(Pic from The Independent).

I’ve said many times that we – that I – live in bubbles. Largely, these are ‘curated’ for us, through our feeds. (I would argue) this happens not only by design, but through social media and media with motivations that are effectively homogenous, politically/philosophically speaking.

We may be ‘of the left’ and bathing in on-line opinions that support our egos and world-views but the guys with their paws on the algorithms are overwhelmingly from the same alt-right/arch-right/’unregulated’ school, squishing us with their inherited or accumulated advantage. It’s a massacre, in terms of their influence on the ether.

The historical record (yeh but whose?) may show not only that Those Who Control have always been in service to the staggering and disproportionate making of moolah but that this phenomenon is inextricable from prejudice. But we are in a moment where that phenomenon – the closeness of capital and racism – has risen again to the surface like some dark and viscous force.

This event has of course been curated, too: a neat example being the hoods who lumbered around English ports over the weekend, funded by an American source. (‘Danny Tommo’, foolishly perhaps, posted to that effect: 30,000 sobs to cover expenses for the bootboys in balaclavas).

If it wasn’t dangerous, it might be funny. The ‘protestors’ on the South coast were carefully protected by the Old Bill and the law because this was allegedly a ‘spontaneous protest’ (or described that way by a ver-ry carefully worded statement issued by the local police) and this exempted it from significant action. Hard to think of a more blatant expression of either institutional racism or the power of secret, ‘christian’/white supremacist/monied brotherhoods over public policy and practise. These guys – masked; in black – were obviously racist and obviously a threat to order. The cops ambled alongside.

The organisation of protests (of all sorts) and dissemination of toxicity and untruth is facilitated by the algorithmic slop. (In fact it often feels like this is *the purpose* of your twitters and your Facebooks!) Critically, the cogs are turning in a way that is deliberately unbalanced.

The role of that ugliest of humans Mr S Bannon esquire may be more central and more influential than we credit, in degrading contemporary understanding, recognition, appreciation, via the internet. He is a profoundly evil man whose profile may have dipped offstage – partly because of his ability to fall out with people (lols) – but his fascistically evangelical commitment towards showering the universe with shit and irrelevance has arguably made everyone from Trump to Farage possible. Racist to his very core, Bannon gave the unspeakably far-right a voice, re-empowering historically-present prejudice and joining-up individual and nationalist causes from all corners.

(It’s important to note that Bannon was and is a chronic bullshitter and self-publicist, with the cheapo salesman’s ability to exaggerate his access and leverage… but that relative smallness, when amplified by the likes of Musk and the other Owners of the Airwaves, made things happen and/or created the slopes for his shitty snowballs).

Musk may be the most patently white supremacist warlord of the internet but he hardly wields his sword alone – sadly. And neither does his relentless greed single him out. One day we may know – the Epstein Connections may ultimately reveal to us – how closely-knitted the seemingly distant (but somehow brotherly?) members of the Billionaires Club are or have been. We *do know* there’s a club… and that they have kinda bought governments… and made the whole neo-liberal concession to No Significant Political Change universal. That blanding-out of political discourse and possibility has not happened by accident. It’s protective.

Parties and governments have been lobbied, bought or out-gunned – quietly ambushed. This applies across into broadcast and print media. Billionaire proprietors editing what we see and experience. Maybe everything has always been about The Owners, but ma’an it feels that way now. Dangerously so, given the rise of the hard-right.

These powerful people ain’t all exactly full-on white supremacist capitalists – several are, surely? – but they are capitalists and they do own us. And they exist to make money and protect privilege. Trump and Farage and Tommy Robinson transparently feed off the unreality and untruth and prejudice that they in turn feed. They are all unthinkable with any degree of public intelligence, decency and judgement. We, meanwhile, are culpable, whilst being engineered and under-powered.