Voices from within the academy are now raising the alarm about the decline of literacy under the relentless assault of totalized digital immersion—finally catching up to what CounterVortex blogger and ranter Bill Weinberg has been saying for years (although sneering denialism about the problem remains fashionable). Worldwide, the humanities are being abandoned in favor of STEM, while social media overtakes "legacy media" as a source of "news"—or (as is more often the case) sinister propaganda. In Episode 333 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill takes stock of this grave and still under-appreciated threat to the survival of democracy and humanity itself—and looks for signs of practical resistance.

CS Lewis is mainly seen as either a purveyor of goopy children's literature or a Christian moralist fuddy-duddy. But Lewis' Space Trilogy—fantastic literature for adults, or "philosophical science fiction"—also reveals him as a dystopian prophet in the tradition of Orwell. The first two books in the series, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, are a critique of space imperialism that anticipated the Avatar movies. But the final one, That Hideous Strength, is particularly relevant for our historical moment, as it anticipated rule by fascist tech bros with hubristic visions of remaking (or abolishing) humanity. In Episode 332 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg makes the case that Lewis offered a vital critique of technocracy and "transhumanism" that is now urgently needed, as humanity stands at the cusp of his worst nightmares.

Protests break out in Russia over the new internet restrictions imposed by the Putin regime, while social media and instant messaging have become the "new public square" for the Gen Z protests that have swept the planet over the past months. Exemplifying the identification with online culture, a pirate flag from a Japanese anime series has become the global emblem of the Gen Z resistance. The new youth social media bans in a growing number of countries are opposed by human rights and civil-liberties groups for good reason. Yet the dystopian side of digital technology becomes more apparent each day—from the climate impacts of data centers, to cynical attempts to sell nuclear power as "clean energy" (sic!) to meet the surging electricity demand, to the digital colonization of human consciousness. Protests are also emerging to the new techno-fascism, and this critique must be central to any true oppositional movement. In Episode 321 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg grapples with the contradiction.

Eclipsed from the headlines by the war in the Middle East, Russia launches a new offensive in Ukraine with an unprecedented wave of drone and missile strikes across the country—even hitting an historic monastery in Lviv. Meanwhile, two young Russian poets, Artyom Kamardin and Yegor Shtovba, remain imprisoned on "state subversion" charges related to public readings of anti-war poetry. They join other imprisoned poetic anti-war activists, such as Daria Kozyreva, and numerous artists and activists imprisoned for opposing the new dictatorship of Vladimir Putin. The recently passed Russian rocker Nikolay Komyagin, frontman for the post-punk band Shortparis, was also an icon of artistic resistance. Long known for their defiant sound, after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine they released the music video "Apple Orchard," on an anti-war theme—resulting in them being blacklisted from major venues in Russia. In Episode 320 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg places these courageous voices in the context of a dissident tradition in Russia under the dictatorships of the czars, the Soviets, and now Putin—from Leo Tolstoy to Shortparis.

As the architecture of total surveillance falls inexorably into place, cellular technology comes to colonize more and more of daily human existence. Accepted in the banal interest of "convenience," this trajectory ultimately ends in not only the extinction of human freedom, but the abolition of humanity itself—an idea openly embraced by the fascist tech bros as "transhumanism," and warned of by CS Lewis in his eerily prescient 1943 work The Abolition of Man.  In Episode 317 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg urges a revolution of everyday life, in which we start saying no to the relentless encroachment of cellular and digital technology.

Hundreds of young Russians gathered in a square in the center of St. Petersburg on the night of Oct. 14 to defy censorship by performing a banned song that calls (in barely veiled terms) for the overthrow of Vladimir Putin. The crowd converged on the city's iconic Palace Square to sing "Swan Lake Cooperative" by exiled rapper Noize MC, which was outlawed in May when judicial authorities labeled it "extremist." The song title refers to the practice in Soviet times of suspending all regular TV and radio broadcasts to play Tchaikovsky's ballet "Swan Lake" continuously whenever the old leader died or was deposed and the transition to a new one was underway. The lyrics go: "The old man still clings to his throne... When the czar dies, we'll dance again, 'Swan Lake' on every screen... I want to watch the ballet... Let the old man shake in fear..."

Youth-led protests demanding better education and healthcare in Morocco escalated into violent clashes with security forces on Sept. 30, the fourth consecutive day of angry demonstrations across several cities. The protests were organized online by a loose network calling itself "GenZ 212," after Morocco's country code. In the southern cities of Tiznit, Inzegane and Ait Amira, as well as the eastern city of Oujda and Temara near the capital Rabat, hundreds of protesters hurled stones at security forces attempting to disperse the gatherings. On Oct. 2, at least two protesters were killed when police opened fire in Lqliaa, near the coastal city of Agadir. Authorities said the troops fired to prevent protesters from storming a police station. (Reuters, BBC News, NYT, PRI)

The case of Kilmar Abrego García, shunted from detention in one country to another, with no end in sight, recalls the World War II-era classic of dystopian fiction The Twenty-Fifth Hour by Romanian writer C. Virgil Gheorghiu. The wartime transnational detention system, harrowingly depicted in the novel, was seen by Gheorghiu as an inevitable manifestation of our technocratic civilization that exalts the machine above humanity, ultimately resulting in the treatment of human beings as mere cogs in the state-industrial apparatus. This process is more advanced today with the current hypertrophy of the technosphere, which is related to the re-emergence of abuses approaching those of the fascist era, and ultimately bodes poorly for humanity's future. In Episode 294 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes an unsparing look at this grim juncture for the human race.