• Kinda Brief
  • Posts
  • Why is Marc Andreessen Quoting Italian Fascists?

Why is Marc Andreessen Quoting Italian Fascists?

Plus, I share some really WEIRD plays I read in college

October 20, 2023

Trust & Safety Tycoon 

This week, Techdirt published a new browser-based game that lets you roleplay as a trust & safety team lead. It’s just as depressing as it sounds. But it is also very interesting and a pretty good recap of the major debates around social media moderation. I worked pretty closely with the Patreon Trust & Safety team during my time there, and the game reminded me of the conversations I’d have with them. If you are at all interested in what that work is like or the larger debate about how social media platforms should handle moderation, I recommend checking it out. 

Platform Updates

Instagram & Threads

The Rest of Meta 

TikTok

YouTube

Twitch 

Reddit

Snap 

Twitter, Sorry X

The Product 

The Dumpster Fire

Culture Movers 

Film & TV

Music 

Creator Economy 

Gaming 

AI 

Oligarchs 

Scams

Three Manifestos 

Before I started working in tech, long before I started writing about it in this newsletter, I was a theatre major with a particular fascination for early 20th-century avant-garde art movements. So, I feel uniquely called cursed to discuss Marc Andreessen’s manifesto and his references to Italian fascism. Buckle up. 

Andreessen is one of the biggest names in VC funding. He became a major player in tech as the co-founder of Netscape in the 90s and later went on to co-found the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). You might have heard of a16z in the past few years because they, and Marc, are one of the loudest promotors of crypto and NFT companies, with investments in Bored Ape pedler Yuga Labs and scammy pay-to-earn games like Axie Infinity. 

This week, Andreessen dropped a long bong rip in a freshman dorm style manifesto about his views as a Techno-Optimist. I’ve skimmed through it and read a couple of breakdowns on it (I recommended reading this one by Dave Karpf if you want to dive deeper). It’s a pretty shallow attempt at trying to frame pushes for tech regulation, criticism of his obviously scammy investments, and overall skepticism about the “tech can solve everything” ethos as morally dangerous opposition to progress. There’s one section that stood out to my ex-theatre studies brain, though:

To paraphrase a manifesto of a different time and place: “Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Technology must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.”

The “manifesto of a different time and place” he’s referencing is Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s 1909 Futurist Manifesto. Andresen also lists Marinetti as one of his “Patron Saints of Techno-Optimisim.” Marinetti was also one of the principal authors of the 1919 Fascist Manifesto, laying the ideological groundwork for the Italian fascist movement. Weird “Patron Saint” to pick my dude.

Here’s the thing, though: despite their proto-fascist beliefs, the Italian Futurists made some interesting art (in a freshman-year dorm room bong rip sort of way). My primary exposure is to their theatrical projects. Their Synthetic Theater (queue another manifesto co-authored by Marinetti) which produced short, energetic, often nonsensical pieces called “sintesi.” Here’s one of my favorites. And yes, these are just photos I took of an actual book I own. 

A short play titled “There Is No Dog: Synthesis of Night” in which an unnamed character proclaims “he who is not there” after which a dog crosses the street. Curtain. 

As a freshman in Theatre History 2, I was fascinated by this one, totally fixated on thinking through how you might stage this script. 

A single-page script for a play called “3nominal Voices Whirlpool Destruction” that’s just of a geometric diamond-ish shape with random words like “lamps,” “walls,” or “fire” written in and around it. 

While these short, strange texts are often very funny in their absurdity, there’s also an undercurrent of violence that bubbles up through many of them. Take, for instance, this piece titled “Detonation: Synthesis of All Modern Theatre,” which is a disturbing critique, or perhaps even provocation, of the futurist's theatrical contemporaries the more you dwell on it. 

The script for “Detonation: Synthesis of All Modern Theatre” in which an unnamed character says “a bullet” and then, after a minute of silence – a gunshot. Curtain. 

Anti-intellectualism and anti-institutionalism also feature heavily in Futurist works. In their view, the modern world must be ushered in quickly, through violence if needed, and the old institutions' gatekeepers only slow it down. I’m starting to see the appeal for tech VCs. 

Alt Text: The script for “Education” set in a classroom. The Professor (thirty years old. He is reading to his students.): Dante is a great poet. He wrote the Divine Comedy and… (several seconds of darkness)  The Professor (forty years old. He is reading with a bored voice.): Dante is a great poet. He wrote the Divine Comedy and… (several seconds of silence.)  The Professor (sixty years old. He is like a gramophone.): Dante is a great poet. He wrote the Divine Comedy and… A Pupil (interrupting him): Why? The Professor (surprised and embarrassed): It is printed here. Sit down and be quiet. Dante is a great poet. He wrote… Curtain.

You see what I mean about the freshman bong rip level of thinking here? Frustrated with stagnation, eager to move quickly, but uninterested in interrogating why stagnation may have set in or the tradeoffs of a different approach. Certainly incapable of offering a real solution. Just move fast and break things. Did I mention that Marc is a longtime Meta board member?

On some level, this isn’t that surprising. Without getting too far into the Marxist weeds, it’s not uncommon to see fascism described as either an endgame of hypercapitalism or a tool used in reaction to social and labor progress. Prevent class consciousness and solidarity by creating and attacking internal and external enemies. Any conflict between labor and capital (or regulators and industry) must be set aside so the fascist state can defend the people from The Enemy.

But you don’t even need to subscribe to that reading to see how dangerous Andreessen’s ideas are. He literally has a section of his manifesto titled “The Enemy.” One of the most influential men in the world of tech names “sustainability,” “social responsibility,” and “tech ethics” as enemies of his ideological movement. Look too closely at how his projects work, discuss how they should be regulated, ask about their larger impact, or suggest in any way that we should slow down, and you are an Enemy of innovation, according to Andreessen. But who am I to question the innovative bonafide of a man who funded so many NFT projects?

I’m sure we’d all appreciate ending on a lighter note

So here’s a fun video. Enjoy!