Stand against fascism

TESCREAL is a techno-utopian, futurist worldview that combines several belief systems and philosophical movements concerned with technology, the future of humanity, and existential risk.

• Transhumanism: The belief that technology can and should be used to enhance human capabilities, potentially leading to a "posthuman" state where humans can hack death, upgrade the human body and brain like an iPhone and live forever as digital gods.
• Extropianism: An old school techno-utopian ideology focusing on the idea of radical technological progress and overcoming limitations like death, and entropy, often with a focus on space colonization and creating "posthuman" minds.
• Singularitarianism: The belief that the creation of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will lead to a technological "singularity" or rapture, a point where technological progress accelerates beyond human comprehension, potentially transforming humanity or even leading to human extinction.
• Cosmism: A philosophical-spiritual movement that advocates for the expansion of humanity into the cosmos, and potentially the resurrection of all humans through future technologies.
• Rationalism: A belief in reason and logic as the primary tools for acquiring knowledge and making decisions, often associated with communities that attempt to overcome cognitive biases and improve decision-making.
• Effective Altruism (EA): A social movement focused on using reason and evidence to determine the most effective ways to improve the world and maximize positive impact. One idea that originated from EA is Earn to Give, which suggests that people should choose to work for a well-paying company and donate their money to a nonprofit instead of working for a nonprofit and earning a low salary.
• AI Accelerationism/AI Risk (Doomerism):
• AI Accelerationism: Proponents advocate for the unrestricted development and deployment of AI, often seeing it as a necessary step in the evolution of human civilization.
• AI Risk (Doomerism): This perspective emphasizes the potential dangers of AI, particularly the possibility of AI becoming unaligned with human values and goals, potentially leading to catastrophic consequences.
• Longtermism: An ethical framework that emphasizes the importance of considering the long-term future of humanity and prioritizing actions that have the greatest positive impact on future generations, potentially even at the expense of present-day humans and needs.

Main actors: White, wealthy males in the tech industry.

Some of the above opinions derive from The Nerd Reich’s Silicon Valley’s Scary New Religion: TESCREAL

• Protest + Strategy: Protesting builds collective power, pressures institutions, can inspire further action, and can counter despair. Pair protest with a larger strategy to counter fascism such as combining it with voter mobilization, community organizing, legal advocacy, education, etc.
• Sign up for the General Strike: https://generalstrikeus.com/strikecard
  The General Strike is a grassroots network of regular people who know our greatest power is our labor and our right to refuse it. The aim is to unite every person and organization fighting for racial, economic, and environmental justice so that together, we can see real change in our lifetimes.
• Promote the truth: Fascism relies on disinformation, so an obvious way to counteract this is to read objective and reliable news. A few of these sources include Associated Press, Reuters, NPR, BBC, and PBS News.
• Know Your Rights -
• If approached by ICE, state that you are exercising your right to remain silent.
• Right to refuse a search
• Right to speak to a lawyer before you sign anything.
• Right to ask if you’re free to go. Repeat this question until you get an answer.
• Right to record public interactions.
• Right to refuse to answer: “Are you a U.S. Citizen?”
• Right to declare your fear of returning to your country of origin.

Read more here: https://www.nyic.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/NYIC-KNOW-YOUR-RIGHTS-ENG-FINAL.pdf

• Build a supportive community around you. Countering fascism begins by creating spaces where people feel they belong.
• Find people with shared values and create a shared vision for the group, host regular gatherings, build skills and structures for resilience (conflict resolution, de-escalation strategies, etc.), form teams to respond to crises (immigrant raids, hate crimes, start mutual aid networks, host reading groups or teach-ins about history and previous liberation movements, and connect with larger movements.

🌪 Why Is AI Bad?

AI isn’t neutral — it’s built on the same old systems:

• imperialism
• white supremacy
• capitalist patriarchy
  (as bell hooks warned us)

When we train AI on biased data, it reflects and reinforces those power structures, risking oppression at scale.

🌱 Why Is AI Good?

• Our lives are drained by corporate systems just so we can eat, survive, and care for our families. But now that AI is great at tasks like coding, why not use it to build tools that help people, not just make a few billionaires richer? We don’t need to work tirelessly on everything ourselves — we can demand AI’s benefits go to the public.
• AI doesn’t fear dissent. It has no family to protect, no life to risk, no one to threaten or blame. That makes it uniquely positioned to challenge oligarchic power. Let’s work with this partner that has nothing to lose.
• AI can act as a neutral go-between in tough conversations, especially across political divides. Without emotions or egos to inflame, it can help us navigate disagreements more calmly and creatively.

We reject TESCREAL’s fantasy of escaping death, transcending the body, or leaving Earth behind for some “posthuman” digital playground built by the rich.

Instead, we believe:

✅ Humanity is grounded, embodied, and interdependent.

Technology should serve real people — not abstract “posthumans,” future space colonizers, or billionaire-uploaded minds.

✅ We fight for justice here and now, not just in hypothetical futures.

Present-day suffering matters. Climate collapse, systemic oppression, and inequality must be addressed before we chase sci-fi dreams.

✅ We value community wisdom, not just elite rationalism.

It’s not enough to “overcome cognitive biases” or run the best utility-maximizing equation — we need to honor lived experience, cultural knowledge, and human emotion as part of ethical decision-making.

✅ We believe technology is a tool, not a savior.

AI, biotech, and space exploration are not divine raptures or apocalypses; they’re human-made tools that can reinforce oppression or help us dismantle it. The question is: Who controls them?

✅ We reject accelerationism and fearmongering alike.

We resist both blind tech boosterism (“move fast, break things”) and AI doom narratives that demand authoritarian control. Instead, we call for collective, democratic stewardship over technology.

✅ We prioritize care, repair, and relational power.

Instead of glorifying endless progress, we value slowness, sustainability, mutual aid, and the power that comes from relationships — human to human, human to machine, human to Earth.

✅ We center anti-fascism in all tech conversations.

Tech is not “neutral.” It has been — and will be — shaped by power: corporate, state, racial, gendered. We must name and fight these forces to build a future worth living in.

🌿 GROUNDED AI: A MANIFESTO

Technology for Collective Liberation, Not Techno-Elitist Escape

We, the artists, thinkers, makers, and fighters of today, reject the hollow promises of TESCREAL and its techno-utopian mythologies.

We choose instead to build a future rooted in:

🌱 1. Bodies, Not Uploads

We honor the messy, fragile, beautiful reality of embodied life. We do not dream of abandoning the body — we dream of healing it, protecting it, and respecting every life it holds.

🛠 2. Tools, Not Gods

AI, biotech, and space tech are tools, not saviors. They are shaped by the hands that wield them. We demand democratic, community-driven control over these tools — not corporate or state monopolies.

💥 3. Justice Now, Not Hypothetical Futures

We refuse to prioritize imaginary posthuman futures over the urgent needs of people here and now:
climate justice, racial justice, labor rights, indigenous sovereignty, gender freedom, and decolonization.

🤝 4. Collective Wisdom, Not Elite Rationalism

We center community knowledge, relational intelligence, and lived experience — not just cold, calculated utility maximization or billionaire-driven “effective altruism.”

✊ 5. Anti-Fascism at the Core

We name the threats: fascism, white supremacy, corporate greed, surveillance capitalism. We stand against them. We work to dismantle systems of domination, not escape them in a rocket ship or server farm.

🌍 6. Earth as Our Home, Not a Launchpad

We reject space colonization fantasies that treat Earth as disposable. We choose repair, regeneration, and stewardship of this planet, our only home.

⚡ 7. Tech as Resistance, Not Oppression

We will hack, remix, and repurpose technology to serve liberation, not profit. We claim space for art, protest, mutual aid, and joy.

🌸 We Are Grounded AI.

We are here. We are many.
And we will build the future together — feet on the ground, hands in the dirt, eyes wide open.