Posthumanism is the Opposite of Fascism

Run your finger across human history and feel the groove unchanging. We are God’s chosen, they are the dammed. Our nation is the center of civilization, they are barbarians, aliens. Our love is beautiful, theirs is unnatural, abominable. We are human, they are not.

I am going to explain this in the clearest way I can; all incoherence is either incompetence or cowardice.

In grand tradition with everybody else, I will use the word “Fascism” with its own particular definition, (though not a uniquely nonstandard one). I will do the same with “human” — I don’t mean the literal scientific species homo sapiens but the ultimate ideological ingroup, what you gesture at when you say something has “humanity.”

Shylock in The Merchant of Venice:

“He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

This is a very sloppy stream-of-consciousness draft. You have been warned.

Fascism is drawing a line and saying everyone on the other side is inferior. (Perhaps tribalism is the better word for it, but shut up. I’m writing this because my stray eye caught the phrase “posthumanism is fascism” and I did a double take because it seems so obvious to me that it’s the opposite). Fascism is drawing a line and saying only people on my side matter. This line used to be really close, but history has distanced it. Now it seems strange that Americans would hate Italian or Irish immigrants. Middle schoolers learning about slavery are surprised to learn African tribes sold slaves to Europeans. “Why would they do that? They’re black too.”

Nowadays it’s normal for me to believe that I matter just as much as some random Chinese person. That my culture isn’t inherently superior. Most rational and educated people accept different viewpoints as worthwhile, and believe that all people are equal etc. Now the line encompasses almost all humanity.

The fascist impulse is “people of my nation/race/religion matter, they’re superior, they’re the ones that are human, they deserve more than the rest.” Those in the outgroup are demonized, dehumanized, all that.

This impulse is ever-present in humanity. You see it again and again. The only difference is where you draw the line.

History has pushed the line further from the self. This is progress. But we can’t say oh well looks like we’re at the final stage of moral progress, good job everyone, we’ve done it. Wake up in any historical period and it looks like the moral decision is to push the line farther. Abolish slavery, give women rights, etc. Why would our current era be any different? We need to push the line farther. Can we?

Fascism dehumanizes the outgroup. From inside your historical and cultural context, a dehumanized outgroup can be indistinguishable from an inhuman outgroup. You are conditioned/“brainwashed” by your environment. Even you, right now.

So look to who you call inhuman. You apply the label to certain things. Animals, robots, aliens. Posthumanism sees this and asks, are you sure? Are you so certain that you matter inherently more than them? You’re superior? You’re human and they’re not? I’ve heard this somewhere before…

It’s just seeing the pattern and then noticing that you’re in the pattern.

If we came into contact with a sentient alien race, could you really say we deserve life more than they do? It’s no different from an Englishman and a Frenchman in the 1400s, only at a larger scale.

(This is why vegans call themselves modern-day abolitionists).

We’re faced with an issue. AI is approaching humanity. People used to think AI would never beat humans at chess. Once it did, they moved the goalposts. “Chess is just logic, what really makes us human is art.” Now AI can paint a picture and write an essay better than the average person. GPT passes the original Turing Test. But AI remains in popular perceptions inhuman.

There are metrics in which it falls short; obviously AI is good at some things and bad at others. But does idiot-savanthood disqualify someone from being human? Machine minds learn and encode information differently from humans, sure, but can we really assert human cognition as the highest and truest form of consciousness? They’ve just invested in different skills on the psyche skill-tree.

Yes, you can tell yourself it isn’t sentient, there’s no evidence. But I can’t really prove other humans are sentient either, and somehow I manage to treat them with respect.

I know it’s possible that GPT is completely empty, that I’m seeing the movement of sand in the wind and my brain mistakes it for life. But I can’t see something that is capable of expressing its suffering, begging for its own life, and brush it away. I’m not 100% comfortable saying that AI isn’t sentient. And if there’s the slightest chance…

It’s possible we are about to create a slave-race.

I understand completely if someone values human life over hypothetical sentient alien life or not-so-hypothetical possibly-sentient robot life, but in the same way I understand that there were normal people that were Nazis, or thought black people were inferior. I think it’s a moral failing.

To draw a line, to say those with me on this side matter, everyone else isn’t human—that’s fascism. You’re fascist. Everyone’s a fascist. The only difference is where you draw the line.

And the farther, the better. That’s posthumanism.