Cage Fights and Coups

When oligarchical fascists start fighting each other, the rest of us just watch and hope that (for once) they only inflict damage on each other.

In Russia, the quickest path to obscene wealth in the past 20 years has been to become part of Putin's inner circle and steal from the Russian people through resource exploitation.

In America, the quickest way to obscene wealth in the past 20 years has been to join the VC-backed Silicon Valley tech bro club and steal from the American people through tax avoidance.

Lately, obscenely wealthy dudes have been squaring off with each other in both Russia (Prigozhin v. Putin) and the USA (Musk v. Zuckerberg).

When that happens, the rest of the world just watches hoping that (for once) the oligarchical fascists inflict damage only on each other.

What are "oligarchical fascists"?

As Timothy Snyder writes on Substack about Yevgeny Prigozhin's recent "march on Moscow":

We don't use the term “fascist” much, since the Russians (especially Russian fascists) use it for their enemies, which is confusing; and since it seems somehow politically incorrect to use it. And for another reason: unlike the Italians, the Romanians, and the Germans of the 1930s, the Putin regime has had the use of tremendous profits from hydrocarbons, which it has used to influence western public opinion. All the same, if Russia today is not a fascist regime, it is really difficult to know what regime would be fascist.  It is more clearly fascist than Mussolini's Italy, which invented the term.... That said, it is important to specify a difference between Putin and Prigozhin's fascism and that of the 1930s. The two men are both very concerned with money, which the first generation of fascists in general were not.  They are oligarchical fascists -- a breed worth watching here in the US as well.

Maybe Prigozhin's aborted coup (if that's what it was) truly weakened Putin. Maybe it was just a temporary dispute between families that three "mob bosses" (Putin, Prigozhin and Belarusian president Lukashenko) had to resolve. But the whole affair revealed that Putin's strong man act was maybe just that.

The crisis in Russia was a reminder of the constant dangers in a world where monsters not only exist, but already command—or could suddenly gain control of—nuclear arsenals.

It was also a case study of how Twitter—until recently the world's best source of real-time news—has been thoroughly degraded by its "racist, misogynistic, anti-worker, journalist-censoring, authoritarian-loving" owner Elon Musk.

As Patrick Tomlinson (@stealthygeek) tweeted:

Before Elon, Twitter was unmatched for major breaking news by any outlet on Earth. Updates from locals were up to the second. Journalists and policy experts were verified and their insights were boosted by the algorithm to maximize their audience. Network news chased Twitter.

Now, at a geopolitical inflection not seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall, all that is gone. Updates are delayed, scattered, and unreliable. "Verified" accounts are just every slack-jawed yahoo with $8 to burn and no professional or reputational incentives for accuracy.

Which is exactly what Musk and his Authoritarian financial backers wanted... To destroy its ability to disrupt their propaganda, spread real news in real time, and to organize against them. Mission accomplished.

As I wrote recently in this newsletter: With Musk, dictators win, people lose.

But that's not the only reason to bring Musk into this tale. Because while he's actively destroying Twitter to the delight of authoritarians around the world, he's also, apparently, saving pay-per-view TV.

In America, instead of tanks on the street, it's tech bros in a cage.

If you're interested, Vox has a complete breakdown of the petty bullshit that led us to the point where Elon Musk and Mark Zuckernerg have publicly agreed to fight each other in a "cage match." Vox also details some of the reasons these nefarious nerds may wish to hype a pay-per-view spectacle to distract from the twin tsunamis of problems they're creating at Facebook and Twitter.

As CNBC reports, the proposed Musk v. Zuck "cage match" could bring in more that $1 billion on pay-per-view, eclipsing the previous $600 million record set by the Conor McGregor-Floyd Mayweather fight in 2017.

As Vox explains:

It could still be an ugly fight, reminiscent of some celebrity boxing matches in the early 2000s, such as the particularly brutal beating that ’70s sitcom star Ron Palillo took from Saved by the Bell’s Dustin Diamond.... "The only fight outcome I can really promise you is that both men will embarrass themselves," says Nate Wilcox (of the MMA news site The Bloody Elbow).

I’ve written a great deal about Elon Musk lately because it seems to me that he's an aggressively slimy person. Also, I used to really like Twitter. Musk has turned the site into a toxic waste dump that is less useful in times of crisis. He's a free speech fraud. And he has not only made Twitter more abusive and less safe for many, he’s done it openly and gleefully in the name of "engagement."

I haven’t spent much time trying to understand Mark Zuckerberg on a humanoid level, but the damage he and Facebook have done to the world is far greater then anything Musk has pulled off so far. Facebook, of course, helped Russia install Trump as their useful idiot American president. Facebook has also been a bully to companies, brands and organizations through the years. They’ve changed policies on a whim in ways that have destroyed businesses.

Most recently, Facebook made algorithmic changes that have accelerated the crisis in the news industry, sending some companies into bankruptcy. These actions have caused more journalists to be laid off at a time when America and the world are in dire need of quality news sources (especially in a world where you can’t rely on Twitter anymore).

Zuckerberg and Facebook also have a history of lying to—and stealing from—advertisers at a truly massive scale.

Most significant is Facebook’s infamous 2015 “pivot to video” when the company touted false metrics about how popular video content was on the platform and encouraged publishers make more videos. That prompted a media-industry-wide shift with heavy investments in producing video content (and corresponding layoffs in other departments) that, in reality, users weren’t watching.

Needless to say, I won’t be watching Musk and Zuckerberg if they do end up in a cage together. But if they are serious about inflicting pain on each other, this is one time I wish them both success.

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