AI as a Fascist Project Summary
- "AI as a Fascist Artifact" — Concise Play-by-Play
- Premise 1: The Convergence
Three forces collide in our world: - **Tech mediation**: Digital systems structure our work, government, and daily life. - **Rising fascism**: Neofascist movements are gaining power globally. - **The "AI" age**: Stochastic systems with attributed agency are embedded in all workflows.
- Question**: Is AI connected to fascism, or just something fascists use?
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- Premise 2: AI is a Political Project
AI isn't a neutral tool. It's a **political artifact through and through** (Ali Alkhatib) whose purpose is to shift authority and autonomy from individuals toward centralized power structures—mostly big tech and their "AI Labs."
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- Premise 3: Structural Alignment with Fascism
- Data foundation**: AI scrapes the internet—mostly colonial, sexist, heteronormative data. Ask for "two people kissing" and you get a white heterosexual couple. Perfect for creating the idealized fictional "past" fascists want to restore.
- Output properties**: Generative AI's structure aligns with right-wing reasoning and aesthetics.
- Labor impact**: AI is used to take jobs from left-leaning creative industries. A **vulgar display of power** by the right.
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- Premise 4: The Four Violences AI Depends On
1. **Data acquisition**: Scraping against will, "if you can download it, you can use it." 2. **Data labeling**: Global south workers suffer mental trauma cleaning torture/sexualized content. 3. **Colonialist declaration**: Only what the West deems "worth" digitizing counts as "all the world's knowledge." 4. **Abuse enablement**: "Nudify" apps and similar tools enabled by most labs.
- Fascism's core pattern**: Normalization of violence as the organizing principle. AI shares this structurally.
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- Premise 5: Destruction of Solidarity
AI attacks labor power on three levels: - **Individual**: "AI will replace you" pressures workers to work harder. - **Collective**: "AI will replace someone else" creates a Thunderdome—we fight each other. - **Structural**: Using AI declares other workers' labor irrelevant, dissolving social bonds.
- Fascism's core pattern**: Destroy solidarity and labor power to cement totalitarian control.
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- Premise 6: Epistemic Capture
AI replaces **truth with belief**. "Everything Machines" sever us from verifiable reality. Sam Altman's vision: "Intelligence" you rent from OpenAI to control your ability to criticize power.
- Fascism's core pattern**: Replace reasoning and debate with belief in power and the leader.
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- Premise 7: Attack on Democracy
AI is introduced into government promising efficiency, but **bureaucracy is a tool of democracy**—transparency in applying power. Stochastic AI systems break that promise, forcing marginalized people to fight black boxes trained on their own disenfranchisement.
- Fascism's core pattern**: Dismantle democratic infrastructures to enable totalitarian control.
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- Premise 8: The Religious Narrative
AI is "The ONLY FUTURE"—a pseudo-religious narrative of paradise. The Singularity creates an ultimate goal whose (re)creation overshadows everything.
- Fascism's core pattern**: Create a narrative of glory and salvation that overrides all else.
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- Conclusion: The Choice
- By using AI, you integrate fascist logic into your thinking.** Even individual users accept its tendencies as "normal."
- Open source isn't neutral**: Licenses are built around libertarian thinking, not political values.
- Final imperative**:
> "Some machines must be broken, so that they stop producing monsters." — Brian Merchant
- "Destroy AI."**
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- Short version**: AI is structurally built on fascist principles and integrates into our thinking in a way that creates permission structures for inhumane reasoning. The choice is between fixing our hearts and tech, or suffering the consequences.