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.
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.
not a meme, please use the sister communities for content like this
(I hate to do this bc I agree with it, but my brain hates twitter posts or just generally walls of text in a meme community)
Libs love fascism but Twitter could be turned into X and made fascist isn't an argument for that. Maybe on the extremely loose way that private property allows this to happen.
About ten years ago Twitter was actually a place for Canadian politicians and journalists and average folks with interest in politics of all views to converse and joke around together. It actually was very fun and despite the fact we didn't agree, stuff like the Tell Vic Everything hashtag ended up being a very organic movement of sorts where a conservative idea for dissolved into humour. It really was rather non-partisan and enjoyable and I'm always sorry it changed.
I'll agree that Twitter is a mess right now, but fascist? I think y'all throw the word around too much, and risk making it lose its meaning.
Fascism is not everything evil. Fascism is a specific flavor of evil. It's only fascism if it:
Has a dictator with absolute power
Is militaristic
Suppresses opposition with force
Has a social hierarchy
Prioritizes the nation over its members
Has strict rules for society and the economy
Otherwise, it's just sparkling authoritarianism. Don't get me wrong, that can still be just as evil or worse depending on how it's done, but spreading misinformation is not automatically fascism.
Frankly, I don't have a real issue with calling it fascism if it only meets some of the points above, but if it doesn't even meet half, I think you're stretching.