Bourgeoisie Authoritarianism and Social Media: The Ecology of Idolatry and Hero-Worship

Social capital determines your potential to be heard and/or understood.

Social media’s top-down authoritarianism is most well present in the language it enforces: “likes”where we may just be expressing agreement, “friends” where we may only be searching for informative outlets, and “followers” where we are not looking join a cult, but are only subscribers. The language informs the actions we take on social media. It also dictates what those actions mean to us, without allowing or even acknowledging our autonomy.

The only way this ecosystem could be truly democratic is one that is extreme in democracy — one that rebukes the illegitimate power of “representation” in favor of consensual processes — welcoming constant pro-consensual socio-political revolutions and proactively promises more. This is an example of an anarchist society, in which there are “no gods nor masters” to dictate the status quo.

Idols, also known as celebrities, are also a symptom of fame and celebrity. Idols stunt the creative processes of an ecosystem by crowding out space for attention from subjugated peoples seeking what liberation would look like specifically for themselves in favor of what the status quo allows to be liberated.

In a Eurocentric, or more accurately a non-Black-centric world, the price we pay for imaginative/creative and therefore intellectual labor is not only the favor of the lighter-skinned, more ‘masculine’, younger [but not too young], able-bodied and minded. The burden of namesake, and baggage plays a role too. That is not to say that bias in favor of the oppressor is not worthy of invalidation, but that the pure desire of non-Blacks to subjugate Black people around the world is cause to the inexploration of those liberation movements that reject whiteness most.

On one hand, we have the Black Panther Party, Rainbow Coalition(s), and other class reductionist (albeit dissonant with racial nationalism [read: internationalism]) analyses that are upheld in most if not all white-dominated Left spaces. On the other, we have the likes of Amilcar Cabral, Romaine la Prophetesse, Nkrumah, Lumumba and relatively so, even Ho Chi Minh — all of which garner less attention and analyses that the broad popular focuses of the Left. Here is a small modicum of solidarity between darker skinned people across the world, and darker skinned Asian people in the East. This baggage is structurally enforced through systemic anti-blackness where the Blacker one is, the deader — both socially dead and statistically dying, both in regards to rate of being upheld as legitimate attempts at liberation, and as efforts worthy of being worshipped to the same regard that the USSR is today.

They are made to be nothing but mere shadows, afterthoughts, second thoughts and sometimes even third thoughts behind the tall, brunette white man in a ushanka, or his poppet; even the more famous Touissant L’Ourveture begged the French for sovereign recognition before less-famous Dessalines took matters into his own hands and commanded the 1804 revolutionary massacre of the ruling classes. And even less known, Romaine la Prophetesse, the ‘man’ ‘possessed’ by the metaphysical Virgin Mary, referring to themselves as a woamn on numerous occasions, who began widespread revolts along the coastlines of Hispaniola — the land’s name before Dessalines changed it back to the original Taino Haiti.

Parallel and intimately tied to this purposefully protracted process of disgarding the dehumanized (alongside those percieved as nonhuman adjacents albeit at lesser rates), is a process of idea-binding. Those ideas upheld most on the Left happen to be those of the white Left, and through the adhesive nature of current analyses of Idols and their ideas, images of the efforts of white men and women flood our minds, especially as a colonized people. The ideas are tied to these visuals, and therefore encourage a homogenized ecosystem of revolutionary thought where it could be infinitely varied, thus drawing all identity in without tokenization.

Day to day, white efforts are measured by the standard of context, while those that are nonwhite are examined outside of context (e.g. infantalizing and appeals to naivete such as “everyone hated Black people back then”), and are often times painted as barbaric, primitive, and through other dehumanizing portrayals. And with nonBlack terminology, nonBlack design, and nonBlack narrative come the intimately-tied rentism of liberation praxes and theory — where one is expected to pay tribute to a non-Black Idol that upholds one idea, even if there, for example, a Black person who had the same ideals within context, though even context is most often times unnecessary in the case of successful Black liberation efforts (especially because ‘successful’ and ‘liberating’ are reduntant ends). In effect, we have a world that simultaneously stigmatizes nonBlack liberation againt subjugation in favor of upholding the history of nonBlack liberation movements and their ideals, so much that in claiming an ends as righteous, we are expected to act (and pay tribute) accordingly. I am not allowed to be a Marxist while despising all of Marx’ antiblackness, etc.. I am to affirm his biologocal supremacy as a cis, straight, white, dead man from Europe whose antiblack perspectives, misgivings, and violences are to either be forgiven, forgotten, minimized in contrast, and/or justified for…?

And so, the burden of a homogenized history will always fall upon the backs of those not included in the ontology of the “human” — to battle against the beurocracy and gatekeeping of liberatory, dual-power styled space as placeless Black people ‘til we can finally have a place to take root among, but not with, the Black revolutionaries who piggybacked whiteness. Im this way, social capitalism is, in verbatim, paradoxically anti-social. It does not foster co-operative, consensual, and truly meaningful relations between people as much as it fosters competition, sycophantry, misinformation about each other (e.g. badjacketing and goodjacketing), erasure, and scapegoating amongst much more.

The above reasonings are only parts of a whole — molecular components of global, always-homogenizing white supremacy. In ecology, genetic variation is a key characteristic of a species that survives. A society or community houses its own variation in genetic code the same way a specimen does. The “genetic code” of a society is multifaceted at BOTH macro & micro levels of material processes, as well as ideas, concepts, & theoretical developments, etc…

Let’s take social media platforms, for instance. Most award users with not only personal rewards such as validation, but also externals:

The most important and oft ignored reward one receives as a Popular user of social media is visibility. Visibility denotes a user’s capability to reach other users, and in turn influence them more often for rather than against the social sphere’s disposition. So if someone appeals to a social sphere’s overarching superstructure or culture, they will often receive attention. If a social capitalist is seeking visibility, they make posts public on Facebook, and may use hashtags or buzzwords on Twitter, so that if anyone searches for a popular topic their post is easy to find and is therefore more visible. All in all, viral tweets accululate the most visibility. Visibility as a strategy for acquiring social capital relies on a great variety of tactics, involving “tweetdecking”.

Example:

Posts also become more visible the more one interacts with it. On Twitter, people with popular tweets will appear more frequently on timelines and on searches as a Top Tweet. Facebook and Tumblr elevate the popular posts that exemplify the status quo of a particular social sphere. The more interactions a post receives, the more potential it has for more interaction. Visibility then can be said to multiply upon itself.

Social capitalism is what makes one person’s suicidal ideations, depression, death, growth, accomplishments, thoughts, beliefs, and desires more meaningful and valued than anothers’ — as opposed to all people’s trials, tribulations, and blessings being equally important. It represents power, and more specifically, control over space that could be equally reserved for another.

Symbolic capital determines your potential to be heard and/or understood; in doing so, social capitalism also undermines the chances that you will be represented, often times being the root cause of why, for example, lighter-skinned, “masculine”, cis, and/or heterosexual men are more positively and most represented than other member of the Black community. And so a social capitalist is essentially a well-known (or otherwise aspiring to be) person, or entity, who makes utility of interpersonal relationships to invest in themselves, or another person who would benefit themselves, and churn out profitable socio-cultural gains. Social capitalists thrive of social capitalism’s ability to erase, silence, and/or crowd-out voices that are not theirs, so that they can take more space within discourse, or even praxis. In this way, social capitalism effectively disables oppressed groups within social justice movements. And due to material and psychological limitations and scarcity of resources (e.g. attention span, access to goods/capital, and goods/capital themselves), they essentially maintain monopolies or otherwise hoard these resources for themselves.

A social capitalist, like all bourgeois celebrities, are out of touch; they are so in tune with (relatively) many tenets of the status quo that they reproduce its language and reasoning even in other spheres of politics, regardless of how supposedly far-left or far-right they are. A social capitalist has no idea what liberated people need— only what social capitalism says is acceptable to further entrenching the existence and supposed legitimacy of capitalist sovereignties and society. A goal of acquiring Fame takes over the liberation and people working with or for social capitalists begin feeling resentment because, rightfully so, they feel they too should have some light. Competition attracts and breeds competition and individualism is born in every heart and mind, all the while conditions remain fermenting into barbaric proportions of culturally-homogenized fascism.

At some point, a social capitalist entity has made the decision to work towards fame because it simply feels better than changing the status quo into something never seen or heard of that benefits all of society, especially with globalizing technology such as the Internet. In this was, social capitalism’s means are amenities only accessible to some, and not all. These include but are definitely not limited to: internet, connections to those of high societal status, academia, desirability determined by a sovereignty’s cultural superstructure, and overall wellbeing. They become brands of comfort instead of beacons of realities, and thus liberation. Perfecting the art of rhetoric, most are populists, and others are working towards populism. If they were not capable of populist language, they would not be seeking such populist status. And in this way, it can also be said they are not revolutionary. They are the counter-revolutionary program wearing the scalp of a revolutionary atop their own. Social capitalists are out of touch when their niche language and esoteric values benefit capitalism by being esoteric. It isn’t about being understood, and moreso about being accepted or agreeable with the status quo, often times making excuses for society and society’s harms.

People who aren’t specifically combatting systemic oppressions often use what is known as “cancel culture” to monopolize on social capital by digging up “dirt” on others to defame or de-legitimize them. Some go as far as to even spread misinformation, spinning facts to benefit their narrative of self-righteousness.