“”In recent years the P2P Foundation has become the dominion of a single man: its founder Michel Bauwens. Despite its stated commitment to the “commons”, under Bauwens’ direction the P2P Foundation has increasingly come to represent an understanding of the commons as a place of white privilege and punitive male fragility.”
Read More Michel BauwensAstroturfing is the use of fake grassroots efforts that primarily focus on influencing public opinion and typically are funded by corporations and governmental entities to form opinions
Data mining expert Bing Liu (University of Illinois) estimated that one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake
Read More Astroturfing – WikipediaIn this article, the so-called ‘anti-woke’ culture war is deconstructed through the notions of metapolitics in fascist discourses – linked to the Gramscian ‘hegemonisation’ and ‘the war of position’ – as well as the Schmittian friend/enemy distinction coupled with theories of deviance and moral panics. The appropriation of the neo-fascist culture war discourse by the mainstream right in the UK is analysed discursively, combining political discourse analysis, the discourse-historical approach and discourse-conceptual analysis. The anti-woke culture war by the British conservative party as well as rightwing media will serve to analyse how social justice struggles like anti-racism, anti-sexism and pro-LGBTQ rights are being abnormalised and positioned as extreme deviant political positions. Linked to this, so-called ‘cancel culture’ is strategically deployed by dominant groups to neutralise contestations against racist, sexist and anti-LGBTQ views. Finally, freedom of speech and the right to offend is weaponised to protect racist and discriminatory language and to position these idea’s as valid opinions worthy of democratic debate.
Read More The abnormalisation of social justice: The ‘anti-woke culture war’