summary
A new rebellious alliance against the kings of the world, from the lords of AI to the rulers of nation-states. The peace they promise is nothing but domination: every agreement dismantles autonomy, rights and resistance. Their regime is a permanent war. The future stands before us, stark and clear: either the kings or freedom.
—————————————————
dESCRIption
As long as there are kings, no right peace will be possible.
Kings are those who proclaim themselves masters in every corner of the world: of rare earths, of energy sources, ecosystems and common goods, of AI, of people’s labor, of cities, stellar routes and communication channels. Capitalism is globalized and, on these new battlegrounds, only the strongest are allowed to stand. Trump, Putin, Meloni, Netanyahu, Xi Jinping, Von Der Leyen, Bin Salman, Modi, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, and the list goes on; and alongside them, in the new domains of economic valorization, stand Musk, Bezos, Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
It doesn’t matter much whether you are the head of a state or of a major extractive or tech corporation; whether you are based in New York or Riyadh, New Delhi or Berlin, in the South or the North, in the East or the West: wherever there are kings, there will be a center and a suburb, the rich and the poor. The wealthy ones who rely on a fossil-based productive model that is destroying life on the planet; a model they defend by trying to tear down every rule that stands in the way of their power, from climate policies to environmental and social protections, even the right to life itself.
The new kings share the need to streamline democratic processes, rules, and laws in order to compete in the future world: fast, unrestrained, and, if necessary, by force. War is built into their agenda, while peace can only ever be temporary: a momentary agreement that tends, in the long run, to dismantle every form of autonomy from below, every form of resistance, every right won in the past.
Supranational bodies are, for them, constraints to delete, unless they provide fast-track structures for ratifying and enforcing economic interests. The Nation and the State, by contrast, are a winning and compatible paradigm: they help maintain control when needed; states strike major deals with the oligarchs of the new technological domains at the expense of societies and their welfare systems; they are vertical structures that centralize power, preserve command and push people to continue seeing them as the only boundary within which politics can be practiced and the present administered.
Yet the world and societies have changed enormously since the age in which nation-states asserted themselves: staggering numbers and layered connections now point toward entirely something else: gigantic metropolis and constantly growing populations, new forms of autonomy that continuously emerge and develop within global and local connections, ecological and circular economies growing in territories through science and collective knowledge, with innovative, grassroots projects for industrial reconversion and forms of self-organization.
Something never seen before is taking shape before our eyes, and there will be unprecedented solutions to this crisis. What is required is the ability to contest its outcomes, by defeating fear with courage, creativity and the ability to envision the future. Europe, too, has rapidly come face to face with this problem. Nationhood and rearmament lead to war; autonomy and self-determination lead to confederation and to peace. The first is the easy path chosen by kings who seek to strengthen their domination; the second is the complex one that prefigures a possible and necessary liberation. This is where we want to begin: coming together as many and diverse, naming the kings and queens of our territories, the ways in which they make themselves untouchable and consolidate their power, the system they build and through which they believe they can dominate the present, and the ways to defeat them.
This, then, is the paradigm from which to start in order to build a new rebellious alliance that embraces acceleration toward a radically different world, con-federating all those who clash with the kings wherever they may be: in cities layered with conflict and new democratic institutions from below; in territories; in the prairies of conquest; online; along stellar and satellite routes.
The future is becoming ever clearer: either the kings or freedom.