Traumatise them back

Content suggestions for anti-fascist Zoombombing

I was supposed to speak at an online event for progressives today, alongside some other campaigners and a great politician, and the Chair had *just* started speaking when somebody, most likely a fascist, who’d infiltrated the audience, managed to share their screen and start playing graphic pornography. The meeting had to be postponed.

This was my first ever Zoombombing. It came to prominence as a disruptive tactic of the far-Right during the pandemic, with events ranging from Holocaust remembrance to Black History Month infiltrated and targeted with hate speech and/or graphic images.

Given that the footage was only on-screen today for about three seconds, I was more bemused than enraged or traumatised. And I suppose I got the sense that the disrupters had maybe played us something that they quietly find themselves drawn to, despite themselves; something that deep down they fantasise about or possibly even aspire to. I don’t spend that much time in the fascist imagination so I stopped thinking about it when I got that far, but it did make me think that a) those of us that can should be disrupting their meetings back, and b) when I get round to it, here are the hot / aspirational / fantastical things that I would play:

1. Fred Hampton’s speech on how we’ll fight capitalism - not with Black capitalism, but with socialism.

2. One of the anniversary durational readings of M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!

3. All of the footage of Kenmure Street.

4. Chris Smalls on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

5. Mariah Carey’s Heartbreaker. How could you remain a bad vibes person after watching that? Also I can do the whole of Jay-Z’s rap and could join the call just to perform that part.

6. Cillian Murphy talking about how he moved his kids to Ireland because he didn’t want them growing up with English accents (ideally juxtaposed with him in that mesh shirt).

7. Gordon Brown saying “stupid bigoted woman” on a loop. I should come clean and say that we’ve really reached the point in the end times where I would happily take some kind of Gordon Brown - John McDonnell coalition over whatever in the flag-draped hell is going on in Downing Street (if Gordy B repents the “British jobs for British workers” situation). Obviously this is a joke. (I will always love an elder statesman, a real old-school-for-the-public-good-statesman though, I can’t lie.)

8. Some of the underwater scenes from Becoming Cousteau - this is my Zoombombing equivalent of getting people to touch grass.

9. The bath scene from The Dreamers (as above).

10. Bukayo Saka on his inflatable unicorn in the pool. The images are copyrighted so you’ll have to Google them. But our boy is resplendent. Moisturised, unbothered, in his lane, forever.

In other news:

I’ll be giving a public interview at Guiding Voices in Rotterdam on September 11th. If this blog has any readers in the Netherlands, do join us.

I’m thrilled to be teaching a sci-fi writing workshop for migrant solidarity organisers with Migrants in Culture this autumn. Yara Rodriguez Fowler, Hanna Thomas Uose, and Ama Josephine Budge will also be teaching, and I’m humbled to be in such good company. Follow Migrants in Culture for updates.

I have my head back in critical tech studies for something I’m writing, and today dipped in and out of Life by Algorithms, edited by Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson (Besteman you may also know for having rightly dubbed the international migration control system as “militarised global apartheid). This part stood out to me, on page 171:

“When algorithms make people foreclosable, deportable, killable by drones, or permanently censured as felons, and when those so labeled are denied access to the information on which these assessments were based, blocked from contesting incorrect or misleading data, or refused the opportunity for a reconsideration of their status, the fundamental basis of democratic society has been utterly compromised.”

Sorry that’s not a cheery note to end on, but do add “sort tech dystopia” to your to-do list. And then go and look at Saka on his unicorn.