In modern society, perception trumps reality.
The easiest way to paint a false reality and sell it to others is through social media. The latest social media fad is pretending to be an activist & ally for a movement while actively working behind the scenes to dismantle the very same protest movement.
The Role of Transparency and Decentralization
The best way for a movement to be successful is to completely decentralize it by teaching others how to be their own advocates by taking direct, concrete actions to implement long-term change. These actions specifically include lobbying local government officials by writing letters, calling, emailing, and attending board meetings to make public comment. Publicly confronting corrupt officials and video live streaming the incident while specifically calling out their exact corrupt behaviors is another fantastically effective method of protesting.
The goal is to be specific and hone in on a particular message while speaking out so that the message does not get lost in translation. Be very clear, direct, and to the point. Videotaping the incident is a must as well, because in today’s day in age, unless it was videotaped then it did not happen. Everyone has a phone nowadays, which means everyone has a video camera.
The Power of Direct Action
Public street interviews and picketing are also powerfully effective methods, just be sure you understand the difference and boundaries of the easement versus the sidewalk versus private property. Public shaming can be a powerful tool when used correctly – namely by sticking to the facts and avoiding violent language. The goal is to bring in the support of the general public and being an aggressor is not a good way of doing so.
The Distracting Influence of Celebrity Figures – The Modern Day Roman Circus
Now, contrast these direct, specific, practical, and effective methods that anyone can take by themselves to the methods touted by celebrity figures and mainstream influencers pretending to be activists.
Their approach is primarily covering celebrity gossip without ever addressing local events and raising the voices of smaller social media journalists – unless it fits with their narrative. They distract people from the topic at hand using what I call the modern-day Roman circus – general mainstream events and brain-rotting entertainment to distract from what’s happening in people’s local community. The goal is to keep people sedated with nonsensical media shilling only noise & talking heads to make people feel good and feel like they’re positively contributing to a cause when all they are really doing is consuming junk content that is self-serving just to the influencer peddling the content.
The energy that people sink into the useless celebrity gossip and self-serving media could instead have been time & energy better spent writing letters to elected officials, showing up to offer public comment at committee meetings, and confronting corrupt officials publicly in person. The biggest tell that someone is engaging in self-serving grifting behaviors while pretending to be an ally is keeping discussions privately.
The worst thing you can do for any activist movement is keep any manner of correspondence private. The success of any movement fundamentally hinges on absolute transparency, which necessitates all correspondence being public. This allows everyone & anyone at any point in time to independently audit whether a person’s actions match their words. Entire movements have ended miserably because they failed to grasp this fundamental concept. This ultimately allowed issues to boil beneath the surface before they ultimately inevitably burst into the public sphere in the worst of ways.
The need for power and control will always be present, and thus larger-than-life figures are expected to arise. But the success of the movement is bigger than any singular individual and those that choose to allow their dislike of any individual get in the way of achieving the desired long-term outcomes from the protest movement have chosen to allow their personal feelings to blind them of what’s truly important.
Sympathy and empathy for victims who were hurt by the very thing the movement is trying to combat is important. However, be careful that this grace does not extend so far as to make prior victims impervious to any criticism. Everyone is deserving of criticism and it is oftentimes the case that parasocial relationships develop between protestors and victims. They develop a sort of trauma bond with victims and can even begin using the same outdated coded language that oftentimes obscures the real message at hand. This coded language creates a sort of in-group that does not lend itself well to bringing in support of the general public while also remaining on point with the desired message of the protest movement.
Case Studies In Fake Activism
The most powerful step to being an effective activist, however, is the ability to paint a very clear narrative. Issues like fraud, theft, and violence are important but what really makes people connect are the personal stories of those affected, especially how children, women, and the elderly are victims. The problem with talking about generalities like fraud is that it does not elicit an emotional response from people to spark passion & allow them to feel the outrage of the indecency. Numbers on a balance sheet are just that – numbers. But when those numbers are attached to real people and real stories, then it means something.
Take, for example, the story of fraud I covered with Li-Cycle. Obviously, fraud and lying to investors, which is what Li-Cycle did, is bad and unlawful. It involved nepotism, cronyism, and gross incompetence. However, the mainstream media, as well as Li-Cycle executives, failed to show the real story of Li-Cycle executives’ fraudulent behaviors. General contractors losing their homes because Li-Cycle executives knowingly hemorrhaged money on completely unnecessary technologies and services despite the advice of subject matter experts. Families not being able to put food on the table because they caused local businesses to pay for Li-Cycle's incompetence. The children of those families going hungry because of a greenwashing scam backed by powerful lobbyists and politicians like Chuck Schumer without any consideration of the complex, finer details. An erosion of trust of the public’s trust in legitimate climate & environmental science. Setting a precedent for future lithium recycling companies to treat environmental science technology as one giant grift like back in the old days of the Wild West.
In other protest movements, it is often the case that existing foundations/organizations, as well as their associated leaders, are not what they seem. This occurred in the Black Lives Matter protests, with the fundraising foundations being primarily used to fraudulently feed a few organizers to purchase luxurious mansions rather than spend the money on assisting protestors to handle issues that occurred during their protesting – namely court cases for bogus charges and physical damages they received while being victims of police brutality as police escalated situations unnecessarily.
In the case of the Scientology protest movement, it has been the departure from relying on existing figures and making protests completely decentralized by empowering individuals to become their own advocates. I believe we are living in the golden age of decentralization, especially when it comes to supporting protest movements. There is simply no longer a need for a middleman like an association/foundation in today’s digital age to manage resources and connections. The internet allows everyone to be instantly connected at all times and simply provide aid directly to the individual(s) who need the support. Doing so greatly saves on management fees as well as drastically lowers the chance of corruption & misappropriation of funds. There is immediate, real-time feedback showing how your funds are being used.
In the case of industrial automation and the broader right to repair & open source movement, it is coming to terms with the failure of existing institutions and calling out charlatans & grifters. Industry associations have undoubtedly failed to educate the public as well as customers, existing as mere husks of what they may have originally intended themselves to be. Industry associations primarily serve the bidding of a few large conglomerate corporate masters shilling propaganda to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt about public technology. It is easy, in this setup, to avoid the needs of the stakeholders namely because they do not have a say when it comes to the governance of the association. Board members are not publicly elected and oftentimes these same board members get a salary both from the association they lead as well as a company that directly competes in the same market, they have political influence in thanks to their board position. It is a clear conflict of interest to have the authority to sway trends, politics, and laws of the same industry in which you are also a business executive in. Unfortunately, this message continues to get lost in translation despite repeatedly sharing it with leaders of the OPC Foundation, CESMII, ISA, and dozens of others.
The Necessity of Public Technology Assets
Furthermore, because industrial automation lacks software engineers - chiefly due to the poor working conditions, benefits, and lack of upward mobility bred by a culture stained with deep-rooted nepotism & cronyism - it is an industry ripe for charlatans and grifters to come around touting competency in areas they have no business in. This is because when you have an uninformed audience, it becomes that much easier to mislead them. The reality is public technology assets are THE only way forward for any technology field to make progress. This is exactly how the digital software technology sector has progressed so rapidly. To publicly state that the open sourcing of technology is NOT necessary to a successful digital transformation journey shows just how much of a charlatan you are.
Public technology assets greatly reduce the need for upfront investment to build the necessary foundations of a project by providing economies of scale by decentralizing the burden of auditing, innovating, scaling, and building new features. This is because public technology assets provide absolute transparency at all levels. From how the social correspondence of trusted contributors occurs in the development of the project, to the funds the project receives, all the way to stakeholders directly contributing & steering the project’s trajectory. The victims for not pursuing open source are primarily children, who get shut out of opportunities to engage in technology at all levels at a young age, regardless of socioeconomic background.
Before Arduino microcontrollers, and now compact programmable logic controllers (PLC), it used to be the case that you had to spend an entire undergraduate degree to have the chance of using industrial electronics. No longer is this the case and because of it, an entire generation of children have grown up with the ability to build their own projects at home for cheap. The gatekeepers of old, like Rockwell Automation for instance, are no longer a roadblock to obtaining information and experience. In other words, the barrier to entry has effectively been removed and the public is now undergoing a digital transformation journey whereby they are unlearning the propaganda shilled by proprietary technology gatekeepers like Rockwell/Siemens/Schneider/Emerson as well as exploring the art of the possible with open hardware and software technologies.
This open access to information, data, and technology assets is fundamental for continued innovation and success. Living in this age of free access to software and hardware technology is great for the public and for business – it is ONLY bad for those bad actors who want to keep the status quo of technology asset control & ownership under a select few private hands. The old approach of private equity of taking public information and funds to sponsor progress while keeping the assets under private control is a scourge to humanity.
Conclusion
Be wary of wolves in sheep's clothing in an age where people are actively speaking out in protest of the old ways. The best way to suppress civil unrest is to plant an agent inside the movement to run controlled opposition. Give people the feeling that they are making successful long-term positive change without taking concrete action to achieve said outcome. Progress is acceptable but only if it’s done in the confines of a tightly controlled narrative that seeks to basically put lipstick on a pig.
Real activism and change require pissing off a lot of people by refusing all current established narratives and carving out your own through independent critical thinking based using the scientific method to uncover oftentimes harsh convoluted truths. The pursuit of the truth, free from personal biases and removed from a cult-like attachments, is what makes a true skeptic.
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DISCLAIMER: I am not sponsored or influenced in any way, shape, or form by the companies and products mentioned. This is my own original content, with image credits given as appropriate and necessary.
Top comments (1)
Enri, some of your expose is brutal, but completely on point.