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George Monbiot Profile picture
@GeorgeMonbiot
Nov 10 • 5 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
1. Here are my thoughts on the pros and cons of staying on this platform.
Pro: We were here long before Musk took it over. We built this.
Con: He has used our creation to help elect a far-right autocrat, and build his own grim political career.
🧵
2. Pro: We should never cede any space, real or virtual, to the far right. Fascist trolls are trying to drive us out. Don't give them the satisfaction.
Con: Our presence could be used to legitimise a far-right hellsite.
3. Pro: It remains, amid the viciousness, a good place to share information, ideas and opinions.
Con: It is also an abysmal, dispiriting place to inhabit, the humour, lightness and kindness crushed by bots and trolls.
4. Pro: By staying, we support other dissenters who stay.
Con: By staying, we impede Ex's decline and replacement with other platforms.
5. In conclusion, I'm staying for now, using the #Xdissenter hashtag in my profile. I also have accounts on Threads and BlueSky. But if we're going to leave, let's do it together, and decide which platform to migrate to.
Your views are welcome, as ever.

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More from @GeorgeMonbiot

George Monbiot Profile picture
Nov 12
1. Who really won the US election? The fossil fuel companies and other polluting industries. We scarcely heard about them during the election campaign, which is just how they like it. Almost everything we *did* hear about was a distraction from the real agenda. 🧵
2. Trump’s campaign was an economic war against the interests of almost everyone on Earth, on behalf of the planet’s most powerful and destructive industries. But it was dressed up, as always, as a culture war: a trick that has been used to great effect for more than a century.
3. It’s not as if Biden/Harris were seriously curtailing polluting industries, especially oil and gas. It’s shocking how little Harris even mentioned the existential threat to humanity that climate breakdown presents. But now? It’s a free-for-all.
Read 7 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Nov 7
1. My column on what happened, what comes next, and just how easy our fake democracies are to overthrow. + short thread on where our remaining hopes lie. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2. People seek to destroy what they feel excluded from. Centralised “democracies” exclude all but a rarefied circle from genuine power. Centralised democracy is a contradiction in terms.
3. Disempowered people tend to be profoundly unimpressed by “rational arguments” for this faction or for that one: they have an entirely reasonable desire – however unreasonable its expression may be – to kick the system over.
Read 7 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Oct 28
1. Trump’s preposterous claim that a “savage Venezuelan prison gang” has “taken over Times Square” is a reminder that people like him actually know nothing about the world, because they never step out of their suites and chauffered cars, offices and private planes.🧵
2. The ruling class doesn’t do its own shopping, or wander around town, or use public transport, or walk into an ordinary café or bar, or join a queue or wait for anything.
3. They are totally reliant on other people – or their own lurid imaginations – to tell them what the world outside their air-conditioned bubble is like. And they appear to imagine a festering pit of humanity. Everyone outside the bubble is perceived as a threat.
Read 4 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Oct 24
This is an important issue, constantly misunderstood. So here's a short thread about "marginality" and capital.
1. Land that's "marginal" for agriculture is often central for wildlife - and for the people who live there. ....🧵
2. There are not 6.4m ha of "marginal" land in the UK on which machinery can work. The “margin” is always in the eye of the beholder. But in this case it doesn’t actually exist.
3. “Core” and “margin” are key constructs of capital. The “margin” is the exploitable sacrifice zone, kept out of the sight and minds of consumers. The “margin” is other people’s heartland.
Read 7 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Oct 21
1. Abuse and harassment are never acceptable. But this is not the first time I’ve seen an emphasis on abuse and harassment shielding bad science. This is a short thread on how it works.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2. It happened with climate science deniers a lot. In the 2000s, they would claim to have received abuse and threats, and almost invariably get national news coverage. Sometimes they would produce no evidence of such threats. They were just taken at their word.
3. They used this story to deflect attention from their poor methodology and portray themselves as victims, standing up for science against an intolerant mob. A similar thing appears to have happened with the bad science surrounding ME/CFS.
Read 9 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Oct 18
This story is one of the most disturbing I've ever covered. It's about how the views of a deeply weird ideological sect affected science, medicine and the media, with devastating impacts on patients. Please read and pass on. This horror has to stop. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
I see my own profession, the media, as being as culpable as any. How did we allow a bizarre sect, with a phenomenally cruel and brutal agenda, to set the prevailing view of this and other issues?
And it was right across the board: just about every major outlet in the UK.
Here's some background to this story, which is, frankly, even weirder than the contents of today's article. 21 years on, I still ask myself, wtf is going on? monbiot.com/2003/12/09/inv…
Read 8 tweets

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