Holochain Embracing Fascism

(A timeline of events and a body of research.)

Today, after many months of attempts by myself and others to address these issues internally, I am releasing information regarding the close association between #holochain, #alt-right / #far-right networks and #hatespeech actors to the public.

It comes as a summary digest in five parts:

• Moritz Bierling and hate speech detailing the public persona of a former HOLO employee, particularly in regard to #transphobia & #transantagonism
• Kevin Dolan Connection to Moritz via Pluribus outlining connections between Moritz, a well-organised hate funding group he interviewed in a podcast, and #natalism (anti-abortion) conferences
• Moritz' close relationship with Curt Doolittle, a violent far-right dissident who founded the Natural Law Institute
• Moritz' affiliation with The Free State Project via Brett Veinotte & School Sucks Podcast linking him directly to a libertarian secession plot to take voting power in the state of New Hampshire
• and tying it all together Holochain, Moritz Bierling and the far-right details Moritz' continued inclusion, support & championing in Holochain and Holochain-adjacent spaces; his marketing of Holochain to the far-right at the time of his employ with HOLO; and the interventions I have played a role in since first being made aware of the issue in June 2022.

I have chosen not to republish some of the podcast transcripts out of desire to keep #fascist content away from SSB. They are linked to on Google Drive, and if folks feel it important that such content be preserved for academic interest or posterity they are welcome to repost and link here.

My hope in first publishing here is that Scuttlebutt holds the capacity for a more responsible and productive discussion than in other communities (e.g. XTwitter) where cultural questioning is typically shouted down. I have tried to slice posts into logical chunks to promote replies & referencing. I hope also that this information will be shared more broadly with queer / #trans advocacy groups, #antifa / #antifascist / #antifascism activist organisations, journalists, humanities scholars & cultural anthropologists; and that it may continue to be of service in protecting non-white and non-male people from harm in engaging with Holochain's community and tech. I hope that usergroups and communities building on Holochain are empowered to make their best and most informed decisions to the benefit of their wellbeing. I hope that the situation will be monitored more widely by those with the resources and care to do so. I hope that #holo will begin working responsibly with counter-terror advisory & training groups.

I hope that we can have the courage to find discernment, deepen existing relationships and not condemn an entire community of people on the basis of their associations. Most are unaware of the issues just as many are unwitting participants in Moritz' elevation; but there are other right-leaning #JordanPeterson fans in Holochain's communities who will no doubt continue to stand beside him. In the included correspondence I did once ask whether Art Brock was the problem, and the answer is "no"- though their influence may be central in this, they are not solely responsible for the dysfunction of a structurally sexist and racist organisation & community of practise. There are many datapoints on the road that got us here, and many things that change agents could learn from these failures. "Don't work with Art Brock" is not an impactful lesson.

I hope that this story can give courage, and that others holding their own concerns, evidence and experiences regarding cultural & governance problems with Holochain may be moved to share them constructively. I hope that people will share opinions and reflections— though I of course have my own, it is important that I step back whilst others provide diverse perspectives. I hope that concerned observers will use this hashtag to report on events as they emerge. This information has been ignored and suppressed for too long, and I believe the only way we can challenge these powers and mitigate these harms is by speaking out.

Wanted to redirect @moid's point here, because there are some important & valid definitional issues at play. Ergo, #defining-fascism.

I find it easy to agree with claims made by other folks that fascism is actually pretty straightforward to define and diagnose. If you compare established definitions the themes and overlap should be obvious. Personally I think the perceived complexity of the task largely depends on whether your inquiry is rooted in a desire to protect those facing oppression from harm, or a fear of open conflict.

"How do you define fascist?"

They act in ways similar to how other fascists act. They act in ways that promote nationalism, authoritarianism, racism, sexism, bigotry, antisemitism, and/or support people and organizations that do the same. Those are fascists.

The fact that people are so worried about how to define fascists is because they want to know exactly how much of all of that behavior they can get away with before getting banned. So you start with "No Fascists Allowed". Tell them right up front NONE of that shit is allowed. If they're arguing about how you should allow a little of it, that's because they want to do a whole lot of it, so you just skip to the end and ban them.

No Fascists Allowed mens you don't have to allow fascists a platform to spread their garbage. You don't have to wait until they break a rule in your particular space. If you figure out they're a J6er or a Qanon or whatever just straight up ban them, even if they've never been caught doing shit in your space - because they will. Eventually. And you probably won't hear about it or see it until after they've already gotten a bunch of their friends into the space and already driven out a bunch of marginalized people.

Of course I could predict that use of the word would be painted as reactionary. Truth is, it took me many months to come to such a discernment. The anchor page in my knowledgebase is still titled "Holochain and Supremacism"- since that is a less inflammatory word, and these issues first began to affect me specifically as patriarchal / gendered violence. I am wary of extending harms that I experience as a trans person to other marginalised identities; though many are linked (eg. any LGBTQ+ gender expression threatens White racial hegemony).

But, now we have this body of evidence. I'll leave it to others to go through these lists of fascist ideologies and characteristics and tick off those they see in the above content. Maybe we could make it like a game of bingo. "How many times did you see 'dehumanization and scapegoating of marginalized or oppressed groups'?"

Harmful beliefs tend to come in clusters. Plenty of Moritz' close associates and the people he empowers are calling to "restore European civilization to the great path of our people" or denying the holocaust and saying that "Hitler had some good points". Moritz is out there broadcasting that all trans people are perverts and paedophiles. Call a spade a spade.

If reactionary politics have made the word 'fascist' overused and problematic, then how are we to respond when the actual fascists enter our spaces?

So, I'll repeat what I said to Eric Harris-Braun before we parted ways:

If we cannot have the courage or discernment to use the label 'fascist' for those who participate in hate speech and are directly connected to hate groups and violent radicals, then we have no hope of creating the better worlds we all know are possible.

When I made this choice of hashtag in publishing to the fediverse I added that

My intention in making it a verb and an alarm signal is that writing can be socially and linguistically adaptive as the situation unfolds.

Yes, the word 'fascist' causes alarm. Maybe @Spencer is right and its use will just lead to wars. Well, I am already involved in an organised war against my right to exist. I did not ask to be.

It seems in the OP I omitted evidence tying Moritz' podcasting partnership with Brett Veinotte to "The Free State Project", a libertarian political plot to take voting power in New Hampshire. Looks like Trump is going to win the New Hampshire primary. Looks like these people have aspirations to secession and covet the 'uncancelability' of #decentralization. Cool and normal.

Don't we think some alarm is warranted, if hate groups and individuals who participate in genocidal propaganda are being empowered with private, unstoppable and easily deployable communications tech to secretly organise and amplify their power?

Hey, thanks for writing. I guess the point is that nouns are 'sticky'. Holochain is embracing fascism- it's an action, a process in motion, a thing that has happened in the past through a thousand tiny cuts and that continues to happen now. To say that Holochain is fascist to me would be where the reactionary politics and finger-pointing starts, where unfair blame lies, where we devolve into "us" and "them". It would also be untrue, and a crude label to apply to a socially complex and dynamic community of practise in which I have met many people who's actions are (from my perspective) generative and positive for the world.

So I genuinely ask that we deepen relationships, in order to weed from our collective psyche the foul roots of our comforts, our toxic positivity, our saviourism, our apologism for hate that does not affect us, our abandonment of the oppressed, and other unconscious biases and entitlements that conspire to give rise to #genocide.

Yes, those conversations will probably have the effect of recentering some who are vulnerable to fascist thought back into their singular reality. But we are mostly an amalgam of the people we spend the most time with, and I should think the idea of reformation near the core of a group wholly devoted to a hateful cause be laughable. At least those their propaganda harms will be able to identify them, set boundaries, keep distance. The alternative is for things to continue as they have been- background fascism influencing events in secret, bigots being empowered, and oppressed people being silently harmed and erased without accountability.

(Related reading: The Alt-Right and Global Information Warfare)

I take your point that alarm does not lead to wellbeing. Maybe it can lead there indirectly if we are able to make our way through the fear. If not, we are stuck in a hostile world behind our individual protective measures. In a world in which fascism is on the rise I think we should all be vigilant.

Thankyou for mentioning Gaza in this reply. We could say similar for Ukraine or Sudan or any of the other places that the West fleetingly cares about. (I'm sharing that discontent intentionally, as channelled via a Ukrainian friend who feels abandoned by most of their social circles now that media attention and leftist virtue signalling have moved on.)

Emotional care for anybody experiencing the impacts of genocide is important work, and I believe these events reinforce the truth that resisting fascism and colonialism really does require being in #solidarity with all oppressed peoples. The ignition point for all of this was Islamophobia being tolerated. Tolerating anti-trans hate speech is just a continuation of the same decision.

Zuerst kamen sie...

(Replying instead of pressing likes because I realize most people are probably using Patchwork where all of Manyverse's emoji reactions just get converted to hearts, thus losing all nuance of the emoji choice):

Hey, for what it's worth, all this conversation is really useful as in it makes me stop and imagine the people mentioned and their stories, their struggles, and the weaving between individual lifes and societal patterns. Something to appreciate.

@andrestaltz I appreciate this pause for reflection and I hope that my obviously compromised sense of safety can be helpful in opening up to some of these difficult issues.

I confess I am still troubled by the perspectives being brought into the dialogue about fascism.

I don't disagree with the 3rd of these linked posts- I think most internal changes in people happen relationally and that this is where we can have our deepest impact. Perhaps it would be useful to know the data I have on this: I have clocked 188 hours of desk time in conversation attempting to resolve these issues. Usually desk time is 1/2 - 2/3 of the time I spend on governance, strategy & management work; but this particular work was disproportionally intrusive into messaging apps on my phone. Still, let's be conservative and call it ~276 hours spent in conversation, mostly doing emotional labour to the benefit of White men's ignorance. And this does not even begin to account for the brain-space consumed by fretting at how to calmly address unconscious bias; or loss of focus, chronic stress and anxiety, lost sleep, waking up with heart palpitations every morning for months, digestive complaints, fatigue and all the other second-order effects that come from feeling a need to assert your right to exist in a hostile environment that does not want to care.

I am confident those conversations took up a lot of Eric's time as well, and the time of many of HOLO's employees. There were related conflicts going on within the organisation that have also consumed time and money. Time spent not building better futures. Slight sidenote, but if we want to have a dialogue about the real quantifiable impacts of tolerating hate speech and bigotry in communities, then let's have HOLO's employees release their timesheet data on this too. How much time and money have they spent suppressing conflict in efforts to include Moritz & those who enable him?

You should also know that I first asked Holochain's community manager for support in addressing Moritz' beliefs with him at DWeb Camp '22. I was told that the idea "felt manipulative", and asked to reflect that perhaps I should have more empathy for others who could be confronted by my physical appearance. I spent the week camped in the same bungalow as somebody I knew to be opposed to my existence. I then had the confidence of a private conversation broken, was lovebombed and cornered into silence and compliance in the back of a car leaving camp. Later in attempting to resolve the betrayal with the community manager I was asked to hold space for his hurt after explicity stating that I did not have the capacity to do so. He has never been mandated unconscious bias / sensitivity training as I requested with HOLO- they simply didn't renew his contract to save face. He remains unreformed and I hear reports of him continuing to cause damage in neighbouring communities. I am only choosing to keep his name out of it due to Art's attempts to scapegoat him. His bromances were an integral part of upholding Holochain's systems of exclusion and oppression. To this day, all has ever said to me about it is that "he just loves Moritz".

In any case, I hope these short summaries help to illustrate how many attempts at generative interventions had preceded my earlier XTwitter frustrations.

Of course, I did not know then what we know now. If I'd have seen evidence that Moritz was in bed with White Nationalists and hate groups I would never have attempted to engage him in dialogue at all. Perhaps nobody is ever beyond helping, but I think it's a bit of an imposition to expect oppressed peoples to be in warm and amicable dialogue with those who oppress them.