The influence of capitalism on digital politics
As a young person who is still finding their political footings, capitalism is something I frequently reflect on, mainly how this economic system is failing us. This influence of capitalism on digital politics is undeniable, however, I aim to dissect the main components of this impact. This is the penultimate time you have to hear this as promise but as always, these are just my opinions and politics is just opinions anyways.
The rise of the right-wing social media presence has led to an increase of support for capitalist views often without a proper understanding of the economic system. This surge in capitalist ideology actively threatens the societal value of humans. Capitalism denotes that human value is based on how productive we are towards society. Clearly, this puts a supposed limit on the value of disabled people and spreads an unhealthy lie that we contribute to society at the detriment to our health in order to be valued. Through social media this message is spread, causing warped view of our sense of self. Within digital politics, it is important to acknowledge both in digital political spheres and offline that our value is not intrinsically linked to our contribution levels, especially for disabled people. Instead, our fundamental worth is unchanging regardless of how productive we are, and we actively need to fight against this system to regain autonomy of our value.
To expand on this, capitalism as perpetuated by right-wing controlled media such as The Sun and Daily Mail within digital spaces allows nationalistic and hateful rhetoric to blossom. This is especially harmful as capitalism presents itself often as an antithesis to POC, people from low-income households, queer people and the disabled community. As previously mentioned, this often leads to a surge in anonymity as a layer of protection against targeted hate in particular as digital capitalist spaces generally are not safe spaces for marginalised people. This in particular is shown by the lack of women or femme presenting women in digital capitalist spaces. Take the Conservative Party, while it's clear I’m no fan it concerns me especially why only 34% of their MPs within the house of commons are women and I could not find a record of a gender non-conforming, femme presenting Conservative MP. Is it due to poor research or do they simply not exist? The latter is more likely. This leads me to question why, is this heavily capitalist environment exclusionary or is it not a safe space? The answer is unclear, suggesting that capitalist spaces both online and offline have a negative impact on digital politics.
Furthermore, it is clear a surge in digital capitalist spaces has led to a sure in digital surveillance. Many platforms track the usage of their services with technology such as cookies without giving a clear response as to how this will be done and for what reasons. Specifically within digital capitalist spaces this could be in reference towards following voter trends and opinions. Generally speaking, anti-capitalist digital spaces often intersect with other leftist spaces, typically filled with a high population of queer people. As mentioned in a previous post, queer activism is certainly on the rise and as a result is often monitored by these large capitalist corporations, leading to a limit on this content as it threatens the capitalist regime .
To summarise, if you haven’t picked up on it yet dear reader I have done my best to choose topics that are closely linked to one and other. I hope this has become apparent to you if it wasn’t already. My main aim has been to highlight some lesser though of connections between current social issues- writing from my own experience with reference to other issues in a hope to offer solidarity to others affected by similar things. As always, these are just my opinions and politics is just opinions anyways, that was the last time you’ll have to hear my little disclaimer, probably…
