On Authority

The Authoritarian Stack: Mapping Big Tech’s Capture of State Power - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

A new project exposes the infrastructure of techno-oligarchic control — and why Europe must act

Human-Computer Insurrection: Notes on an Anarchist HCI

The HCI community has worked to expand and improve our consideration of the societal implications of our work and our corresponding responsibilities. Despite this increased engagement, HCI continues to lack an explicitly articulated politic, which we argue re-inscribes and amplifies systemic oppression. In this paper, we set out an explicit political vision of an HCI grounded in emancipatory autonomy - an anarchist HCI, aimed at dismantling all oppressive systems by mandating suspicion of and a reckoning with imbalanced distributions of power. We outline some of the principles and accountability mechanisms that constitute an anarchist HCI. We offer a potential framework for radically reorienting the field towards creating prefigurative counterpower - systems and spaces that exemplify the world we wish to see, as we go about building the revolution in increment.

Human-Computer Insurrection: Notes on an Anarchist HCI

The HCI community has worked to expand and improve our consideration of the societal implications of our work and our corresponding responsibilities. Despite this increased engagement, HCI continues to lack an explicitly articulated politic, which we argue re-inscribes and amplifies systemic oppression. In this paper, we set out an explicit political vision of an HCI grounded in emancipatory autonomy - an anarchist HCI, aimed at dismantling all oppressive systems by mandating suspicion of and a reckoning with imbalanced distributions of power. We outline some of the principles and accountability mechanisms that constitute an anarchist HCI. We offer a potential framework for radically reorienting the field towards creating prefigurative counterpower - systems and spaces that exemplify the world we wish to see, as we go about building the revolution in increment.

To Repress or to Co‐opt? Authoritarian Control in the Age of Digital Surveillance

This article studies the consequences of digital surveillance in dictatorships. I first develop an informational theory of repression and co-optation. I argue that digital surveillance resolves dicta...

Time and the Neo-Monarchist Turn

One of the classical arguments against democracy concerns its supposed short-termism. Early-modern political thought contrasted the pitfalls of elected authority, whose timebound character was seen to invite inconstancy, instability and plunder, with the merits of indefinite rule on the model of kingship. Such reasoning has seen two revivals in recent years, first in a neo-liberal form as an argument for technocracy (see independent central banking), second in a neo-reactionary form as an argument for an all-powerful executive or ‘monarch’ (see the contemporary international far Right). This article looks at the structure of these political arguments and the work they do. Having reconstructed their historical background, it charts how the neo-monarchist turn marks a radicalisation in democracy-scepticism, guided by a patrimonial logic of authority as property ownership. The article goes on to examine the political-economic factors to which this responds, as well as the contradictions to which neo-monarchism is prone. As the article concludes, temporal arguments for authoritarian politics may be dubious in substance but merit careful observation in a context of widespread disaffection with existing institutions.

Obeying Nobody: Public Service and the Ordinary Evil of Administration - Roy L. Heidelberg, 2026

This essay explores administrative evil by reconsidering it through Weber’s ideal-type of bureaucracy and Arendt’s concerns over the bureaucratization of social...

Whitepaper — The Collective Intelligence Project

I. Capitalist Acceleration: Sacrificing safety for progressII. Authoritarian Technocracy: Sacrificing participation for safetyIII. Shared Stagnation: Sacrificing progress for participation

Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization by …

How Control Exists after Decentralization by Galloway, …

'Composable Moderation' May Protect Bluesky from Political Pressure | TechPolicy.Press

Shifting enforcement away from a single platform and into a distributed ecosystem should blunt interference by authoritarians, writes Audrey Hingle.

Palantir's social media manifesto is a blueprint for technofascism

The surveillance firm’s viral X post calls for hard power, conscription and the end of pluralism. AI expert and academic Mark Coeckelbergh on what happens when technology becomes the gateway to authoritarianism

Researchers Detail How AI Systems Can Enable Authoritarianism

A new preprint study of authoritarianism-enabling AI presents another set of evidence of the gaps in safeguards, writes Tim Bernard.

The Myth of Authoritarian Efficiency

When it comes to getting stuff done, democracies win every time.

(PDF) Authoritarian Neoliberalism from Below: Subjectivity and Platform Capitalism in Argentina and Brazil

PDF | We are witnessing a worldwide resurgence of reactionary ideologies and movements, combined with an escalating assault on democratic institutions... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

An Anarchist FAQ

The Anarchist FAQ Editorial Collective An Anarchist FAQ Version 15.4 (17-Mar-2020) 17-Mar-2020

Argument from authority

Some consider it a practical and sound way of obtaining knowledge that is generally likely to be correct when the authority is real, pertinent, and universally accepted,[1][4][5][6][7][8][9] while others consider it to be a very weak defeasible argument or an outright fallacy.[10][11][12][13][14]