technocratic restructuring of society. At the same time, fear of foreign powers, the “race for AI supremacy”, and “geopolitical dominance” are being used to legitimise the tech industry’s takeover of governments, militaries and intelligence agencies. Authoritarianism, totalitarianism, nationaism, militarism, corporatism, racism, sexism, propaganda – the tech billionaire class are actively cultivating fascism and amassing vast wealth and power in the process. They must be stopped!
Another tech is possible
The version of technology offered by billionaire tech CEOs is not the only one. A world is possible in which digital technology liberates people rather than subjugates them, redistributes agency from top to bottom rather than the other way round, and fosters sociability and global solidarity rather than isolation and conflict. Technology can and should improve working conditions and enable people to work less rather than more, leaving them more time for care-giving labour in their communities. Technology can and should enable us to protect ecosystems rather than destroy them. Radical democratisation of technology would mean both software and hardware are designed and operated by the people for the good of their communities, not by billionaire CEOs for the good of their wallets. We can take back technology from the corporations, the oligarchs and the fascists, and reorient technological development towards the benefit and healing of people and planet. But we must act now!
We must unite and resist
It’s time to unplug technofascism and shutdown the machinery of mass surveillance, genocide and ecocide. Resistance is urgent and necessary. We must refuse and disrupt the installation and expansion of socially and environmentally destructive software and hardware systems, and the technocratic, authoritarian restructuring of society. We must disrupt the corporations that profit from these destructive systems, and shut down the military-tech-industrial complex. We must challenge technofascist ideology and propaganda, and call out the marketing hype masquerading as fact. We must reject “artificial intelligence” and call it what is it: a giant word guessing machine built on violent exploitation and environmental destruction.
We refuse to let our future be dictated by techno oligarchs and corrupt governments. Only through collective action can we abolish the systems of oppression and destruction that threaten people and planet and foster alternative solutions that serve democracy and the social and environmental struggles we face. As a movement for climate, social and environmental justice, we must ally and act in solidarity with workers’ movements, with anti-war, anti-genocide and anti-impirial struggles, with anti-fascist struggles, with anti-surveillance and digital rights campaigners, with resistance scientists and political hackers, and with local struggles against ecocidal infrastructure expansion.
From the 27thto 29th of June we are rising up for a festive occupation — a mass action gathering of activists and organisations united in opposition to the technofascist oligarchy.
Whether you are new to the topic and want to take action but are not sure how or you are a full-time activist, we invite you to co-shape our collective response to the tech and political elites.
Why direct action?
Code Rouge/Rood is a civil disobedience movement created by activists and supported by different organisations and action groups. We consciously choose civil disobedience as our action method, because in a political system dominated by the imperative of growth and elite interests, legal action methods are no longer an option on their own, since they are co-opted and crushed by an unfair balance of power. Our adversaries are well-organised, extremely well-financed, and have access to media and political power. Therefore, breaking the law is not only a way of being heard, but a legitimate way to assert people power in a repressive capitalist system.
The great changes in history have often taken place as a result of mass acts of resistance. People chose to organize, to break unjust laws, to demand change and to create the change they wanted themselves. The history of peasant struggles is rich: from the mobilizations against CETA-TTIP since 2015, to the movement of landless workers in Brazil against colonial inequality, or that of the Larzac peasants from 1971 to 1981 against a military camp… Systems are not fixed, they are constructed. With imagination, will and a determined collective action, we can shake the powers in place and create resistance against harmful industries. Let’s rise up together!