Treatlerism and Microfascisms
Capitalism, consumerism, and its feeding of reactionary sentiment and apathy
The “Treatlerite”
The term “Treatlerite,” became popular a few weeks ago through discourse on Twitter; the concept it was trying to convey (which I personally think it does so both hilariously and effectively) is that the constant need to enjoy and consume “ideally” has been flooded with reactionary thought lately. Not only does the consumer need to be able to effect efficiency but also that the person giving them their “treats” doesn’t creep them out or belong to a group of people who typically would. Racism, even some which is typically only ever espoused through what is seen as misandry, is more outspoken when one begins to observe those that not only order but post about their orders from services like Doordash, Ubereats, Instacart, etc… Consumers, those who would publicly post about their “bad orders,” would discuss their disapproval of the lack of preciseness from a service that pays based on the number of orders and not the amount of time worked; these posts also occasionally included signs of discomfort about who was showing up at their addresses: usually at the level of the whole gender of “male shoppers or delivery drivers” but also occasionally race-specific or non-white men especially.
In summary, the Treatlerite mentality is the ability to consume as efficiently as possible, as much as you want, without having to face any sense of discomfort or unease along the way; this is often with the expectation that now you don’t even have to do that yourself, it just ends up at your doorstep. One is not expected to face the realities of the gig economy and the particular difficulties that minorities and immigrants face within it; the comfort of consumption always comes as the first imperative in this thought process.
Treatlerism is only a Symptom
This phenomenon of Treatlerism, however, is only one that spawns particularly from an age when one can get anything they want at the press of a button; the Covid-19 pandemic increased the rate at which delivery and pick-up apps and services expanded and became a mainstream mode of consumption. The ultimate sickness is that the commodity form and the “right to consume” have morphed into a million black holes of microfascism. Whether it be the need for convenience within physical commodities or the endless stream of entertainment that we have that can quickly become reactionary; the traps are set for us to be ready to fall into multiple times a day. Microfascisms, as Deleuze and Guattari discuss them in Capitalism & Schizophrenia, are little “black holes” that come from micropolitical rather than macropolitical fronts:
What makes fascism dangerous is its molecular or micropolicial power, for it is a mass movement: a cancerous body rather than a totalitarian organism. American film has often depicted these molecular focal points; band, gang, sect, family, town, neighborhood, vehicle fascisms spare no one. ONly microfascism provides an answer to the global question: Why does Desire desire its own repression, how can it desire its own repression? (Anti-Oedipus)
The goal (though one could say these cancerous cells of desire have no active intention) is to find and feed on the insecurities, the repressions, the sense of injustice that make you vulnerable to the fascist bastardization of the social contract. In this contract you don’t just sign over some rights to guarantee that others do the same, you instead willingly give some over your desire and freedom so that certain others may have theirs taken away completely. Being bullied by a members of a certain racial group can become a support for deportation and ethnic cleansing when that bullying turns one towards searching media that sees that group as lesser. Being broken up with or cheated on can turn into racism and misogyny once filtered through all the angry relationship forums and stories online or even something like the fascist fetishization of racial cuck porn. One mass micro-political example may be the anxiety around crime and serial killers fueled by police or true crime shows and podcasts is one of an interesting form of microfascism as it is an anxiety that the media creates and feeds itself for the most part. With this mixed with local news reports as well as more and more content that feeds into the created desires of “wanting to protect yourself anywhere you are “ (by which I don’t mean teaching self-defense but rather videos about why and how you should barracad your hotel room anytime you check in), there is an anxiety that is created despite the reality of most places becoming safer that feeds into a willingness to strengthen policing and stereotyping of people. The micropolitical frustrations are brought to a level of a macropolitical movement through canceral institutions meant to feed that hate and starve the possibility of the creation of non-fascist desires.
The Online Space & Reactionary Maxxing
The “Treatlerite” is met with microfascisms on fairly many fronts; the frustrations of a busy day make it easy to take it our on those that make mistakes, especially when it comes to stuff one paid for, other fears and experiences can make someone showing up to your house or apartment very scary, and online spaces make it easy to share these experiences and anecdotes. But whether it is groups discussing food ordering, true crime forums, or even in some cases what would seem to be progressive spaces like communities of trans people online, the internet (and its capitalist oligarchs) push reactionary sentiment because it has become what gets the most engagement, the most clicks, and easily turns anecdotes or false perceptions into an anxiety ridden reality. Part of this is that many interactions that just normally or ignorably go by are not seen as worthy as discussion, in another way, groups centered around a certain community or concept can become isolated with only people willing to feed into these anxieties.
To take “mom groups” on facebook for example, while they may start out as being a collective of people sharing their experiences, tips, and asking for advice; if these groups have people already inbedded into more reactionary or fringe ideas, they can slowly take over such a group by pushing away people willing to fight against anti-vaxxers or extremist home-schoolers. Eventually, when enough people who know better leave the space becomes primarily ridden by reactionary anxieties preying on new parents who don’t know what they’re doing in every situation, while those sure of the conspiracies keep feeding into each other.
The Fight for a Reactionary Platform
The recent and short ban of Tiktok and a big part of the response to its restoration has also caused some troubles that I wish to discuss in this post as well as I see similarities to what has been discussed so far. I understand the desire to maintain the platform that one makes a large portion of their income or advertisements from or on, such as the big creators do, but it additionally seems that once the defense of platforms goes beyond the desire to actually be able to create change, that these platforms function not only to create more reactionary sentiment but to bottle up any possibility of left wing discourse. This is shown the most clearly by the fact that when Tiktok returned this week from the ban, it was accompanied by a swarm of restrictions geared towards specifically targeting liberal and left wing discourse.
Beyond the restrictions and censors on place that block political discourse, the websites seem to function almost as a kettle tactic would in breaking up or slowing down a protest on the streets (Kettling is a tactic police use to move protests into a small space to either get them to end or arrest the remaining protestors, Acid-Horizon’s book Anti-Oculus features a good discussion of their political importance and similarities). By getting addicted to social media and using them as the form of left wing political organizing or information spreading, we not only open ourselves up to misinformation becoming uncontainable, but also restricting the spaces under which we actually try to create organizations and information spreading into spaces meant to monitor everyone and to benefit themselves. These platforms are geared towards keeping us on them and in many ways they have done an excellent job at doing that and threatening the possibility of revolutionary speech by replacing it with a desire to be able to speak at all on these platforms, which it can easily dispel and deradicalize into content meant to get clicks and views through monetization. Once Musk bought twitter and introduced a premium level where you could get paid for engagement, and before the nazis and far right took over or bought almost every single big account on the platform, many supposed liberals and leftists started posting more and more emotional, possibly reactionary posts (ragebait), and even straight up lies so that they could get views and get paid. Money deterritorializes all, even the political desires, and the money connected to these platforms happens to be in the hands of a lot of reactionary billionaires at this moment.