Counter-Revolutionary Technology

Insurgent left-wing political organizations struggle with utilizing existing technological infrastructure in order to achieve their political objectives. While the reasons for this struggle vary between organizations, much analysis has been made that shows two primary issues that these organizations face with regard to their own technological infrastructure. First, the vast majority of technological infrastructure is made with the primary goal of acquiring users to develop and optimize return on investment by monetizing user data and income. Second, state and state-supported groups are known to heavily utilize existing digital infrastructure to surveil and subvert insurgent political groups. These two primary reasons, when combined, create an adverse environment for political organizations. They are constrained by technological infrastructure that was built solely for commercialization and whose very nature, with its emphasis on decentralization and transparent information, creates a vulnerability that can be exploited.

Unfit for Purpose

Despite the proliferation of digital communication tools allowing for large groups of like-minded individuals to coordinate, communicate, and share information quickly and easily, the design of these tools has also given priority to communications that generate engagement above all else. While social media platforms do show a tendency that encourages users to engage in formal arguments on complex subjects when compared to traditional 1-1 communication (Hu, Talamadupula, and Kambhampati 2021), social media platforms have shown that high engagement posts often rely on moral outrage and in turn, lead to people to often conduct sophistry rather than meaningful discourse (Carpenter et al. 2021).

For political organizations, this utilization of moral outrage can seem deceptively useful due to its ability to create collective knowledge and spontaneous reaction to certain situations (Spring, Cameron, and Cikara 2018). However, research suggests that aligning this spontaneous outrage with organizational goals and perhaps, more importantly, long-term organization proves to be difficult (Brady and Crockett 2019).

Furthermore, as moderation on these platforms increases to discourage the sharing of misinformation and violent organization, so too does the elimination of voice from marginalized communities. Research has shown that the elimination of potentially radical conversations on social media platforms has stymied disinformation often linked to right-wing groups, however, it has also disproportionately removed posts related to transgender or queer issues, social justice, and anti-racism despite following site policies (Haimson et al. 2021).

When organizers are faced with the benefits of mass communication, they also subject themselves to a communication system that actively hinders and suppresses long-term organizational communication.

Insecure by Design

Prior to the advent of mass digital communication, organizing against the interests of state and business required centralized and coordinated publishing of information across networks of human relations. This created highly organized and hierarchical tight-knit communities that could effectively conduct operations to achieve their political goals. However, the centralized and hierarchical structure created vulnerabilities for those participating. The state in particular could utilize legal and political channels to target and punish those advocating for goals against the interest of the state. For instance, in the 1930s, as members of the Teamsters union began successfully advocating under a Trotskyist banner, many leaders of the Minneapolis Teamsters local were prosecuted under the Alien Registration Act which prohibited printing, writing, or circulating material advocating for doctrines that could threaten the government of the US (Schultz and Schultz 2001, pg 35). This doctrine of utilizing legal and political channels to punish others has been recently termed “Lawfare”.

Well-run organizations could effectively conduct complex pre-planned operations. However, due to a lack of accessible mass-communication technologies, adversarial organizations could easily dismantle operations through the use of Lawfare. For instance, as early as 1874, the city of New York utilized the strategic and timely revoking of a rally permit to unleash riot police and calvary on a gathering of socialists, anti-monopolists, and trade unionists in Thompkins Square. This legal loophole allowed the use of near-lethal force that ultimately destroyed the coalition behind New York’s unemployment movement at the time (Robert Justin Goldstein 2001, pg 27). Lawfare still continues against communities deemed against the interests of the American state. In 2016, police and National Guard utilized an excuse of illegal roadblocks to assault a camp of native protestors using armed infantry and armored personnel carriers designed to be used in war zones to beat, teargas, and disperse protesters from their native land (BBC News 2016).

Now, with the advent of mass digital communication technology, political organizations have reorganized under more decentralized means. These organizations often rely on looser non-hierarchical networks in order to limit liability and vulnerability to individual members becoming compromised. However, this new non-hierarchical and decentralized structure which is now reliant on utilizing digital mass communication has its own vulnerabilities. The open nature of many of these communication platforms allows for effective and flexible mass communication at the cost of securing the identities, locations, and other critical information of its members. For instance, Planned Parenthood’s public locations and operations have been subject to numerous firebombings and violent retaliation by decentralized right-wing terror groups (Bill Morlin 2015).

Furthermore, decentralized organizations are inherently less connected, with many members only being known through their online personas. While this lack of strong interpersonal relationships can assist in getting thousands to turn up a protest, it also means that there is inherently less behavioral moderation through social norms and collective experience. US domestic counter-intelligence programming described in Senate Intelligence Committee documents describes utilizing infiltration and misinformation to spread discontent and increase factionalization among organization members (Glick 1989). Where Lawfare was the primary concern of left-wing political organizations of old, counterintelligence is the primary concern of left-wing political organizations today.

While digital communication platforms could theoretically design information flows and features to help counteract these issues, their private ownership by massive corporations means that left-wing organizations in particular are faced with a decision to adopt tooling that inherently undermines their ability to function or lose out on being able to mobilize as effectively as more reactionary political organizations.

References

BBC News. 2016. “Riot Police Move in on North Dakota Pipeline Protesters,” October 28, 2016, sec. US & Canada. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37790839.

Bill Morlin. 2015. “Four Arsons in 74 Days at Planned Parenthood Clinics.” Southern Poverty Law Center. October 2, 2015. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2015/10/02/four-arsons-74-days-planned-parenthood-clinics.

Brady, William J, and Molly J Crockett. 2019. “How Effective Is Online Outrage?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 23 (2).

Carpenter, Jordan, William Brady, Molly Crockett, Rene Weber, and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. 2021. “Political Polarization and Moral Outrage on Social Media.” Connecticut Law Review, January. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/law_review/454.

Glick, Brian. 1989. War at Home: Covert Action against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do about It. 1st ed. South End Press Pamphlet Series, no. 6. Boston, MA: South End Press.

Haimson, Oliver L., Daniel Delmonaco, Peipei Nie, and Andrea Wegner. 2021. “Disproportionate Removals and Differing Content Moderation Experiences for Conservative, Transgender, and Black Social Media Users: Marginalization and Moderation Gray Areas.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5 (CSCW2): 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1145/3479610.

Hu, Yuheng, Kartik Talamadupula, and Subbarao Kambhampati. 2021. “Dude, Srsly?: The Surprisingly Formal Nature of Twitter’s Language.” Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 7 (1): 244–53.

Robert Justin Goldstein. 2001. Political Repression in Modern America from 1870 to 1976. 1st Illinois ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Schultz, Bud, and Ruth Schultz. 2001. The Price of Dissent: Testimonies to Political Repression in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Spring, Victoria L., C. Daryl Cameron, and Mina Cikara. 2018. “The Upside of Outrage.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 22 (12): 1067–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.09.006.