Speculative digital technologies amplify ethno-nationalist mobilization to new magnitudes.

Evidence

As we saw in part 2, speculative technologies do not merely subtract lived experiences into commodified predictive data; they are nodes for circulating the radical uncertainty that defines a speculative mode of being. Ethno-nationalist populist movements have channeled their digital activism right at the heart of the spaces afforded by such technologies; the connectivities and cleavages evident in the steady growth of these platforms’ constituencies now extend far beyond the fringe, achieving magnitudes of mobilization that traditional social movements have previously lacked. Sociologist Paolo Gerbaudo (2018) has emphasized this affinity between digital technologies (their dependence on and use of contradiction, opacity, and confusion) and neopopulist publics. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 500

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s chain of how speculation migrated from trading floors into politics via digital infrastructure. — connects to: Digital speculation platforms amplify populist mobilization beyond traditional social movements — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 698; Conspiracy media, white supremacy, and nationalism form a self-reinforcing ecology — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 108; The internet enables nationalist extremists to advocate genocide — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 202
• QUESTION: How much of the causal weight is on the technology’s affordances versus the populist publics that adopt it?