<nettime> David Golumbia on "Cyberlibertarianism"

[Carsten Agger via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

The last week or so I've been reading David Golumbia's
"Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology".

I think he raises many important and well-known points that have also
been raised by writers like Fred Turner, Richard Barbrook, Evgeni
Morozov and Yasha Levine:

That behind the seemingly progressive "computers as liberation"
ideology is a libertarian right-wing agenda which can, as we have seen
with Tim May from the "cypherpunks", openly tolerate extreme bigotry
veering towards fascism, if only they can also get their freedom of
government interference.

That's something that's worth being aware of - you also have some
alleged civil society organizations which are, some of the time, more
like corporate lobby groups acting on behalf of with not very
progressive values, e.g. Google and Meta. As I said, Golumbia raises a
number of important points.

But I'm also kind of disappointed with the book - I think Golumbia's
argumentation is sloppy, often being limited to stating that this
person says such-and-so ... and that's what a right-wing person might
also say.

E.g., he criticizes people for thinking of Glenn Greenwald as a
progressive icon, when he actually started criticizing Democrats'
reaction to Trump's victory in 2016, and that paints him as right wing.

However, while Greenwald has indeed veered to the Libertarian right,
Golumbia does not go into *what* Greenwald was actually criticizing
Democrats for - which was their conspiracy theories that the election
was stolen by Putin and Trump was really a traitor taking orders from
Putin. Greenwald was thus *right* at the time, and his position can't
be taken as a sign that people were blind to his alleged right-wing
opinions.

In another place, Golumbia criticizes the pro-cryptography campaigns -
no entirely wrongly - but then goes on to say, that  all governments
*must* be able to monitor all electronic communication between
individuals, and only right-wing libertarians would think otherwise.

He also criticizes Richard Stallman's position on free software for not
being very aligned with the normal political ideas of "freedom" as
stated e.g. by John Stuart Mill (this is not wrong) - and that,
therefore, Stallman and the Free Software Foundation are also part of
the movement towards right-wing libertarianism. He doesn't engage with
what Stallman's ideas of software freedom *do* entail, or whether they
are reasonable or not. 

I wish Golumbia was still alive today, because then it would be easier
to criticize these points - as it is now, it's not like he's able to
revise any positions he took.  

Best,
Carsten

-- 
Carsten Agger - agger@fsfe.org
https://fsfe.org --- https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/ 
FSFE Denmark Coordinator, General Assembly & European Team Member

Blog & Podcast: freely.modspil.dk/agger --- podcast.modspil.dk
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