A world of cages, propaganda-scrolling on our screens, rights and free movement dismantled for most – but flows of capital intact. Techniques of targeted voter suppression honed as the data mining industry matures.
All the noise of an endless media circus, even as genuinely progressive ideas are kept off the agenda. Support for so-called (liberal) democracy spirals out through the plughole – where the solutions to our overlapping crises should be.
It’s easy to imagine the doom story. The erosion of the democratic ideal, our political systems descending from flawed but partially functional, to something much worse. But there is another path, another story that is with us, if we can work out – all of us – how to grasp it…
First the bad. 2023 is a state already, so what could 2073 look like?
The new brand of neofascist populism has bred. We all know the type: ‘Big’ men with bad ideas, deflecting criticism through bombast and humour, and a penchant for punching down. In the background, careful media management and the connivance of corporate outlets and their algorithmic counterparts keep their shows on the road.
They cut healthcare and other services, first for migrants then for the rest of us; they also cut taxes for the rich. Wealth is even more concentrated, distilled and enmeshed in politics and the media. There are, has used the dominance of Amazon to buy into video news and social platforms including Fwitter. A Bezos-Murdoch wedding is on the cards. New plutocrats have joined them after the rapid growth of a new sector: green energy.
