Blackcap Blog

Published at 09:27 on 23 February 2025

Let me start by saying I have been nothing but satisfied with Digital Ocean, which I use to host this blog, so far. The issue here is not anything Digital Ocean has done, it is what Digital Ocean is highly likely to do in the future.

Digital Ocean is a capitalist enterprise based in a country undergoing a transition from democracy to fascism. The historical role of the capitalist class is to line up in support behind fascist regimes whenever they arise.

I do not know the politics of Digital Ocean’s top management and board of directors. It does not much matter. Even if both are dominated by political progressives, compliance with the rapidly-emerging fascist regime is highly likely.

In a capitalist corporation, management serves at the pleasure of the board, whose prime mission is to act in the interest of the corporation’s stockholders and their desire to maximize profits. Profits are not maximized by staking out adversarial positions to an authoritarian regime.

The above makes compliance the expected outcome, and the historical record of capitalism under fascism bears this theory out.

Yes, even under the Nazis there were businesses like DEF (Oskar Schindler’s firm) and Ernst Leitz GmbH (the makers of Leica cameras) that tried to do the right thing as much as they could. But even they were heavily constrained, and did a lot of complying (both manufactured materiel for the Wehrmacht). Even if Digital Ocean follows in their footsteps (and odds are against it, good guys like Leitz and Schindler are the exceptions that prove a general rule), they will still have to make a public show of being loyal Trump fascists.

Even in the optimistic case, then, this site is likely to end up as collateral damage should it remain on Digital Ocean.

Hence, it is now time for me to move this site elsewhere, which brings me to the requirements for what “elsewhere” should ideally be.

1. As little US connection as possible. Ideally this would be an organization that is neither owned by US capital, managed or overseen by US citizens, based in the USA, nor physically hosted in the USA.
2. Cloud hosting that lets me run my own installation of WordPress on my own installation of Linux. I am not interested in sharing an OS installation or a WordPress installation with others; past experience has taught me that both are insufficient to my needs.
3. The ability to assign a static IP address to a virtual server.
4. A provider that offers an S3-compatible cloud storage service, since I use such to keep this site backed up.

Any suggestions as to the above would be greatly appreciated!

Published at 11:29 on 6 February 2025

Ironically, this is something which could be created by disbelieving in it.

Assume a widespread disbelief in the relevance of the Democratic Party, accompanied by a widespread rejection of Trump. Then, the most likely result is the pursuit of change outside the auspices of the Democratic Party.

Since the Party is, in fact, incompetent almost to the point of irrelevance, this would make the resistance more effective than one which pursues mainly in-Party strategies.

Now, while the Democrats are incompetent, they are also the lesser half of a two-party duopoly. This is part of the reason for their incompetence, in fact; the duopoly insulates the Democrats from the normal forces of ideological competition.

The same duopoly also makes it extremely difficult for any sort of new movement to gain true, effective party status. (The latter has happened only once in U.S. history, when abolitionists created the Republican Party.) The natural outcome, borne of Democratic Party opportunism and oppositional frustration, is some sort of merger of the new opposition with the old Democratic Party. This could then make the post-merger Democratic Party more relevant.

By contrast, a widespread continuation of belief in the Democrats’ relevance is likely to enable them to coast along in their current ineptitude, protected by the duopoly, as they evolve into an opposition in name only that serves mainly to legitimize a fascist state run by a Republican Party that dominates virtually all aspects of the political process.

Whichever option is chosen will, in other words, be a self-falsifying prophecy.