Resisting the Broligarchy
The companies that dominate our retail economy, news media, social media, digital advertising, consumer electronics and AI – Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Tesla, Meta (Facebook) and OpenAI have aligned themselves with the Trump regime and its plans to build a Christian nationalist fascist surveillance state.
The most powerful tool that we have to fight back against these enablers is our spending power.
Last winter, tens of thousands of Twin Citizens organized to resist ICE. They formed ICE watch networks and neighborhood mutual aid groups, and volunteered by the thousands to deliver food boxes to families who were afraid to leave their homes. In doing so, they not only protected their most vulnerable neighbors, but they also made their neighborhoods and community stronger. The Twin Cities became. a model for the country.
Imagine what could happen if Twin Citizens organized to resist the Big Tech in the same way that they organized to resist ICE and the DHS. .
Some people might feel that resistance is futile – nothing we can do as individuals is going to have an impact on companies as big as Amazon, Tesla, Meta or Google. But the time is right – there is a widespread loathing for Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos and their companies and platforms. As Facebook, Google and Amazon enter into the end stages of enshittification (the gradual decline in user experience as platforms prioritize profit extraction) there is a growing hunger for alternatives.
The basic actions that we can ask people to take are:
- Boycott Amazon, and all of its subsidiaries – Audible, Kindle, Whole Foods, etc. Instead shop locally and support independent businesses.
- De-Google our lives – by moving to alternative email services, search engines, calendars, cloud storage and maps that don’t track our activity and don’t sell our data.
- Gradually leave Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok and Threads in favor of non-profit open-source alternatives.
How can we engage a large enough group of people to make this campaign have impact? (Can we?) Could we work through neghborhood organizations, or the mutual aid groups formed during the ICE invasion?