I refuse to be a flying monkey

Leave Twitter to save your soul and dignity.

In the 1939 American musical fantasy film “Wizard of Oz”, there is the part where the Wicked Witch has its horde of winged monkeys capture Dorothy and her dog Toto.

In psychology, the term “flying monkeys” is a term describing the enablers of a narcissist or sociopath person who do work on that person’s behalf, perhaps abusing or harassing others.

(I promise this will make sense. Bear with me.)

For a more serious framing that will lead us to the same place, here is a recent video by history professor Timothy Snyder on fascism. (As a sidenote, you should study, read, and watch all of Snyder’s work, particularly the short book On Tyranny which he wrote right before the start of Trump’s first term, and which will become handy during Trump’s second term.)

There is a segment towards the end that’s important to my point. I don’t know the specific concise written source for this from his work, so I just transcribe it from the video:

In fascism, you turn out not to be anybody at all. In fascism, you turn out just to be a tool, just to be someone who’s turned against other people. You turn out not to have any definition at all. You turn out to be a person without any qualities. You turn out to be just a character in somebody else’s story.

So, this is my claim today. Twitter in 2024 has turned into an abusive fascist hell hole that fosters hate, division, nihilism, and extremism, in service of the most extreme wing of the 🇺🇸 Republican Party, village squares be damned. It openly and proudly promotes a hateful nihilist fascist agenda, and everyone remaining there is a part of it. Snyder wasn’t talking about Twitter specifically, but what he said now applies fully on that hell site.

It does not matter what I myself think or post–just my being there legitimizes and amplifies the hate. We are just mindless, meaningless cogs in the fascist hate machine. It is dehumanising and soul-wrecking. Elon Musk is the Wicked Witch, and we are all his flying monkeys. Elon Musk, David Sacks and everyone else around them laugh at us all, and think nothing of us as users or humans.

The above clip from 1939 is exactly what it looks and feels like. Dorothy and Toto are human dignity, hope, and love, and we are on a mission to destroy them on Twitter with our flying monkey mob, because the Witch doesn’t know what those are, or why anyone would need them.

How did we get here?

2022

Let’s go back to 2022 when Elon Musk hadn’t yet bought Twitter. Yes, there was such a time once, not even so long ago.

From the perspective of Ukraine and supporters of Ukraine, Twitter’s descent into fascism and hate is especially unfortunate. Twitter in 2022 was an essential tool to get out the word about russia’s imperialist aggression and crimes in Ukraine, to fight russian poison and lies, and to help raise funds to support the defenders and people of Ukraine. Twitter itself was then a neutral platform whose management and ownership didn’t inject their own views into the broader public discussion, about Ukraine or otherwise.

I cannot overemphasize how crucial Twitter and other social media then was to get the word out about Ukraine, at a time when russia’s full scale invasion was still a shock to most of the free world, and there wasn’t much Western news presence on the ground. At a time when many offered Zelenskyy a ride and thought Kyiv would be done in three days, those first videos of invader equipment getting blown up and Zelenskyy proudly claiming to remain in the war zone paved the way for further resistance and support.

I sometimes think about what would have happened if there had been no Internet in Ukraine, or russia had managed to cut the access, and we hadn’t received all the early info and videos from Ukraine. It is not a good thought. Thankfully, things went differently, and Ukraine maintained its internet access.

2024

After acquiring Twitter and initially claiming to be politically neutral and supporting “free speech”, Elon Musk fully went behind Donald Trump who won the 2024 🇺🇸 presidential election, with Elon Musk’s Twitter contributing to the victory in the information space. Twitter is no longer a neutral, welcoming village square for all. Instead, it is a megaphone for fascism, which under the guise of “free speech” suppresses and ridicules groups like Ukraine supporters, and boosts and celebrates division and hate.

This complete transformation from a neutral village square into a fascist megaphone is weird to understand. Most Twitter users, both people and institutions, still behave as if it hadn’t happened. We still share whatever thoughts, dreams, and aspirations we have, and political leaders broadcast important messages that may shape the fate of entire countries and nations. Yet all these messages and thoughts lose their meaning, value, and humanity on Twitter, and do not matter any more. They are merely cogs and tools to amplify the entire fascist hate machine.

It’s weird and counterintuitive. Twitter still looks and works much the same as it did a few years ago, so the human intution would assume that the rules and values guiding it are also the same. We used to share our thoughts with pen, paper and pigeons, and these didn’t change their entire being around in just a few years. But this is Internet and social media of 2024, and times are weird.

Just imagine. Countless people, institutions, causes, governments around the world are now posting on a platform that serves the agenda of an extremist fascist wing of one political party in the United States, and are amplifying that agenda with their posts. Welcome to Internet and social media of 2024.

There is some exodus from Twitter happening. Just as I was preparing this post, Guardian announced that it will no longer post on Twitter from its official accounts. Don Lemon is leaving Twitter. I am sure there will be more of these.

“The battle is here”

Several NAFO cartoon dogs, Ukrainians, and friends of Ukraine insist that we need to remain on Twitter and continue fighting the information war there because “that’s where the battle is.”

I’m not convinced that is the case. In 2022, the challenge was to overpower russian poison that was itself trying to suffocate truth from Ukraine on Twitter, and NAFO did a brilliant job at that. In 2024, things have changed, not least because Twitter itself has changed, as I discuss above.

What even is the battle today? Who are the opposing sides? What is the condition of victory? What are the rules of engagement? How is the underlying platform playing into this?

The larger battle, obviously, has not changed. We still need to remove russian poison from Western brains, including voters, decision makers, media, business, academia, culture, really all fields of life. I am just not sure that Twitter of 2024 is as relevant for all this as it was a few years ago.

There are two cases for remaining on Twitter I’ve recently heard that I’d highlight. One is that it remains an effective platform for some who are fundraising for assistance to 🇺🇦 defenders. If so, then by all means, continue. Whatever assistance we can get from anywhere helps.

Second is that we need to engage with Republican and MAGA voters, because many of them aren’t against Ukraine, and could benefit from reasonable truth and discussion. Yes, these people are and remain on Twitter, they voted as they did, and demonizing them isn’t helpful. But I’m not sure if Twitter today is, or even wants to be, the place for reasonable engagement. What I’ve myself seen from this group is only vile and toxic hate of the worst kind, and Twitter today really seems to be optimizing for screaming and hate rather than reason.

The Ukrainian cause is much bigger than one social media platform that now just serves one political party in the US, and where the platform’s leadership actively hates Ukraine. It is unhealthy and dangerous to tie yourself to something which openly works against you and corrupts your soul and humanity.

Where to?

Let’s suppose you’re with me, and ask, where would I go for social media if I want to leave Twitter?

This post is already long, so I won’t go into details, but here are some quick opinions.

Bluesky and Mastodon are both fairly new Twitter-like social networks that have lately grown a lot. What stands out to me is that they’re both fairly open and developer-friendly which helps with innovation (as was Twitter, before Elon Musk turned everything off). I use both of them for different purposes with different personas. Bluesky is now transforming into NAFO community HQ where all the dogs converge to socialize. Here is my cartoon dog profile on Bluesky.

Facebook, Threads, Instagram - I’m not a fan of anything by Facebook, but I suppose it is an option for some people. Threads moderation is hostile to Ukrainian community and has closed accounts of Ukrainians and Ukraine supporters. Facebook has been burned with political content before so they seem to take an approach of just not having much political around at all, and moderating strictly. Which is better than letting hate spread as it does on Twitter, I suppose.

Medium, Substack, Tumblr, build your own, … - there are many more networks out there that I can’t comment on, but they all have real people doing things, interacting, communicating. NAFO was originally associated with Twitter, but I like the idea that we should branch out more.

I don’t think there will ever be one single network where all of us converge, and that is a good thing.

What I will do

I will keep my Twitter account active. Not as a normal human being, but as a NAFO brain damaged cartoon dog. I made several changes though, with the aim to be prepared to get kicked off Twitter any second, whether for regulatory reasons (e.g Twitter gets banned in EU) or moderation (my account gets suspended).

My main NAFO home is Bluesky. I’m now treating Twitter as secondary.

I migrated important content off Twitter. I’m republishing some of my previous Twitter posts and threads on this newsletter. I have nothing on Twitter any more that I can’t afford to lose.

I support fundraisers on Bluesky now. I donate to Ukrainian defenders every month, and continue to do so. Twitter was an important channel to find the donation opportunities, but it’s dehumanizing to see all these fundraisers among the russian hate, so I stopped paying attention. I now donate to causes I see on Bluesky (and there are already plenty).

I stopped paying for Twitter. I was paying for over a year, and I think it boosted me in the algorithm a bit. I was also making some money from ad revenue sharing which I donated to Ukraine, but it was about the same amount that I paid for Premium, so overall everything works out. I cannot in good conscience any more be part of financing all the Twitter madness that I described above.

I fully expect to be banned from Twitter one day, and what a great day it will be. When that happens, I likely won’t go back. I’ve been there since 2007, and it was a good ride, but all things come to an end.