Dear Reader, 

The unstoppable train of progress has left the station. They are making it clear. Get on board, or get left behind. They say things like, “AI won’t replace humans, but humans who use AI will replace those who don’t” (Sam Altman), or the less delicate, “If you don’t have an AI strategy you’re going to die in the world that’s coming” (Devin Wenig). The CEO of Flock Cameras, Garett Langley, defended the surveillance technology by saying that “we shouldn’t pause progress.” Get in, or get left behind.

The new wave of stories about Artificial Intelligence are particularly focused on AI’s ability to end the world. We are in an all-out sprint, we are told, to the end times. No off-ramps in sight. It’s this kind of evangelism which reminds me, dear reader, of Mark Fisher’s book Capitalist Realism. “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” writes Fisher, and it is difficult to imagine a time at which he’s been more correct. It is easier for reporters, intellectuals, and software developers alike at this moment to imagine the end of the world than the end of the AI bubble, or the software that maintains it. Capitalism, or the newest, digitally-flavored variation of it, has once again flattened the future. Fisher continues: “Lowering our expectations, we are told, is a small price to pay for being protected from terror and totalitarianism.” Accept the surveillance, the wealth inequality, the hellfire from the sky, for a little more ease. 

In her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt details the trial of prominent Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. She makes the case that the man on trial was no evil genius but rather a man so banal that he thought nothing of the evil he was doing. Evil has no imagination, because it is made up of a million cogs in a machine. But the leaders, political and economic, who are shaping our futures do have imaginations. When Project 2025 was conceived by the Heritage Foundation, a radical negative imagination emerged for all of our futures, one that is coming together piece by piece. It is an alternative vision for the future which is possible simply because it continues to accrue money where money is hoarded. Trump’s great shock to the political system was the ability to shape an actual future, to immediately institute executive orders, to start wars, and to repeal protection, rather than to preach a grand return. Their radical negative imagination harnesses populism to shape the texture of change. 

Amazon is now using AI to predict which of its warehouse workers are more likely to join or form unions. Flock cameras have been consistently accessed by law enforcement to stalk their former romantic partners. A new study from the Action on Armed Violence UK on the “Lavender” AI used by the Israeli military has shown that the software was used to identify bombing targets with minimal human approval required, resulting in mass killings of civilians. Last week, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security conducted a raid of Representative Ilhan Omer’s house under the guise of an immigration fraud investigation. The radical negative imagination is no longer a return to the past, but the creation of a new future. A new future in which we are managed like data in the system of our overlords. 

In the beginning of October, French students blockaded the entrances to their schools in a protest against poor learning conditions and the lack of teachers and educational opportunities in public schools. The initial protest spread like wildfire. A police officer posing as a French student on Snapchat sent the message, “Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres,” directly translating to “In the name of God, it is the darkness.” News sites have characterized the messages as a poor attempt to imitate the slang of young French students of color in order to gain access to group chats discussing the upcoming protests. The clumsily worded phrase has become a slogan of the youth protests in France. Situationally, it has become the emblem for the complete misunderstanding of the real issues which the young people of Europe are erupting against. 

In Albania, the “Flamingo Revolution,” which started earlier this year in protest of the Trump family’s purchase of large swathes of environmentally crucial wetlands, has reached new heights in the last few weeks and is now demanding the resignation of the sitting Prime Minister. In Serbia, a student anti-corruption movement which has been ongoing for two years has gained new momentum with the same demands. These protests have spread to Belgium, Portugal, Italy, and Greece. In India, the “Cockroach Protests,” another large student movement protesting the Modi government, have won the release of two of their prominent leaders from jail thanks to mass mobilization. 

It is unsurprising that the protests have been met with resistance from mainstream media as well as established politicians, who condemn the use of violence or ‘rioting’. It is not a surprise that these same people do not see the poverty and hopelessness which these young people see in front of them as its own form of violence. Capitalist realism conceals the fact that on a globe where there is enough food to feed the whole population, letting some go hungry is a choice. Fisher says, “The long, dark night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect… From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.” 

The U.S, has, perhaps, become numb to possibility. In an ever-worsening situation, we see none of the explosions of popular protests and riots which have spread across the rest of the world. The hold of capitalist realism only loosens as we watch the unfolding of other young people who believe in a different future and are brave enough to claim it—to stop the train of “progress” because they recognize that there are bodies on the tracks. “Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres.” We might create a spark in the darkness.

Narges Anzali wonders if the hold of capitalist realism can ever loosen.