The Internet Shutdown and Revolutionary Politics: Defining the Infrastructural Power of the Internet

Abstract

The solution to the accumulation of authoritarian power enhanced by the Internet will not emerge from within the Internet itself; rather, the only radical and enduring response to the kind of networked authoritarianism that is becoming pervasive globally must regard attacking the extractivist foundation of Internet materiality as the primary and most effective antifascist tactic. Far from being a recent emergence of authoritarian infrastructure, however, the Internet was developed by the US military-industrial complex and has always carried the imprint of authoritarian utility. The Internet is now a pervasive infrastructural feature of global capitalism and its state accomplices, and the deliberate temporary stoppage of Internet functioning by state actors, a so-called Internet “shutdown” or “kill switch,” illustrates the primary purpose of this infrastructure is to defend state power and capitalist commerce. Liberal attempts to reform the Internet are misguided, and anti-authoritarians should adopt an abolitionist position regarding the Internet as infrastructure. The primary strategy for such a form of abolitionism should focus its efforts on shutting down the extractive industries that provide the material substrate of the Internet.