The three armies fighting for the post-American world
Iām coming to GUELPH, ONTARIO THIS FRIDAY (May 8) to deliver the Musagetes Lecture.
Political change is downstream of coalition building, and coalitions are fragile things, because by definition they are not fully aligned; they share some goals but often violently disagree about others. A coalition forms when groups set aside their differences to pursue the common elements of their agenda.
Trump is a master coalition builder. He wouldn't have been able to seize and wield so much power without a coalition that includes people who absolutely hate each other and want each other to die. Let's face it, Nick Fuentes wants to turn Ben Shapiro into a lampshade, but they both sent their followers to the ballot box for Trump. We've all seen those videos of Trump supporters railing against "elites" after watching the richest man on Earth cavorting with Trump while promising to give all of their jobs to AI and robots.
This contradiction isn't a bug, it's a feature: the bigger a coalition gets, the more power it has ā provided you've got a Trump figure at the top, using his cult of personality to coerce and flatter his coalition members into playing nice with each other.
But Trump's incontinent belligerence, his bullying, and his cognitive decline mean that he's conjuring a new anti-Trump coalition into existence: groups of people who don't agree on much, but do agree on fighting Trumpismo and its leader. This is very visible in US domestic politics, where "Never-Trumper" conservatives find themselves on the same side as Democratic Socialists, at least on this narrow issue. The anti-Trump mass mobilizations ā the Women's March, the anti-ICE demonstrations, the No Kings rallies ā are visibly, palpably coalitional, made up of people carrying signs and banners for groups that are often at odds with one anotherā¦except when it comes to Trump.
But I'm much more interested in the international coalitions that are forming to fight Trump. It started with my longstanding fight for a good internet, free from surveillance, extraction and manipulation, the three evils inherent to the business models of America's shitty, enshittifying tech companies.
Under normal circumstances, you'd expect tech companies in other countries to capitalize on the fact that America exports its obviously defective tech products around the world. As Jeff Bezos often reminds his suppliers: "Your margin is my opportunity." Whether it's Apple taking a 30% margin on iPhone payments, Apple and Meta creaming 51 cents off every ad dollar, Amazon harvesting 50-60% from every platform seller, or inkjet printer companies marking up the colored water you use to print your grocery list by 25 quattuordecillion percent, there's a ton of opportunities to disrupt these comfortable ex-disruptors.
But no one does that, because the US Trade Representative bullied every US trading partner into enacting an "anticircumvention" law that makes it a crime to modify America's tech exports. The quid pro quo for this? Free trade with the USA ā and tariffs for any country that didn't fall into line. Well, they all fell into line, and Trump tariffed them anyway.
That means that America's tech giants' margins are now everyone else's opportunity. The trillions that US tech companies extract could be someone else's billions ā all they'd have to do is offer the interoperable goods and services that disenshittify America's tech products. They could sell the tools that let anyone in the world use independent app stores, or fix their cars and tractors, and put generic ink in their printers. A year ago, no country could afford to allow a company headquartered in its borders to get into this business, lest they be clobbered with tariffs. Today, any country that isn't thinking about this is a sucker that will end up buying these tools from another country that gets there first.
This means that digital rights hippies like me (who've been banging this drum for 25 years), suddenly have a new ally in the fight against enshittified tech products. Today, there are people who want to help you protect your pocketbook and your privacy, but not because they believe in human rights ā rather, because they want to get really, really rich. They see Big Tech's margin as their opportunity.
But it's not just entrepreneurs and activists who want a post-American internet ā we have a third member of our coalition: national security hawks. Trump wants to steal Greenland. He wants to steal Alberta. He wants to steal all the oil in Venezuela. He wants to interfere in foreign elections to keep his dictator cronies in office, lest they lose power and find themselves facing prison. And when Trump's allies do face justice, he wants to fire the judges who dare hold these corrupt, powerful men to account.
So when the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the genocidaire Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump had Microsoft shut down the court's IT systems. The Chief Justice of the ICC lost his Office 365 account, which means he can't access his email archives, his working files, his calendar or his address books. He can't even log in to his non-Microsoft accounts because they're tied to his Outlook email address.
The ICC was just a warmup: Trump did the same thing to the Brazilian high court judge who sentenced the dictator Jair Bolsonaro to prison for attempting a coup after he lost his re-election bid, having presided over a term of gross misrule.
All of this has inflamed concerns within every (former) US ally's national security establishment. These people all understand that Trump doesn't need to roll tanks to take over their countries: he can just brick their key ministries, major firms, and households. He doesn't need to send an army to steal Greenland, he can just shut down Denmark and cut off the world's supply of Lego, Ozempic and ferociously strong black licorice.
Combine the natsec hawks; the economic development wonks, entrepreneurs and investors; and the privacy and digital and human rights activists, and you've got a hell of an anti-Trump coalition around the world, all pulling together to build the post-American internet, a disenshittified and enshittification-resistant internet built on international digital public goods and running on servers outside of the USA:
But this coalition isn't limited to the post-American internet ā you'll find a coalition much like it in every place where Comrade Trump is calling forth a post-American world. That's the shape of the coalition that's winning Trump's war on fossil fuels: climate activists (hippies), electrification manufacturers and installers (businesses) and national security hawks who don't want to get hormuzed:
I'm not as plugged into the other areas where Trump has dismantled US hegemony, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that a coalition much like this one is popping up in the countries where Trump and Musk doged the public health system into oblivion. The global south is full of countries that signed up to enforce US agricultural and pharmaceutical patents and US restrictions on birth control and abortion in exchange for the food-aid and health-aid that Elon Musk and his merry band of broccoli-haired brownshirts killed. It's easy to imagine that reproductive rights and health justice advocates in those countries are now on the same side as investors who'd like to get into business selling generic pharmaceuticals and agricultural inputs, and that they're being backed by people worried that their country's food and health sovereignty are at risk unless they hasten the transition to a post-American world.
I have been an activist all my life, and a digital rights activist for the majority of my adult life. I'm sure there are members of this post-American coalition who want things that are absolutely antithetical to my agenda. That's what makes us a coalition ā we disagree about so much, but we all agree on this: it's past time for a post-American world, and Comrade Trump is delivering it.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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U.S. law enforcement is investigating whether a woman took a laptop computer or hard drive from U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office during the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol and tried to sell the device to Russian intelligence, according to a court filing...
alt-right followerĀ Riley June Williams (22) may also be charged withĀ light TREASONĀ ā ārebellion or insurrectionā and espionageĀ #NatSec
ITV News videoed Williams directing insurrectionistĀ inside the Capitol and Pelosiās office.Ā #MAGATerroristsĀ #TrumpsTerrorists
Williams wasĀ āwearing a t-shirt emblazoned with an alt-right sloganā
Journalist Raven Geary ācaptured Riley June Williams fleeing the #CapitolRiotā
An FBI agent disclosed the detail in an affidavit released on Sunday night that outlined a criminal case against Riley June Williams, a Pennsylvania woman accused of unlawfully breaching the Capitol building and directing people to Pelosiās office.
Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin said after the attack that some of the thefts might have potentially jeopardized what he described as ānational security equities.ā
Williams has fled an address near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that she shared with her mother, deactivated her phone number, and took down social media accounts.
Williamsā mother: She took an interest in āPresident Trumpās politicsā and āFar Right Message Boardsā
Williamsā ex contacted the FBIĀ
According to the affidavit filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the FBI received a tip from someone who stated they were a former romantic partner of Williams.
The tipster said Williams āintended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russiaās foreign intelligence service,ā the affidavit stated.
According to the tipster, āthe transfer of the computer device to Russia fell through for unknown reasons and Williams still has the computer device or destroyed it,ā the affidavit stated. The investigation remains open.
Williams directed rioters (domestic terrorists) inside the CapitolĀ #TerroristAttackĀ #RepublicansComplicit
Trump Impeached for āIncitement of Insurrectionā
NAT SEC concerns re: blackmail [gain control] of J. Biden by Russia, China and/or other foreign [or domestic] entities?
US Intel apparatus [reports?]?
Clear and Present Danger?
Q
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The unprecedented, massive new sanctions bill that Congress sent to President Donald Trump on Thursday is a statement of outrage by legislators over the presidentās failure to responsibly carry out foreign policy on Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Fundamentally, it is also an overt effort to seize the national security reigns from the president.
Legislators are near unanimous in their support for a tougher U.S. policy stance on some of the gravest national security challenges. Many believe that Trump and former President Barack Obama have not acted strongly enough to check Iranās ballistic missile program, support for terrorism, and efforts to destabilize the Middle East, as well as North Koreaās alarming race toward long-range nuclear weapons capabilities.
Lawmakers took matters into their own hands and wrote the new sanctions legislation to address these threats. But the real target and virulence of their bill is the set of financial measures aimed squarely at Russia. A raft of new sanctions are designed to hold Moscow to account for its meddling in U.S. democratic processes and its continued aggressive actions in Europe and the Middle East.
In practical terms, the new Russia measures lock into statute existing sanctions, preventing the president from throwing them out. And they go much further: New provisions will cut deeper into the profit-making and international engagement of Russiaās defense, intelligence, energy, banking, rail, mining, and metals sectors. They also target RussianĀ cyberintrusions, and the countryās military support for the Syrian regime. Taken together, these new restrictions send an appropriately tough message to the Kremlin that the United States will not tolerate Russiaās election meddling and thuggery.
As tough as the legislation is, however, serving up venomous financial sanctions is nothing new. The truly remarkable and unprecedented element of this piece of law is an innocuously dubbed ācongressional reviewā of sanctions. It handcuffs the president in his exercise of sanctions by creating elaborate mechanisms for scrutiny and blockade to prevent watering down of Russia policy. Congress wants the president on a very short leash.
