Democracy is barely hanging on against the Internet. Can it survive the celebrity con?

In 2017, Nate Persily, a Stanford Law School Professor, published an article in The Journal of Democracy entitled "Can Democracy Survive the Internet?" I don't want to "Fukuyama" this question - declaring something dead before enough time has passed to really know - but I do think we can say, for now at least, that democracy is facing an existential threat in the U.S.

The Internet is part of the reason, but it's not as direct a link as you might expect. Persily's article focused on the Internet's contributions to spreading lies and propaganda - he called them the three "Vs" of challenges - "Velocity, Virality, and Volume." I want to comment on how the Internet's production of billionaires - a secondary effect of not just allowing, but celebrating the privatization of digital infrastructure - may be the Internet's biggest threat to the sovereignty of the people.

In the thirty years since Netscape brought us all onto the web, the internet has both enabled and prefigured the most extensive centralization of power and wealth ever achieved. Using the tactics of enclosure, a handful of men have consolidated economic control over a communications infrastructure that now undergirds domains as diverse as transportation, energy, education, cultural exchange, medical research, foreign aid, banking, investing, giving, and collective action.

It's notable that many of the news scoops about what's happening inside the U.S. government are coming from Wired, a magazine known more for its tech gadget reviews than its political reporting. The tech press has been remarkably active in covering what, at first, looks like a political story. They're breaking news about Musk and his minions.

danah boyd is one of the more visible scholars of technology and society. She recently posted a piece called "What game are we playing," in which she offers a few frameworks to help people make sense of what's going on. She considers "Jenga politics," "dismantlement," "lock-in," and "arson." It's worth reading the whole piece, but the subtitles alone reveal her sense of the intentional destruction of government systems.

I want to offer another one frame, that of the celebrity con. Both Musk and Trump fancy themselves successful businessmen, but the truth is more complicated than that. Trump is a master of celebrity for celebrity's sake. He's also a master con. Musk acts as if he founded Tesla, when he strong-armed it away from its real founders. He famously used Twitter to manipulate Tesla's stock prices and build his own "army" of fanboys. Neither man hesitates to glorify violence or use their fanboys to intimidate anyone who might get in their way.

The Internet is responsible for both men's cultlike followings. It is directly responsible for Musk's wealth. Trump, who recently learned how to use shenanigans such as SPACs and crypto currency to ripoff people, has simply added digital con artistry to his lifelong habit of real-world fraudulent ventures. Online intimidation is said to be why elected officials from the GOP are silent on his unconstitutional power grabs.

There are cracks in the story of the internet as a centralizing technology. Perhaps the light of the future exists in these cracks. More and more people are moving off the major platforms and on to federated versions that allow the same kind of microblogging, photo swapping, and video sharing, without driving dollars and power to a handful of men. Just as people have gotten smarter about the surveillant nature of our cities, airports, and financial tools, we're catching up to the oligarch-producing nature of our privatized digital infrastructure.

Democracy in the U.S. is under direct attack by two Internet-fueled con men, hell-bent on bending the government to further enrich themselves while also living out their wildest dreams of unaccountable megalomania. Both depend on their fanboys to do their dirty work. Both have conned their way to celebrity and now turn their celebrity to the task of extending their con.

Seeing through the con are all of the street protestors, Canada and Mexico, defiant federal government workers, advocates and lawyers who have filed lawsuits, and people taking over representative's offices. People are holding lines, pushing back on performative strongmen-itis, and pointing out the nakedness of these would-be emperors. These are distributed actions - aligned in principle but not in practice. Wise words to live by, when trying to slow, then prevent, and ultimately hold accountable, a group of celebrity con artists.