1 When
someone tells you who he is, believe him. Last week Donald
Trump appointed a director of intelligence who spouts Russian propaganda,
a Christian
nationalist crusader as secretary of defense, and a secretary of
health who is a vaccine
sceptic. If Trump was seeking to destroy American democracy, the American
state and American values, this is how he’d do it.
2 Journalists are first, but everyone else is next. Trump has announced multibillion-dollar lawsuits against “the enemy camp”: newspapers and publishers. His proposed FBI director is on record as wanting to prosecute certain journalists. Journalists, publishers, writers, academics are always in the first wave. Doctors, teachers, accountants will be next. Authoritarianism is as predictable as a Swiss train.
3 To
name is to understand. This is McMuskism: it’s McCarthyism on
steroids, political persecution + Trump + Musk + Silicon Valley
surveillance tools. It’s the dawn of a new age of political
witch-hunts, where burning at the stake meets data harvesting and online
mobs.
4 If
that sounds scary, it’s because that’s the plan. Trump’s
administration will be incompetent and reckless, but individuals will be
targeted, institutions will cower, organizations will crumble fast. The
chilling will be real and immediate.
5 You
have more power than you think. We’re supposed to feel powerless.
That’s the strategy. But we’re not powerless. If you’re a US institution or
organization, form an emergency committee. Bring in experts. Learn from
people who have lived under authoritarianism. Ask advice.
6 Do
not kiss the ring. Do not bend to power. Power will come to you,
anyway. Don’t make it easy. Not everyone can stand and fight. But nobody needs
to bend the knee until there’s an actual memo to that effect.
WAIT FOR THE MEMO.
7 Know
who you are. This list is a homage to Yale historian, Timothy Snyder. His On
Tyranny, published in 2017, is the essential guide to the age of
authoritarianism. His first command, “Do not obey in advance”, is what has been
ringing, like tinnitus, in my ears ever since the Washington Post refused
to endorse Kamala Harris. In some weird celestial stroke of luck, he calls
me as I’m writing this, and I ask for his updated advice: “Know
what you stand for and what you think is good.”
8 Protect
your private life. The broligarchy doesn’t want you to have one.
Read Shoshana
Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: they
need to know exactly who you are to sell you more shit. We’re now beyond that.
Surveillance Authoritarianism is next. Watch The Lives of Others,
the beautifully told film about surveillance in 80s east Berlin. Act as if you
are now living in East Germany and Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp is the
Stasi. It is.
9 Throw
up the Kool-Aid. You drank it. That’s OK. Most of us did. But now is
the time to stick your fingers down your throat and get that sick tech bro
poison out of your system. Phones were – still are – a magic portal into a
psychedelic fun house of possibility. They’re also tracking and surveilling you
even as you sleep while a Silicon Valley edgelord plots ways to tear up the
federal government.
10 Listen
to women of color. Everything bad that happened on the internet
happened to them first. The history of technology is that it is only when it
affects white men that it’s considered a problem. Look at how technology is
already being used to profile and target immigrants. Know that you’re next.
11 Think
of your personal data as nude selfies. A veteran technology journalist
told me this in 2017 and it’s never left me. My experience of “discovery” –
handing over 40,000 emails, messages, documents to the legal team of the Brexit
donor I’d investigated – left me paralyzed and terrified. Think what a hostile
legal team would make of your message history. This can and will happen.
12 Don’t
buy the bullshit. A Securities and Exchange judgment found Facebook
had lied to two journalists – one of them was me – and Facebook agreed to pay a
$100m penalty. If you are a journalist, refuse off the record briefings. Don’t
chat on the phone or use email. Refuse access interviews. Bullshit exclusives from
Goebbels 2.0 will be a stain on your publication forever.
13 Even
dickheads love their dogs. Find a way to connect to those with which you
disagree. “The obvious mistakes of those who find themselves in opposition
are to break off relations with those who disagree with you,” texts Vera
Krichevskaya, the co-founder of TV Rain, Russia’s last independent TV station.
“You cannot allow anger and narrow your circle.”
14 Pay
in cash. Ask yourself what an international drug trafficker would do and do that. They’re not going to the dead drop by Uber or putting 20kg of
crack cocaine on a credit card. In the broligarchy, every data point is a
weapon. Download Signal, the encrypted messaging app. Turn on disappearing
messages.
15 Remember. Writer
Rebecca Solnit, an essential US liberal voice, emails: “If they try to
normalize, let us try to demoralize. Let us hold on to facts, truths, values,
norms, arrangements that are going to be under siege. Let us not forget what
happened and why.”
16 Find
allies in unlikely places. One of my most surprising sources of
support during my trial(s) was hard-right Brexiter David Davis. Find
threads of connection and work from there.
17 There
is such a thing as truth. There are facts and we can know
them. From Tamsin Shaw, professor in philosophy at New York University: “‘Can
the sceptic resist the tyrant?’ is one of the oldest questions in political
philosophy. We can’t even fully recognize what tyranny is if we let the
ruling powers get away with lying to us all.”
18 Plan. Silicon
Valley doesn’t think in four-year election cycles. Elon Musk isn’t
worrying about the midterms. He’s thinking about flying a
SpaceX rocket to Mars and raping and pillaging its rare earth minerals
before anyone else can get there. We need a 30-year road map out
of this.
19 Take
the piss. Humor is a weapon. Any man who feels the need to build a
rocket is not overconfident about his masculinity. Work with that.
20 They
are not gods. Tech billionaires are over-entitled nerds with the
extraordinary historical luck of being born at the exact right moment in
history. Treat them accordingly.
Carole
Cadwalladr is a reporter and feature writer for the Observer
-The
Guardian
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