Photo by Ravi Sharma

The other day, I read someone on X, the social-media hub formerly known as Twitter, say the argument against individualism in left-wing spaces has gone too far. I can’t recall who said this, or what the exact context was, but she was making the case that while there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, as the platitude goes, some consumption is more ethical than others.

In the animal movement, I’ve really appreciated the pivot away from individualism in recent years, which is still ongoing. Instead of focusing so much on changing individual behavior, namely by getting others to go vegan, activists seem to be focusing more on enacting pro-animal public policy. For instance, I’ve been pushing legislators to support more government funding for cultivated-meat research.

That said, I sympathize with what this commentator was saying. Ironically, I particularly feel this way when thinking about left-wing participation on X. I don’t want to pretend my hands are clean here. I’m a regular lurker on the website formerly known as Twitter. I follow a smorgasbord of political journalists, cultivated-meat experts, animal activists, socialists, movie critics and New York Knick fans.

Still, I think anyone left of center — or, more broadly, anyone opposed to the rising threat of right-wing authoritarianism — needs to get off X. Twitter has always been a bit of a cesspool, but since Elon Musk bought the site, he’s turned it into what is arguably the world’s largest fascist propaganda tool. Ideas which previously would have been confined to neo-Nazi message boards have entered the mainstream.

I don’t want to suggest Musk is solely responsible for this. Academics much smarter than me have outlined factors which lead to the rise of fascism. However, in the United States, I don’t think there’s anyone, other than former President Donald Trump, who has done more to legitimize the far right than Musk. His purchase and transformation of Twitter has shifted the Overton Window significantly.

Admittedly, it’s easy for me to say people should leave Twitter. I haven’t spent a significant chunk of my career building an audience there, as many of the people I follow have. The prospect of giving that up and starting over on another social-media site must be daunting. That said, in providing free content on X, these users are drawing eyeballs to what is fundamentally a fascist operation.

I’m also under no illusions about ownership of the alternatives. Take Threads, for example. It’s owned by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, no one’s idea of a leftist hero. I suspect he supports Trump. Still, Zuckerberg strikes me as bad in the way all billionaires are bad. Musk is uniquely toxic, in part because he appears more interested in spreading far-right ideas than actually earning money.

Of the Twitter clones I’ve tried so far, my favorite is Bluesky, but I don’t particularly care where the people I follow go. I just want them off X. Again, it’s easier said than done, especially for those who have grown an audience on Twitter, but I wish these people would pin a note to the top of their profile, telling me where I can find them going forward, and permanently log off.

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