The three armies fighting for the post-American world
I’m 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 – 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 – the Women's March, the anti-ICE demonstrations, the No Kings rallies – are visibly, palpably coalitional, made up of people carrying signs and banners for groups that are often at odds with one another…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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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 – 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:
Clippers' Steve Ballmer defends self, team from accusations of cap circumvention, 'They conned me'
In his first public comments since allegations broke that the Clippers circumvented the salary cap to get more money to Kawhi Leonard through an endorsement deal with a fraudulent company, team owner Steve Ballmer defended himself and the organization as innocent, saying that they were victims of scammers, like many other investors.
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Posted to the MOFO Linux Project Page (Sourceforge, 2025/08/19)
Friends,
Censorship has existed as long as communication and authoritarians have existed in the same space. People in power have always had a narrative about their existence and why their world was the way it was. Censorship was as simple as forbidding expression which challenged power and its narratives. With every advance in communication between humans, the information space grew in volume. We began by speaking person to person, creating sculptures, and drawing on caves. Then orators would speak to groups of assembled persons, or write texts by hand and distribute them. Then came the printing press, telegraphy, and the various forms of electronic communication.
Censorship evolved with every advance in communication, to resist the sharing of ideas which challenged power. With the word "ideas," I refer to not only creations spun up in the mind of a creative storyteller or artist, but also the people of science, mathematics, philosophy, law, religion, and politics, who attempt to understand our world and share what they have found. In democratic societies, it is the people who decide where to draw the line between what expression is permissible and what is considered harmful and warranting restriction. Authoritarian societies organize around obedience to leadership and restrict expression which is non compliant. Think of how the Catholic church fought the discovery of heliocentrism. Consider how puritanical and cultish people in the United States fought (and continue to fight) the teaching of evolution or genetics. It has been a century since the Scopes trial and a half century since the West Virginia School Book War, and tens of millions of people still cling to extreme religious ideas which we know are mythical.
Worse, yet, so-called democracies such as the UK and USA are mandating draconian measures against online anonymity and secure communications. American "red states" are foolhardily mandating restrictions against access to websites containing information about contraception, reproductive health, and options for pregnant people. They should know better, but they do not, as the lawmakers appear to have minimal awareness of facts associated with censorship. LOL, I guess they didn't read my entertaining yet hard hitting book, Censorship's Grave.
Censorship is dead. As mass communication advanced, so did the tools of censorship, such that for every measure, came a countermeasure. For every countermeasure, came a new advancement against censorship. We have paper and ink documents which are waterproof. We have optical and spinning-rust disks which can survive if an office or data center is flooded or burned down. We have encrypted communications which will are as likely to yield Shakespeare as to give up their true contents. We have vaults and online libraries progressing toward offering every work which has ever been published. In a real sense, censorship is dead and we are free - if it is our choice to be free.
Dictatorships are enraged and frightened by unhampered communications. They have learned to track internet usage and block websites and VPN protocols. They interfere with DNS queries. They choke crossborder connectivity until broadband becomes a trickle. Circumventionists figured out how to evade every, I repeat, EVERY form of internet censorship, save for cutting cables. I have personally experienced blocked and throttled "normal" internet while visiting countries considered to be non-free. In those same places, I have used encryption and multithreaded connections to enjoy blazingly fast file downloads, peer to peer file sharing, and media streaming. Everything the dictators can do to limit assembly and expression FAILS, as no barrier is perfect. Except for cutting the cables. MOFO Linux is my version of a toolset for exploiting flaws in censorship barriers and accessing online media. Yet now, the media does not want certain people to access it. There is a voice out there saying, in effect, "We don't serve your kind here."
There is a way to censor, which makes useless every circumvention method: self-censorship! All of the circumvention technology is useless if one party to an act of assembly or expression opts out. That means Tor is useless if you don't use it. Tor is also useless if your forums or media platforms block it. VPNs and SSH tunnels are useless if the platform will not allow you to use it because you arrive from a known server address. I have seen these things happen in 2025, and the trend is increasing. Twitter / X, YouTube, Reddit, and various adult entertainment sites, are rolling out age verification systems which eliminate anonymous access to their content. It is getting down to a self-censorship where people cannot break out of a restricted internet bubble and use the large platforms because the tools which liberate at the origin are also the tools which provoke blocking at the destination. You can leave home, but you are welcome nowhere! If you have a server farm's IP address, please go away!
Platforms which surrender to authoritarian lawmakers and block access to people using circumvention tools will kill what remains of the internet we had a decade ago. They are going to screw it up for everyone, and why? Cowardice! Because they lack the spine to say no to authoritarians.
None of this dumbassery will solve any problems with obscene content or its access by minors. To stop that problem, parents need to do better in raising children who grow up with healthier minds. I mean this in all seriousness, that we worry about what our kids eat, or that they follow safe practices when crossing streets. But not enough care that they develop healthy minds, learn to handle stresses of life, and have a respect for other people and living things. It is the job of parents, not legislators, to make it so. Addictions, substance abuse, violence and abuse against people and creatures ALL have something in common, and it will never be solved with censorship.
Anti-censorship operating systems will always exist, one way or another. It is a silly fantasy to think a day will come when Tails, Qubes, or MOFO Linux will be unavailable. It is true that Twitter / X, YouTube, Instagram, or the many adult content sites may close down. However, they will be replaced by alternative services which meet the demands of internet users. Until internet users are no longer interested in such services. Because it is the users, not the dictators, which control the bottom line.
Good luck with all of that. Have fun. Don't get hurt.
Phil Collier / MOFO Linux
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