noon notes on the politics of Mr Robot 1.2

The excellent person is related to his friend in the same way as he is related to himself, since a friend is another self. - Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics

Hello, friend.

Hello, friend? That’s lame.

Maybe I should give you a name, but that’s a slippery slope.

You’re only in my head.

Do you ever notice how Reuters and AP always make sure to apply the qualifier “self-identified” before “anarchist” as if people are talking to the press like this:

Reporter: can you tell me why you throw rocks at police?

Rock thrower: as a self-identified anarchist, throwing rocks at police is both a defense and offense against the nation-state, and a state is only capable of violence; the function of democracy itself, formed by Athenian warrior-citizens, is to determine the specifics of war. That war continues directly through police and their protection of property, and indirectly through legislative and capitalist modes.

The style guide operates as a rejection of Elliot’s opening monologue “hello, friend” because the press is not your friend, it is a function of the state, and the state is not another self. Elliott’s address applies a proximity title, then gives a name. That name exhibits actions and presents ideas. The name is Mr Robot, but he is not a self-identifying anarchist, even though the USA Network has tagged him as such. The purpose of the press qualifier “self-identified” is to clarify the use of the title ‘anarchist’ is not meant as an insult by the author. This will then be an examination of the insult to Mr Robot, the not-anarchist.

November 2014, the Turkish Marxist-Leninist hackers Redhack announce they deleted 1.5 trillion Lira ($668 billion) worth of household electric company debts. The government of Turkey was quick to refute the ability to just erase debts. There are back-ups, they said, you still owe us. Redhack deleted delinquent utility bills in a smaller hack in 2013. I have not found anything confirming anyone paying a debt erased by Redhack, but I don’t speak the language. In an interview, the English-speaking contact for Redhack said “We go along with the current agenda in Turkey […] The current government is enemy of the environment and humanity.”



Debt abolition is a form of social democracy, if not coupled with or followed by political rupture, intersectional insurrection, full communism, or whatever phrase you want to apply to mean fix shit up.



Mr Robot tells Elliot “money hasn’t been real since we got off the gold standard.” This isn’t a position of anarchism, but one of market libertarians. He goes on to say, “What if I told you that this conglomerate just so happens to own 70% of the global consumer credit industry? If we hit their data center, we could systematically format all the servers, including backup. Every record of every credit card, loan, and mortgage would be wiped clean.” Technically, loans and mortgages aren’t consumer credit. But that’s semantic when foreclosures and defaults are grinding people into dust. Finally, Mr Robot delivers the soundbyte the whole show was sold on. “The single biggest incident of wealth redistribution in history.”



Wealth redistribution is going to be a root function of full communism, and full communism is full anarchism, meaning wealth is no longer a metric for success or survival. Abolishing debt is a zero-sum redistribution of wealth and it doesn’t abolish a monetary system any more than abolishing a monetary system would abolish the state. But Mr Robot isn’t talking about statelessness. He’s barely talking about anti-capitalism. The first question in his Ferris wheel pitch to Elliot asked, “what if you could take down one conglomerate?”

Mr Robot is pitching a hostile corporate takeover. Democracy has not been hacked.



