If the Twitter/X thing teaches you one thing, let it be this: Twitter was a neoliberal place. Then Elon Musk made it into X, a fascist place. Once again, neoliberalism laid the foundations of fascism. But that’s not the (whole) lesson… Neoliberal folks are still using X, calling it Twitter to make themselves feel better, and pining for the good old days. And there’s the real lesson: When neoliberalism turns into fascism, neoliberals will adapt to life under fascism. Right, class dismissed.

source

(We really need a better way to crosspost from mastodon…)

  • glimse@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    8 months ago

    The conclusion is moot when the premise itself is wrong. Twitter was only “a neoliberal place” if you’re only looking at the neoliberal part of it. It’s like saying “YouTube is a site about sports highlights” because that’s all you watch.

    If you used Twitter and only saw neoliberal garbage, that’s on you for following neoliberals. It completely ignores the majority of communities.

    When I was active on there, if I saw a political tweet it was pro-socialist 95% of the time.

    • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      i think youre misunderstanding the point they’re trying to make, but then again they’re not expressly clear who they’re talking about either and “neoliberal” is a term that means different things based on how we’ve been using it etc etc.

      If the Twitter/X thing teaches you one thing, let it be this: Twitter was a neoliberal place. Then Elon Musk made it into X, a fascist place. Once again, neoliberalism laid the foundations of fascism.

      I suggest they’re referring to the ownership of Twitter, not twitters users here. Twitter was owned by neolibs (they assert) and sold to Elon. They’re saying Elon is making X more fascist, not speaking about the userbase.

      Neoliberal folks are still using X, calling it Twitter to make themselves feel better, and pining for the good old days.

      And there’s the real lesson: When neoliberalism turns into fascism, neoliberals will adapt to life under fascism. Right, class dismissed.

      Now he’s moved to the userbase, which is confusing and muddles things up a bit. but his point here is the neolibs are the ones who stayed on X even after fascist users started coming in due to a fascist ownership. They complain, but they get by, because (and this may now just be my projecting my own thoughts) neoliberals have 0 morals and 0 insight.

      You said you aren’t there anymore. I think this means you’re exempt.

      Anyway that’s what i got from it

    • jollyrogue@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      Aral is promoting the Fediverse.

      He’s also saying neoliberals/centrists are largely performative, and they are fine with fascism. It’s a variation of the Nazi bar story.

      There were always problems with Twitter’s moderation as it was lighter on the right than the left. The famous comment about not banning Republicans congresspeople comes to mind. It was never as right leaning as Facebook though.