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#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

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(((Baslow)))

This video doesn't tell most of the people who will read this post anything they don't already know.
But that it is being published in the NYT, that these academics are so emphatic, that they are actually leaving...
I find significant.

The question is no longer "What do I think of all this?" but "What are we collectively doing about all of this?"

So far, I think, our answer is inadequate.
nytimes.com/2025/05/14/opinion

The New York Times · Opinion | We Study Fascism at Yale. We’re Leaving the U.S.By Marci Shore
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
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(((Baslow)))

The rise of end times fascism

The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them

theguardian.com/us-news/ng-int

As it happens, I've had some thoughts about how we might resist:

seizethemeans.communitarium.or

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

The Guardian · The rise of end times fascismBy Naomi Klein
Public
(((Baslow)))

Technocracy fails not because people are dumb, but because it enshrines the wrong kind of intelligence. Real wisdom emerges in the interplay of lived experience, mutual trust, and shared interpretation—things only real communities can cultivate.

@pluralistic on "Ostromizing Democracy"

pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/ana

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

pluralistic.netPluralistic: Ostromizing democracy (04 May 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Public
(((Baslow)))

Beyond Social Products: Comparing the Communitarium Project and New_ Public's Vision

New_ Public wants better digital communities. So does the Communitarium Project—but it starts further back, aiming not to reform platforms but to form new communities, infrastructures, and counter-realities beyond capitalism. A comparison:

seizethemeans.communitarium.or

#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

Seize the Means of Community · Beyond Social Products: Comparing the Communitarium Project and New_ Public's VisionNew Public wants better digital communities. So does the Communitarium Project—but it starts further back, aiming not to reform platforms...
Public
(((Baslow)))

Language of the Left: Worker
Class, Myth, and the Obsolescence We Must Design

“Worker” has been a rallying point and a mythic role. But its durability is both a strength and a trap. If the Left is to move forward, we must use the term strategically—while refusing to treat it as permanent. The worker must remain historically specific, ideologically provisional, and ultimately, replaceable.

#LanguageOfTheLeft
#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

seizethemeans.communitarium.or

Seize the Means of Community · Language of the Left: WorkerClass, Myth, and the Obsolescence We Must Design “Worker” has been a rallying point and a mythic role. But its durability is both a stre...
Public
(((Baslow)))

The Communitarium Project: Oh God, Not Communes Again!

The Communitarium Project isn’t about reviving communes or escaping society—it’s about building transitional, interstitial spaces where people can live, think, and act together differently. Not utopias, but shared infrastructures for sense-making, coordination, and care—without enforcing consensus or closing down difference.

#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

seizethemeans.communitarium.or

Seize the Means of Community · The Communitarium Project: Oh God, Not Communes Again!The Communitarium Project isn’t about reviving communes or escaping society—it’s about building transitional, interstitial spaces where p...
Public
(((Baslow)))

I'm confident that most of the people likely to read this toot already know that, while it is possible for gossip to be malicious and destructive, gossip as a practice is vital to human communality.
If you find yourself needing to make the case to someone who *doesn't* know this, here's a nice little video:
youtube.com/watch?v=zHmoWNIO6e

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

YouTubeThe Evolution of Gossip | Otherwords (feat. @besmart)By Storied
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(((Baslow)))

Idiotism: The Enclosure of the Self and the Limits of Leftist Language

Neoliberalism thrives on idiotism—enclosure of the self, severing people from collective life. Historically, “idiot” meant disengagement; under capitalism, it became an insult. Leftist language must resist this by rooting itself in real communities of practice, rebuilding speech communities, and reclaiming political meaning from ideological enclosure.
seizethemeans.communitarium.or
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

Seize the Means of Community · Idiotism: The Enclosure of the Self and the Limits of Leftist LanguageNeoliberalism thrives on idiotism—the enclosure of the self, severing people from collective life. Historically, "idiot" meant disengagem...
Public
(((Baslow)))

Why the Language of the Left No Longer Moves Us – And What We Can Do About It

The Left’s key terms often fail to mobilize because they've been enclosed, ritualized, and detached from lived practice. Leftist organizations sustain these terms internally but they must help build outward-facing communities that integrate language into real, systemic change. We need to reclaim a vocabulary of communal power.

seizethemeans.communitarium.or

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

Seize the Means of Community · Why the Language of the Left No Longer Moves Us - And What We Can Do About ItThe Left’s key terms—solidarity, mutual aid, liberation—often fail to mobilize because they have been enclosed, ritualized, and detached ...
Public
(((Baslow)))

What is the Communitarium Project?
The Communitarium Project is an effort to create shared spaces—both online and (eventually) offline—where people can collaborate, deliberate, and take action to challenge the status quo. It is an evolving experiment in building a digital commons for meaningful engagement, exploring alternative models of collective ownership and governance.

seizethemeans.communitarium.or

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

Seize the Means of Community · The Communitarium Project is an effort to create shared spaces—both online and...at is the Communitarium Project? The Communitarium Project is an attempt to create online and real-world spaces where people can come together not just to talk, but to think, plan, and act in ways that challenge the status quo and explore alternative futures. It is not another social media network, nor is it simply a forum for discussion. Rather, it is an experiment in constructing a shared infrastructure for collective learning, deliberation, and action—a digital commons that...
Public
(((Baslow)))

My development of the Communitarium Project has been based on more fundamentally theoretical thinking which I am calling the Symbiotic Intelligence Framework (SIF) and which includes the seeds of a General Theory of Interpretive Systems. I have setup an experimental ChatGPT to convey the basic ideas and discuss the implications of the framework and the Communitarium Proect more generally.

seizethemeans.communitarium.or

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

Seize the Means of Community · 🧠 Talk With the FrameworkAn Open Invitation to Explore the Symbiotic Intelligence Framework and the Ideas Behind the Communitarium Project I’ve created a public-...
Public
(((Baslow)))

"This is the predicament we find ourselves in today: Not that there is no opposition or resistance, not that there is no message or narrative, not that the right has all the power. It’s the sense that the left lacks that lever it once wielded. The massive rallies and marches that once felt disruptive and threatening to a society customized to conformity and compliance, now just seem like another event in another city on another day."
coreyrobin.com/2025/04/14/to-p
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

coreyrobin.comTo prove a strikeThere’s a moment in chapter 12 of Capital where Marx describes a critical phase of glassmaking in a manufacturing workshop. Five workers gather at “the hole” of the furnace, each focused on an individual task that, taken together, will produce a bottle. “These five specialized workers represent the individual organs of a working organism that can function only as a unit.” Those five workers can only function as a unit “when all the workers are directly cooperating with one another.” That need for working cooperatively gives each and every one of those workers a tremendous amount of power: “When one member is missing, the whole body is paralyzed.” If just one worker withdraws their cooperation, the working organism ceases to […]
Public
(((Baslow)))

Socialist Media Platforms: Part I – The Elevator Pitch

What if we stopped calling them “social media”?
Whatever they once were, today’s platforms isolate more than they connect.
That’s where socialist media platforms come in.
We’re talking about a complete rethinking of what media platforms are for...not to exploit the social, but to nurture it.

seizethemeans.communitarium.or

#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

Seize the Means of Community · Socialist Media Platforms: Part I - The Elevator PitchWhat if we stopped calling them “social media”? Because whatever they once were, today’s platforms isolate more than they connect. They ...
Public
(((Baslow)))

The Capitalist Conscience Movement and the Communitarium Project: Two Divergent Lessons from 2008

In the wake of 2008, two responses emerged: one to soften capitalism's image through ethics and purpose, and one to move beyond it by reimagining individuality and community from the ground up. The Communitarium Project rejects capitalist assumptions, to build shared life beyond enclosure and accumulation.

seizethemeans.communitarium.or

#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

Seize the Means of Community · The Capitalist Conscience Movement and the Communitarium Project: Two Divergent Lessons from 2008In the wake of 2008, two responses emerged: one to soften capitalism's image through ethics and purpose, and one to move beyond it by rei...
Public
(((Baslow)))

Socialism Is a Way of Doing Things Together

What if socialism isn’t an ideology to debate, but a way of doing things *together*—living more communally, acting more collectively, and caring more reciprocally on level ground? A brief new blog post on socialism as a lived orientation, not a doctrine.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject
#Socialism
#CollectiveCare

seizethemeans.communitarium.or

Seize the Means of Community · Socialism Is a Way of Doing Things TogetherToo often, socialism is framed as a theory to be argued or a system to be installed. But perhaps we should begin elsewhere—not with ideol...
Public
(((Baslow)))

I asked my stochastic parrot to write something more inspirational—something to frame the Communitarium Project as sacred, not in the theological sense, but in the sense of shared meaning-making. What we got was a vision of the Communitarium as a kind of Talmud for atheists—commentary as community, dialogue as devotion.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

seizethemeans.communitarium.or

Seize the Means of Community · A Talmud for AtheistsToward a Communal Commentary on the Raw Material of Shared Life A perspective on the Communitarium Project “In the absence of God, w...
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