Khadija Mbowe
patreon
The Case for Digital Divestment, a manifesto
🕑 Added 2023-11-20 22:34:27 +0000 UTCI’ve been thinking for a long time how to use the internet as a weapon. As a tool against these oppressive systems.
At first it was great and I felt like this place, social media, would be a place to level the playing field. A place to teach and be taught.
I now understand what Audre Lorde said: “For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”
Social media can help us with collective action, but only so far. It can be used as a tool to spread awareness, to educate to inspire, but after that…?
We’ve seen the images. We’ve seen the face of war; its lies, propaganda, and overall brutality. We’ve been exposed to the cost of all of this. And our solution is to just keep looking, posting, “amplifying”. But if the world has seen. If the world is open and on the side of liberation, what’s left to amplify?
We are so used to the short life cycles of sensational news stories…
My speculation is that we fear the minute people stop talking about something they’ll forget about it and move on. Those people were always going to do that, and they cannot be relied upon for actual change. They are not yet consistent enough in their own beliefs, and in their own lives to show up consistently for liberation.
I hear people speak of solidarity of centering, the most marginalized. I have spoken of that too. But it seems I’ve been misunderstood. When we began speaking of Palestinian liberation, we also started speaking of liberation for people in Congo, Tigray, Sudan, and Hawai’i.
They too are marginalized. They to deserve to be centred in our conversations. If you disagree, then I ask you how long should they wait? How long should we put their liberation on the shelf?
We are using these platforms and applications to bring awareness about one genocide, but cannot see our constant use of these platforms and technologies is actively funding another one.
How do we reconcile that? How do we continue to ignore the elephant in the room? To compartmentalize one group’s subjugation to uplift another?
You say you want “liberation for all!” You say, “none of us are free until all of us are free!” You say “solidarity now” and then continue to give these billionaires all of your time and attention and they convert that to money.
They commodify your desire to change the world. They commodify and profit from your loneliness. They are the real enemy, watching us fight each other as they continue to exploit the Earth and its people. All the while we scroll. We complain. We yell. We save and we scroll.
Maybe the ends justify the means…but then I would have to ask you whose liberation are you fighting for? Yours and yours alone or liberation for all people?
It’s my belief that spreading awareness…
(using these platforms and technologies) is a good first step, but after that there needs to be more action.
We’ve never lived in a time where social media was part of politics such as now. We haven’t lived in a time where consumers have so much power. Where consumers can choose to opt in or out of these applications of our own free will.
We’ve also never lived in a time where people are so addicted to their devices. So dependent upon this crutch, that if it is not there, If we are not online, we believe we cannot find information. If we are not online, we believe we cannot do the work of liberation. If we are not online, we believe that we cannot actively resist
Your ancestors didn’t have Instagram. The revolutionaries you quote, repost, and save did not have Twitter. The leaders of the past who do you look to to teach you a way forward were not on TikTok.
If they had access to social media, they would be just as sceptical, just as weary, just a suspicious as I am of how far social media can take us when it comes to the work of true liberation for ALL.
Some of us have valid reasons for being unable to show up the way we want to in the real world. Most of us do not. Most of us, particularly in the Global North, will find any excuse to hold on to our comforts. We will find any excuse to go right up to the line of liberation until we are asked to risk something important to us.
Then…we retreat. We take a step back. We continue to look on through our comforts, but refuse to let them go, even if they are the very thing standing in the way of our collective liberation.
These applications and platforms have a so convinced that we cannot do anything without them, that the mere suggestion of a digital divestment prickles “progressives”.
I am not anti-Internet. I’m not even anti-social media. But at what point do we say enough is enough? At what point do we stop looking at ourselves as products and remember our humanity remember that we are people. First and foremost.
We have collective power on our sides, but only if we choose to see it. Only if we choose to believe it, and look past the rose coloured glasses these applications have placed on our eyes.
It’s a toxic relationship bestie. How do you reclaim your power in a toxic relationship? By walking away. Divesting from it completely. Or…Divesting long enough to show them that you can leave if and when you choose to, so they better act accordingly.
But what do I know I’m just a baby …👶🏿
* this manifesto was updated from the original one posted to other platforms earlier today
Comments
Ana Cravid
I feel like we gained a lot of solidarity these last years with social media, but we lost it too. Social media will have people from all over the world pouring their hearts into a thread, sharing posts on oppression, it will connect people and struggles. But at the same time that we see this huge wave of solidarity, we also see a huge lost of solidarity. It's not that hard to not have your Starbucks or Macdonalds. I work at a billion dollars corporation. We are all overworked and underpaid. My co-workers and I always talk about how life is hard, inflation made everything harder, how it is unfair that we are all so underpaid, etc. But when I or someone else suggests a strike or some other actual action to change things, no one wants to take part in it. As long as people aren't "too bad" themselves, they don't care. They like to theorize, to dream and talk about change as long as it doesn't bring them any discomfort. We had a training in October and I got to talk to more like minded people. It was very refreshing. They said they tried real change, they tried strikes, but in the end, most people still worked leaving those protesting hanging. Social media is important, but it only highlighted this "talking" part, which is important, but no one wants to act. We still have power. Corporations, politicians, governments, states, are nothing without the people. Let's unite, protest, boycott, refuse to work simply. We still have power but it must really be WE. This power only exist in collectivity, in community, in numbers.
Isobel Tait
Ever since I got rid of Instagram and Facebook I have been way more invested in learning about what is actually happening in the world. Instagram can be really claustrophobic with the reposted infographics and people arguing about the situation in Gaza when it's like... Hey we live in AUSTRALIA. The best thing we can do is organize and show up to the rallies and donate.
