209 Ur-fascism and celestial nukes

One of the most serious consequences of the nekomemetic pandemic and Gaia's resulting toxic shock was the huge displacement of migrants. For more than a century, growing masses of migrants had been ready to face dangers of all sorts and risk their lives in order to leave the situation to which their birthplaces destined them. The phenomenon began in the Neolib era and amplified as the septicaemia worsened. This worried the Gov Q where elites from northern countries had a great deal of clout. Despite countless obstacles, such as im/material walls added to the old national borders, the flow of humans continued to increase. The Autonomous Sphere continued to weave, intuitively or unconsciously, a web of de facto experiences, at least until the discovery of the nekomemetic disease, and tried not to aggravate Gaia's worsening state. Ecological struggles, which had begun with us Boomers from the long '68, created antibodies against the pandemic, but they weren't intended to build a political machine that mirrored Gov Q. The French charmer's biopolitical prophecy predicting the Autonomous Sphere's incompatibility with governmentality still weighed, but less than before: five or more centuries of capitalism was about to culminate in the Great Escape and an unprecedented debacle for those who were forced to stay.

The most successful alternative/antagonist experiences succeeded in creating original forms of cooperation and a new Commons. The same could be said of struggles against ecological, biological, social, cultural discrimination, oppression or domination, which tended to focus only on one specific aspect: class, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, nationality and so on.

Up till then, these separate rebellions had failed to coalesce into anything significantly and politically incisive on a global level; Gov Neolib and Q controlled – if not outright ignored – them with ease. To make up for this fragmentation and ephemerality, attempts were once again made – with the participation of what remained of the non-aligned academic sphere – to create confluence mechanisms able to link these struggles and overcome the status quo. Given the difficulty in teasing out any politically incisive group from autonomous circles, some focused on creating an intersectional artificial intelligence (IAI). IAI was supposed to make each singularity conscious of its interest in not limiting itself to its sphere of struggle. Only a worldwide afflatus could have given these experiences real political weight. The results, however, were disappointing; IAI not only proved to be an ineffective substitute for the utopias and myths that had animated the revolutions of the past, but often generated even more acute internal conflicts than those that had characterized the defunct historical left. Which is saying something... When questioned about its own identity, IAI answered, ambiguously:

Intersectional Artificial Intelligence (IAI) refers to the use of artificial intelligence techniques to analyze and address issues of discrimination and inequality that arise from the intersection of multiple factors, such as gender, race, sexual orientation and gender identity, disability, and others.

IAI's goal is to develop systems that better recognize and understand the complexity of human identity, thus avoiding the creation of artificial intelligence systems that reflect and amplify existing inequalities.

For example, AI-based facial recognition systems may have problems with racial discrimination because existing technologies have been trained primarily on datasets containing images of white-skinned individuals, and thus may have difficulty recognizing individuals with other complexions. Intersectional AI can help detect and correct these types of problems and develop more equitable and inclusive AI systems.

The crux wasn't found, because perhaps the crux wasn't there, just as perhaps an intersectional Marx never existed. And if it seemed an impossible feat to build a Commons among humans as divided as they were dominated by different forces, it was almost unthinkable to include Gaia as well while avoiding falling into forms of transcendence that made her a superior being. Meanwhile, the nekomemetic virus found subtle forms of creeping in and spreading, in a minor tone, even within Autonomous Sphere collectives.

This is explained by the fact that, in contrast to material viruses that take advantage of sociality to multiply, moving from host to host, the nekomemetic virus often took advantage of and insinuated itself at times and places of isolation, when you're alone, in front of a two-, three-, or four-dimensional network interface.

That's why, as I'll explain later, some groups in the Autonomous Sphere committed themselves to developing strategies to counteract the nekomemetic virus by promoting authentic, supportive and cooperative forms of sociability based on mutual trust and the sharing of common goals and values. In this way, they sought to create a less fertile ground for the nekomemetic virus, reducing its ability to spread and creep into the relational dynamics of communities.

It wasn't enough. Especially in the North, uprisings were taking contradictory and dangerous directions. The weaker and less educated part of the subordinate classes of Governance, conditioned by the selfish individualism in which they had been raised and educated, saw no way out: in the general worsening, their condition nevertheless often remained less miserable and desperate than that of the colonized/racialized in the Southern hemisphere, those at the forefront of Gaia's septicemia. I have to admit, the original sin of 20th century proletarian revolutionary theories often maintained, contributed to and even aggravated such inequalities. They partly shared the Eurocentrism and productivism of their capitalist enemy, putting the struggles of the Northern working class at the center.

The absence of defined strategies in the Autonomous Sphere and all the other difficulties exposed large portions of populations to influences that were more senseless than irrational: from no-tech fundamentalism to racist neoreligions with apocalyptic overtones. Sometimes seemingly incompatible elements converged in movements of spontaneous revolt, making them easy prey for ur-fascism, a primordial and eternal fascism. Ur-fascism had always been pliant, with ambiguous logic and based on a rhetoric of revolt and demands. Ur-fascism, characterized by diverting people's anger from real problems to easy scapegoats, was well integrated into Gov Q's algorithms and no longer needed to violently suspend the paltry institutional remnants of PoSt/ates' local governments. All it needed to do was use migrants as sacrificial victims, exploiting their vulnerability to create a common enemy toward which to divert insurgent anger.

That this attracted Ur-fascism despots, in a version disguised in the oxymoron of "autocratic democracy" did not worry Gov Q at all, having worked out a special protocol for designating them. In cases where they made their own light, Gov Q was still able to cohabitate by integrating them or manipulating them or, at the limit, neutralizing them if they were no longer functional for the system. Gov Q's only concern was the possibility of uncontrolled use, in the PoSt/ates, of the arsenal that included classic nuclear weapons and newer ones, called "clean deterrents," capable of destroying humans and living beings while leaving the rest intact. The dislocation of the Empire of Bias following the chronicling of the Second Civil War also facilitated this danger. But as we'd see, Gov Q kept the situation under control, never overtly disavowing or humiliating what remained of the local governments of the PoSt/ates.

The transition of nuclear arms from local governments to WorldForce was a complex process, marked by intense infighting. But implementing these measures took place with masterful hypocrisy: formally, some of the PoSt/major states retained control of their nuclear arsenals, but, in case of disagreement, Gov Q had the technopolitical means at its disposal to prevent any unauthorized use or coup d'état. Moreover, ever since the High Frontier stage, Gov Neolib had secretly developed a new nuclear weapons system they were able to launch from space with great precision. Subsequently, Quantum Governance never denied the leaks about this new system, fueling suspicions about an alleged divine protection side by side with celestial protection. Also taking advantage of the extreme weakness of some nuclear-weapon-holding countries (primarily those dispersed in the territories of the Empire of Bias), Gov Q had assumed a fair amount of direct control over the world's nuclear arsenal through WorldForce. Any use of these massive means of destruction was integrated with global quantum management. Virtually no human chain of command in Governance – even less so the PoSt/ates without a green light from the nuclear control bots, just as the latter needed the agreement of human command. The processes built into these smart devices designed to evolve according to context were obviously top secret. Deep learning techniques based on the use of artificial neural networks were structured in several layers, operating like biological neural networks. Each layer processed values and passed them on, allowing for more and more complete information processing. But to go back to what we were talking about, ie to the post-nuclear context, the mainspring of ur-fascist movements were fear and despair. For Gov Q, riots – with whatever political sensibilities the participants might have had – were not a real concern. They were, after all, just delicate moments, generally handled by the PoSt/ate SecurServs, even though by then WorldForce discreetly intervened in several cases.

Riots, insurrections, and social movements were episodes of rebellion against the system, but they often lacked a solid theoretical substrate to ensure strategic continuity. Considering repressive violence and the complexity, extent and interrelatedness of the components of the Gov Q system, the chances of large-scale subversion were almost nonexistent. But MAT's multispecies emotional and affective flows were beginning to affect some humans and started looking like something potentially destabilizing, even beyond control at the quantum level.

In this fairly new scenario, Gov Q's automatic simulation and control systems via global platforms clearly indicated that the old recipe of production/consumerism revitalization, besides being hardly feasible in such a degraded biosphere, would be come inoperative. Quantum calculations indicated it would certainly be preferable to feed divisions within the subordinate classes. So, convenient too was foment movements inspired by the archetypes of ur-fascism. At least for a time, Gov Q created diversions, although it was unlikely to have reached the stage of the Great Escape under such conditions. The fact remains that, like in times past, Q-era ur-fascism had managed to settle in just about everywhere, especially on the less educated segment of the Northern subaltern classes.