⁂ Article

The stubborn few who show up with shovels, laptops, and trust

In the tech world of social change and challenge, we’re living with a strange imbalance. Too often, the spaces we use and try and build are crowded with useless, self-destructive prats – people more interested in ego, control, and clout than in making anything grow from the roots. And when they do very rearly act, their “help” is often poison: it blocks, slows, and derails.

At the same time, the number of people doing truly useful, collective, grounded work feels small. You can see […]

⁂ Article

The stubborn few who show up with shovels, laptops, and trust

In the tech world of social change and challenge, we’re living with a strange imbalance. Too often, the spaces we use and try and build are crowded with useless, self-destructive prats – people more interested in ego, control, and clout than in making anything grow from the roots. And when they do very rearly act, their “help” is often poison: it blocks, slows, and derails.

At the same time, the number of people doing truly useful, collective, grounded work feels small. You can see […]

⁂ Article

In tech, it is really important, to see the unit of measure

Most software today = individualist. Even “collective” tools (Fediverse servers, enterprise SaaS, etc.) are just abstractions that aggregate individuals. The default assumption is the liberal subject: the sovereign individual. The infrastructure is built for self-expression, personal feeds, private chats, me, me, me. That’s why for example, when you step into libertarian codebases like #nostr, the smell of #stupidindividualism is everywhere.Communities are treated as “groups of […]

⁂ Article

In tech, it is really important, to see the unit of measure

Most software today = individualist. Even “collective” tools (Fediverse servers, enterprise SaaS, etc.) are just abstractions that aggregate individuals. The default assumption is the liberal subject: the sovereign individual. The infrastructure is built for self-expression, personal feeds, private chats, me, me, me. That’s why for example, when you step into libertarian codebases like #nostr, the smell of #stupidindividualism is everywhere.Communities are treated as “groups of […]

⁂ Article

The real blockages in activist tech

It’s not just the tech, we’ve had working #FOSS tools, protocols, and infrastructure for decades. What kills movements is social, it’s the politics. Fractionalism – ideological vanguards fighting to capture and control. Authoritarian “protection” – censorship framed as security, silencing criticism. Shrinking ghettos – small groups defining themselves by exclusion, not expansion.

On the so-called radical paths, whether Trotskyist, Stalinist, or anarchist, the pattern is the […]

⁂ Article

The real blockages in activist tech

It’s not just the tech, we’ve had working #FOSS tools, protocols, and infrastructure for decades. What kills movements is social, it’s the politics. Fractionalism – ideological vanguards fighting to capture and control. Authoritarian “protection” – censorship framed as security, silencing criticism. Shrinking ghettos – small groups defining themselves by exclusion, not expansion.

On the so-called radical paths, whether Trotskyist, Stalinist, or anarchist, the pattern is the […]

⁂ Article

Smiling-faced vileness: How enforced politeness becomes a weapon in grassroots paths

All too often, the ugliness we face in grassroots spaces wears a smile. It’s smiling-faced vileness: pleasant, agreeable individuals who wield control by blocking dissent, sanitizing movements under the guise of compromise, and maintaining the illusion of consensus. This is especially true in spaces overly tolerant of #NGO-style protocols – those bureaucratic, #fashionista postmodern traps that slowly erode the spark that makes radical communities thrive.

From my work across decades – from […]

Smiling-faced vileness: How enforced politeness becomes a weapon in grassroots paths

All too often, the ugliness we face in grassroots spaces wears a smile. It’s smiling-faced vileness: pleasant, agreeable individuals who wield control by blocking dissent, sanitizing movements under the guise of compromise, and maintaining the illusion of consensus. This is especially true in spaces overly tolerant of #NGO-style protocols – those bureaucratic, #fashionista postmodern traps that slowly erode the spark that makes radical communities thrive.

From my work across decades – from […]

All too often, the ugliness we face in grassroots spaces wears a smile. It’s smiling-faced vileness: pleasant, agreeable individuals who wield control by blocking dissent, sanitizing movements under the guise of compromise, and maintaining the illusion of consensus. This is especially true in spaces overly tolerant of #NGO-style protocols – those bureaucratic, #fashionista postmodern traps that slowly erode the spark that makes radical communities thrive.

From my work across decades – from protest camps to #openweb projects – I’ve seen this pattern again and again. Projects like early #Indymedia were messy, radical, and fiercely autonomous. That edge, that wildness was slowly excised until what remains is either safe, bland, and powerless or locked down and paranoid, both smother the naive grassroots paths.

At late era #climatecamp i’ve witnessed activist planning groups that masquerade as open and inclusive, but doom radical ideas by policing language. If someone speaks candidly about power or inequality, they risk being labelled as “derailing.” Not unlike what I describe on the Fediverse: “a consensus ritual where insiders quietly veto contentious proposals, pushing them offstage.” The effect is chilling – the bold, and meaningful, get diluted and then silenced.

I’ve also seen “horizontal” groups adopt soft authoritarianism: a handful of insiders subtly side-line contentious voices with endless calls for care, safety and more research or structure, this is simply polite gatekeeping, in those quiet pauses, power consolidates. These practices don’t just kill energy, they devour possibility. They cannibalize the chance for communities that are both fluffy (nurturing) and spiky (radical).

Smiling-face vileness is not satire – it’s #fashionista postmodern gaslighting. It slowly smothers life with calm care and precision. The task of the grassroots is to replant what’s been stomped. That means cultivating friction -mess, disagreement, negotiation – because that is how community grows, trust is built, and real alternatives emerge. Let’s embed this friction into our code, our community practices, our shared care. Let’s compost the #NGO and fashionista chokeholds so we can grow radical, tender, collective futures #KISS

A lot of the “smiling-faced vileness” comes from a mix of personal psychology, learned behaviour, and the systemic incentives that shape #NGO, institutional, and #mainstreaming culture. It’s not usually deep evil – it’s something more banal, entrenched, and self-justifying. Examples of this mess makeing:

  • Fear of losing control when change threatens the structures they know how to navigate, so they subconsciously (or consciously) try to stop it. Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil idea applies here: harm is done by “ordinary” functionaries protecting their turf “The real danger is not that people will rebel, but that they will acquiesce in doing what they know is wrong.”
  • Cognitive dissonance management, as they see themselves as “the good guys,” so any action – even blocking positive change – must be reframed as “responsible” or “prudent.” #Postmodern self-protection: everything can be justified with enough narrative spin, “No one is the villain of their own story.”
  • Status preservation, NGOs and funding orgs reward stability over creativity, hierarchy over challenge. If your position, funding, or reputation depends on maintaining the current order, you will fight disruptive change, even if it’s obviously better “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
  • Incompetence + insecurity, breeds paranoia. If you don’t know how to manage real change, you start to fear those who do. The façade of competence becomes more important than actual results, “When a man’s only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
  • Groupthink & conformity pressure, #mainstreaming cultures reward going along with the majority, even if the majority is wrong “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

This is why these people who take a cling to “power” often look “nice” on the surface while quietly gutting or neutralising anything spiky, challenging, or any change of path. It’s not just personal malice, it’s a cultural immune system against change, fuelled by fear, vanity, and comfort.


When, the tiny few of these people “secede” in #mainstreaming media (and the history it writes) it is not neutral, it’s a kind of #PR machine. It launders power and polishes away dissent. The smiling faces and “respectable” voices are just the velvet gloves over the iron fist. It’s fake history as PR – it isn’t history as lived memory or contested struggle, it’s official narrative, a “storybook” written to flatter the winners and confuse the rest. That’s why it feels vile and pointless: it distracts, pacifies, and reframes mess as inevitability.

The people who produce this are not innocent. Yes, many are clueless functionaries who internalize the system’s values without question. Others are parasitic aspirants, desperate to climb into the #nastyfew, copying their methods. Even when they do “small goods” (a sympathetic article, a cultural puff piece), in the larger pattern they still serve the mainstreaming machine.

The compost metaphor is about instead of raging endlessly at the mess, take what can be siphoned off (attention, fragments of narrative, disillusioned individuals) and redirect that flow into the alt systems ( #OMN, #4opens, Fediverse, grassroots histories) then compost the rest: let it rot, break down, and become the fertilizer for something alive and grounded. Because otherwise we get stuck in their cycle: doom-scrolling their fake stories, wasting energy on reacting instead of building. The challenge is mediation, not just rejection. Spot the toxic flows, tap them for useful nutrients, and feed the roots of alternatives.

#KISS

From my work across decades – from protest camps to #openweb projects – I’ve seen this pattern again and again. Projects like early #Indymedia were messy, radical, and fiercely autonomous. That edge, that wildness was slowly excised until what remains is either safe, bland, and powerless or locked down and paranoid, both smother the naive grassroots paths.
You know where you don't see it? In societies without completely unaccountable extremely wealthy members.
It’s not usually deep evil – it’s something more banal, entrenched, and self-justifying.
You make excellent points, but here I think you're mistaking the snake for the stampede. There's a reason societies that survive become so locked down and paranoid. All that banal evil is encouraged, even engineered I'd say, by deep evil. It's just too convenient how all these people through their petty problems and foibles are always making a very few people increasingly wealthy. There are winners in this, winners taking everything. Saying they play a small role in the bullshit is like saying an arsonist plays a small role in burning down the building.
Fear of losing control when change threatens the structures they know how to navigate
Massive marketing campaigns to inflame people's fears and draw attention to what they'd feel threatened by. Ever turned on the news lately? (Don't.)
NGOs and funding orgs reward stability over creativity
And the wealthy have phoned all these orgs, to let them know that if they don't adopt a certain policy, the wealthy philanthropist will be forced to donate their funding elsewhere. Their "position, funding, or reputation depends on maintaining the current order," because there are a very few wealthy people who can force it to depend on their agenda.
Incompetence + insecurity, breeds paranoia.
Who appointed those clowns to run the circus? (Hint: it's the wealthy)
Groupthink & conformity pressure
If you've had your head in the sand, you might not be aware of the field of "mass psychology" that extremely wealthy people have been using since Freud to topple governments, disrupt societies, and reduce us to consumers of the goods they overproduce. Every plastic wrapper in existence comes from this "groupthink" which coincidentally somehow always favors the wealthy every time.

I guess what I'm saying is we need to be able to resist being manipulated by deep evil. If we can do that, then a lot of the banal evil just won't happen. People can be infuriatingly dense, but what we observe today is that plus lots and lots and lots of social manipulation. We humans are actually pretty decent, given half a chance. Almost nobody needs to be composted; instead we need to be fertilized, and nurtured, shielded from the storm ripping us from the soil, and from the parasites boring into our root systems.

⁂ Article

Smiling-faced vileness: How enforced politeness becomes a weapon in grassroots paths

All too often, the ugliness we face in grassroots spaces wears a smile. It’s smiling-faced vileness: pleasant, agreeable individuals who wield control by blocking dissent, sanitizing movements under the guise of compromise, and maintaining the illusion of consensus. This is especially true in spaces overly tolerant of #NGO-style protocols – those bureaucratic, #fashionista postmodern traps that slowly erode the spark that makes radical communities thrive.

From my work across decades – from […]

⁂ Article

A guide for staying honest and native

A community is only viable if enough people care enough to keep it relevant. In this era of #stupidindividualism, most people don’t lift a finger to make that happen.

This is the norm across many #4opens spaces: a near-total lack of interest in building or maintaining shared paths. It’s a textbook case of right-wing Tragedy of the Commons. Developers show up when it suits them, use the space for their narrow needs, then drift off without contributing to the upkeep. They treat community […]

⁂ Article

A guide for staying honest and native

A community is only viable if enough people care enough to keep it relevant. In this era of #stupidindividualism, most people don’t lift a finger to make that happen.

This is the norm across many #4opens spaces: a near-total lack of interest in building or maintaining shared paths. It’s a textbook case of right-wing Tragedy of the Commons. Developers show up when it suits them, use the space for their narrow needs, then drift off without contributing to the upkeep. They treat community […]

#OMN (Open Media Network): Federated media publishing, using open standards like RSS/ActivityPub. Need to revive/maintain working tools for reliable metadata/feeds

Basic trust and moderation layers (think: old-school #Indymedia with modern plumbing)

A project of this is #MakingHistory: Collaborative, living archives of what’s happening in communities. Not just news — a record of resistance and survival. We need with versioned storyboards

#OMN (Open Media Network): Federated media publishing, using open standards like RSS/ActivityPub. Need to revive/maintain working tools for reliable metadata/feeds

Basic trust and moderation layers (think: old-school #Indymedia with modern plumbing)

A project of this is #MakingHistory: Collaborative, living archives of what’s happening in communities. Not just news — a record of resistance and survival. We need with versioned storyboards

New #Disintermedia blog post, and a new entry in my ongoing Indymedia stories, this one about valuing our contributions to public interest work.

Most of us feel like an imposter sometimes. Your work is more valued than you know. Rate yourself.

https://disintermedia.substack.com/p/indymedia-stores-4-valuing-our-contributions

#Indymedia#IndymediaStories

The path I walk, and advocate for, is rooted in a few simple but powerful #KISS principles: a return to grassroots governance, a focus on community-driven technology, and the composting of failed ideas to nurture new growth. To enable this shift, we must develop tools and frameworks that uphold transparency, empower collective action, and center sustainable, open alternatives. This means pushing back against the dominant #mainstreaming narrative and embracing practical, grounded methods of building from the bottom up. You can see some of this in action at unite.openworlds.info.

I remain deeply critical of the role of #NGOs and the broader mainstreaming strategies that dilute radical potential. Too often, projects that begin with genuine grassroots energy are co-opted through institutional funding and pressure to conform. This turns them into vehicles for maintaining the status quo rather than challenging it. To reclaim our agency and resist this corruption, we need to re-center on the #4opens, prioritize collective and direct action, and build resilient alternatives to the #deathcult of neoliberalism. My critique comes from long experience with radical media and open tech — from #Indymedia and #OMN to the #Fediverse and ActivityPub. Learn more at hamishcampbell.com.

My #boatingeurope life reflects a more sustainable, #DIY lifestyle — an attempt to live "native" to the rhythms of nature rather than the chaos of the #deathcult. A decade ago, after 20 years campaigning on climate and ecological collapse, I sailed away in a literal lifeboat, escaping burnout and disillusionment. But the world is round — and I’ve since returned to re-engage with tech activism and grassroots media, because retreat alone won’t solve systemic issues. Bridging the divide between alternative cultures and the mainstream remains vital. Yet this is often blocked by both sides — the mainstream demands conformity, while alt-paths refuse to compromise. Without building bridges, we risk further stagnation. It's time to find common ground without losing our roots.

#hamishcampbell
Support on Open Collective
Boating Europe on YouTube

The path I walk, and advocate for, is rooted in a few simple but powerful #KISS principles: a return to grassroots governance, a focus on community-driven technology, and the composting of failed ideas to nurture new growth. To enable this shift, we must develop tools and frameworks that uphold transparency, empower collective action, and center sustainable, open alternatives. This means pushing back against the dominant #mainstreaming narrative and embracing practical, grounded methods of building from the bottom up. You can see some of this in action at unite.openworlds.info.

I remain deeply critical of the role of #NGOs and the broader mainstreaming strategies that dilute radical potential. Too often, projects that begin with genuine grassroots energy are co-opted through institutional funding and pressure to conform. This turns them into vehicles for maintaining the status quo rather than challenging it. To reclaim our agency and resist this corruption, we need to re-center on the #4opens, prioritize collective and direct action, and build resilient alternatives to the #deathcult of neoliberalism. My critique comes from long experience with radical media and open tech — from #Indymedia and #OMN to the #Fediverse and ActivityPub. Learn more at hamishcampbell.com.

My #boatingeurope life reflects a more sustainable, #DIY lifestyle — an attempt to live "native" to the rhythms of nature rather than the chaos of the #deathcult. A decade ago, after 20 years campaigning on climate and ecological collapse, I sailed away in a literal lifeboat, escaping burnout and disillusionment. But the world is round — and I’ve since returned to re-engage with tech activism and grassroots media, because retreat alone won’t solve systemic issues. Bridging the divide between alternative cultures and the mainstream remains vital. Yet this is often blocked by both sides — the mainstream demands conformity, while alt-paths refuse to compromise. Without building bridges, we risk further stagnation. It's time to find common ground without losing our roots.

#hamishcampbell
Support on Open Collective
Boating Europe on YouTube

⁂ Article

What do you mean by “mainstreaming”?

At its core, #mainstreaming is how we, often unconsciously, uphold and reproduce the values of the dominant system. In our time, that system is #neoliberalism, or what I metaphorically call the #deathcult. It’s the air we breathe: shaping our politics, our economics, even the food we eat and how we relate to each other.

In activist terms, #mainstreaming too often means pushing this dominant worldview into alternative spaces, building careers and institutions that play progressive on the […]

⁂ Article

Talking about the #geekproblem in #openweb funding

Let’s be honest: we have a real and ongoing #geekproblem in how funding is allocated in the alt-tech and #openweb space, and it’s holding us back. The current push for infrastructure is important, but it’s not enough.

Yes, backend infrastructure is vital. You can’t build sustainable alternatives to #dotcons without solid plumbing. Funding projects like mesh networks, free firmware, and decentralised protocols, as #NLnet and others often do, is necessary work. BUT… If no one uses […]