In the 1890s, Germany pioneered electric bikes, launching a legacy of sustainable transportation innovation. Yet today, in an ironic twist, Germany’s Nazi party (AfD) has elevated a polluting relic of Soviet engineering into a cultural battleground symbol.
As Germans increasingly embrace efficient, affordable electric two-wheeled transportation, Nazis (AfD) have seized upon an unlikely symbol of resistance: the primitive, polluting two-stroke Simson engines manufactured in East Germany. This embrace of DDR-era technology by a nationalist party reveals a deeper political strategy.
The irony is striking: while electric bikes represent Germany’s authentic heritage of proud innovations, the AfD has chosen Soviet-bloc mopeds as symbols of “traditional” German identity. This dubious appropriation appears deliberately provocative — these engines, which fail modern emissions standards by spectacular margins, serve as perfect vehicles for the AfD’s broader assault on regulations and regulatory authority itself.
Obsolescence makes these mopeds ideal political props for the politically obsolete Nazis. An inability to meet basic standards transforms them from mere vehicles into symbols of false victimhood, grievance and attempted defiance against time itself, not to mention modern governance.
I have firsthand experience with these machines, having spent years modifying an Italian moped from the 1980s. The technology was fundamentally flawed even then. The two-stroke engines release up to 30% of their fuel unburned directly into the air, mixing oil with gasoline to create dramatically higher pollution levels than four-stroke designs. When Simson attempted a more sensible four-stroke update with the SR50/4 in the 1990s, it was snubbed by traditionalists, a perfect metaphor for the AfD’s stance. The more weak and unhealthy a technology, the more ardently they embrace it as a symbol of resistance.
The AfD’s embrace of obsolete technology reveals another layer of historical ignorance. Nazi Germany was crippled by technological backwardness, particularly its heavy reliance on horses. Nearly 80% of the Nazi military depended on horse transport during WWII, lacking reliable access to modern fuel and engines. This technological deficit was a key factor in their defeat by 1942, though Hitler prolonged the war purely to continue his genocidal campaign. The historical irony is sharp: while the AfD claims to champion German technological tradition, they mirror the Nazi regime’s fatal embrace of outdated transportation methods — just replacing horses with Soviet mopeds. Nazis…can Nazi the future.
Freund Pferd or “Our Friend the Horse” by Rolf Roeingh as published in 1941 by Deutschen Archiv-Verlag in Berlin.
Like their Nazi predecessors, the Nazis today (AfD) build power by twisting historical symbols into nonsensical propaganda. They appropriate whatever serves their disruptive agenda, regardless of historical accuracy or internal contradiction. The fact that Germans pioneered electric vehicles in the 1800s makes any “traditional” stance against the modern technology particularly absurd; yet another example of blowing their bets on the wrong horse.
The AfD’s appropriation of the Simson becomes even more cynical when considering the moped’s original design philosophy. The designer’s own grandson reveals the bitter irony[1]:
What does the Simson designer actually think about his moped being exploited by right-wing groups? Clauss Dietel designed the Simson models S50 and S51.
Unfortunately, BuzzFeed News Germany can no longer ask him, as he passed away in 2022. His grandson Bruno Dietel did not want to comment on the topic when we approached him.
In a post on X/Twitter, he writes that the moped’s design was based on the so-called ‘open principle,’ a ‘solidary, ecological, democratic design concept.’ Simson is being ‘wrongfully misused and annexed as a symbol.’ ‘My grandfather experienced the Nazi era in Saxony and in his final years was very concerned about the resurgence of totalitarianism. What’s happening in the Simson context would have deeply outraged him.’
This calculated provocation, using an environmentally conscious designer’s work as a symbol of anti-environmental protest, exemplifies the broader AfD strategy. Nazis deliberately misappropriate symbols to generate outrage, treating German cultural heritage as merely raw material for political theatre.
Their visual branding follows the same cynical logic. Their red ‘swoosh’ logo deliberately contrasts with the German Reichstag’s considered and thoughtful blue, suggesting violent disruption to any democratic process.
The German AfD red logo signals leaving blue to put red Nazis back in power, invoking “just do it” Nike campaigns.
Also, I swear that logo wasn’t designed intentionally to look like a giant red horse penis attached to a swastika man. Pure coincidence.
The Simson story exemplifies how the AfD weaponizes nostalgia against progress. While electric motors offer traditional German solutions to contemporary mobility needs, the AfD transforms them into cultural battlegrounds. Their embrace of anemic polluting Soviet-era mopeds has nothing to do with transportation policy — it’s about manufacturing outrage. The more harmful or obsolete a technology, the more valuable it becomes as a symbol of resistance to modern environmental and social standards.
The path forward may lie in Clauss Dietel’s original vision of modernity, the “open principle” of democratic, ecological design that respects heritage while embracing progress. His Simson vision represented an attempt to bridge East and West, old and new. That his creation has been twisted into a symbol of extreme division would have outraged him, but perhaps not surprised him. After all, he had seen Nazis put on this show before.
A 1980s Soviet export brochure marketed the S51 as a marvel of modern global engineering (click on the image for an English PDF)
After liberating American troops firebombed the Nazis out of power in Berlin, Germany’s Bundestag reconstruction was very carefully curated in a serene color of profound philosophical heritage — one that traces the relationship between color and governance through centuries of Western thought. The lineage of blue was known for a political intention in rational deliberation, whereas bold reds marked a palette of mass death through extremist violence and hate groups.
“Reichstag blue is a well-chosen color. It can create a calm atmosphere in the Bundestag,” color expert Silvia Prehn told DW. “It is a calm color that conveys clarity and objectivity. Blue has a physically calming effect — one’s pulse and breath slow down as it relaxes and soothes.” […] The new foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, would be more likely to be the heir to the “German Blue”: “Just yesterday she wore exactly the same color as the chairs in the Reichstag, that is, aquamarine with a bit of purple,” says the color expert. “She wants to be taken seriously.” Whether top German politicians in the new government take up the blue again or not, the chairs in the Bundestag will continue to be “Reichstag Blue.” “The blue stands for the thinkers, analysts, the people with the data, numbers and facts,” says Prehn. “Violet, on the other hand, represents the visionary and the foresighted.”
Some are more suited for power than others…
Though this relationship proves more complex across cultural contexts, the following analysis draws out patterns and meaning for national security discussion purposes rather than apologetically back away from useful predictors of threats.
A blue helmeted thinker tends to know:
The red brick thrown to destroy structural beams
Could instead shelter a children’s dreams.
The connection between blue and representative reasoned governance has roots in Western classical philosophy. Plato, in “The Republic,” speaks of a philosopher-king’s need for contemplation, where he associated vast blue depths (e.g. the sky, the ocean) with divine wisdom. While color theory wasn’t explicit in his writing, emphasis on forms of rational governance over fiery emotional appeals laid some groundwork for later analysis.
Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Judgment” (1790) developed a crucial color theory relationship to governance. Whereas Kant held color secondary to form, he provided an analysis of “cool” versus “warm” experiences in aesthetics. This has influenced how later theorists understood color’s active role for intentionally shaping human behavior and defining the outcomes from our spaces.
The elevation of blue in Western governance cannot be separated from its religious significance. The use of “Marian Blue” in Christian iconography, particularly expensive lapis lazuli pigments, associated the color with divine wisdom and contemplation, as Michel Pastoureau documents in “Blue: The History of a Color” (2001). Richard H. Wilkinson in “Symbolism & Magic in Egyptian Art” (1994) informs us how rituals since ancient times have used red to represent danger and death, while blue was for birth and sustainable life. Islamic architectural traditions similarly made extensive use of blue tiles in places of worship and governance, as detailed in Robert Hillenbrand’s “Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning” (1994). The Great Blue Mosque in Istanbul shows blue applied to represent expressions of divine wisdom and earthly authority. Meanwhile, Buddhist and Hindu traditions have used red to suggest a shedding of the past in transition to revolutionary insights, as David Fontana suggests in “The Secret Language of Symbols” (1994).
A very Blue Mosque of Istanbul
Both religious symbolism and secular governance aesthetics, despite the vast differences in other regards, apparently arrived at a universal recognition of color meaning. The Soviet and Chinese communist movements, for example, dramatically made use of red’s symbolism and rejected blue. Both flags deliberately combined red with yellow/gold stars, a combination that Michel Pastoureau identifies in “Red: The History of a Color” (2017) as historically associated with imperial power. The British “red coats” had such an influence over American colonies that to this day the more “militant” minded adorn themselves with “salmon” shirts and “pink” pants to express soft-skin hard-head conservatism. Their palette signifies underlying politics of harsh exclusion and white-washing race-based privilege.
Turkey Red and Madder dyes that colored uniforms, from railway coveralls to navy and military gear, originally were chosen as a low-cost dye to obscure stains. They were adopted by New England elites (“Nantucket Reds”) as a carefully cultivated symbol of power. What was a practical application of labor became an ironic subtle marker of racism and privilege caste.
The Swiss flag’s red, originating in the 13th century Holy Roman Empire, presents an especially revealing case study in how militant symbolism evolved into a facade of “neutrality” that enabled profound moral failure. While Switzerland inverted its red cross on white background to create the Red Cross symbol in 1863, supposedly representing humanitarian neutrality, this same “neutrality” would later serve as cover for Swiss complicity with Nazi Germany. During WWII, Swiss banks laundered Nazi gold, refused Jewish refugees at their borders, and maintained profitable trade relationships with the Third Reich while claiming moral distance through their red-branded neutrality. This transformation of militant red into “neutral” red ultimately served the same authoritarian ends through passive facilitation of genocide for profit rather than active revolution.
The history of red in governance thus presents fascinating insights beyond mere revolution. The American flag incorporated red from Britain and France, marking a sharp contrast with its application of blue for justice and vigilance. The founders of America observed the color red in French political conflicts, which carried particularly profound revolutionary, symbolic, and political meanings.
During the 1789 French Revolution, red was prominently associated with abrupt course change through bloodshed. It was incorporated into the National Guard’s cockades for a unifying symbol of Parisian revolutionaries, later appropriated into the French tricolor, where it represented the fight to end prior rule. Napoleon Bonaparte thus cynically marked his seizure of power with red, pressing the color further into a French symbol of abrupt grab of authority. His uniforms and depictions often featured red elements to express dominance and imperial violence. Under his rule, France transitioned rapidly from popular revolution to unjust dictatorship, showing how red’s use to foment widespread rebellion has been rooted in tragic centralization and control. A historian remarked in 1825 how the British planned to hoist a red “no quarter” flag upon invasion by France, in order to warn only mass death lay ahead.
Source: “Histoire de Boulogne-sur-Mer”, Pierre BARTHÉLEMY, 1825, page 230.
Later revolutions, such as those of 1830 and 1848, reaffirmed red as the emblem of rabid disruption and rejection of any compromise or concession in governance.
This is all important context for why Berlin’s “Reichstag Blue” represents a deliberate application of philosophical principles. When redesigning the Bundestag after reunification, architect Norman Foster collaborated with color psychologist Professor Max Lüscher, whose “The Lüscher Color Test” (1969) demonstrated blue’s calming, thought-promoting properties.
Michel Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish” (1975) suggests our institutional spaces and symbols measurably shape behavior, arguing that environmental designs — including color — promote either rational discourse or emotional manipulation.
Many other contemporary international organizations thus have largely embraced blue as a symbol of rationality and peace. The United Nations’ light blue represents peacekeeping missions, while the European Union’s blue flag with gold stars symbolizes unity and reason. NATO’s blue emblem similarly suggests stability and collective security rather than aggression.
The Republican Party’s adoption of red in 2000 during electoral coverage, however, marked a subtle but significant regression to authoritarian aspirations. What began as supposedly arbitrary choice revealed deeper intentions with the racist and anti-democratic MAGA movement’s gleeful promotion of bright red merchandise for overthrow of government. The color choice, whether broadly intentional or isolated, aligns with historical patterns of authoritarian movements. Color theorist Johannes Itten termed this use of red for maximum contrast in “The Art of Color” (1961) as an intentional technique to provoke emotional rather than rational responses — bold, high-contrast colors used to disrupt or blockade rational discourse by triggering emotions instead. Contemporary theorist Eva Heller notes in “Psicología del color” (2000) that while blue promotes “intellectual understanding and diplomatic communication,” red triggers “fight-or-flight responses” and emotional arousal useful for rapid power grabs.
The logo “Alternative for Germany” is visualized as a flashy red arrow resembling the commercial Nike logo. The color red acts as a signaling function and recalls the visual style of electoral propaganda campaigns by other far-right parties (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006; Doerr 2017a).
The German AfD logo signals Nazism breaking away from blue in a red return, invoking “just do it” Nike campaigns.
The known contrast between careful contemplative blue versus the emotional reactionary red in political movements reveals a fundamental pattern in human governance.
Whether deployed as the bright red of revolution, the calculated red of imperialism, or the sanitized red of profitable “neutrality,” this particular color consistently served to either provoke or enable authoritarian impulses. As we witness the rise of populist movements worldwide, especially the return of nativist xenophobic groups such as MAGA, the conscious color choices in governmental spaces and symbols serve as crucial indicators.
The Bundestag’s blue chairs stand as the architectural commitment to reasoned debate, backed by centuries of philosophical and psychological understanding. The persistent use of red by authoritarian movements — from the Nazis to their Swiss enablers to modern extremists — demonstrates how color serves as both a tool and warning sign in the human evolution towards thoughtful rational governance away from rushed extreme emotional manipulation.
The plenary session in the Bundestag in the former Reichstag building, the seat of the German Bundestag, taken on May 31, 2016 in Berlin. The motion to commemorate “the genocide of the Armenians and other Christian minorities” was one of the topics discussed in the Bundestag on June 2, 2016. Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa +++(c) dpa – Bildfunk+++ | Use worldwide
Red revolutionary violence (French, Soviet, Chinese)
French Revolution (1789-1799)
Reign of Terror executions: ~17,000
Vendée massacre: ~170,000
Total French Revolution deaths: ~500,000-600,000
Soviet Red Terror (1917-1953)
Great Purge executions (1934-1939): ~1.5 million
Induced famine (1932-1933): ~3.9 million
Gulag system deaths: ~1.6 million documented
Total Stalin-era deaths: 20-25 million estimated
Chinese Communist Revolution (1949-1976)
Great Leap Forward deaths (1958-1962): 15-55 million
Cultural Revolution killings (1966-1976): 1.5-2 million
Total Mao-era deaths: 40-80 million estimated
Red imperial power (British Empire)
Atlantic slave trade (1500s-1800s): ~3.5 million deaths during transport
Indian famines under British rule (1769-1943):
Bengal Famine (1769-1773): ~10 million
Great Famine (1876-1878): ~5.5 million
Bengal Famine (1943): ~3 million
Irish Potato Famine (1845-1852): ~1 million deaths
Total estimated deaths under British Empire rule: 35-40 million
Red Nazism and false neutrality (German, Austrian, Swiss)
Holocaust Jewish victims: ~6 million
Total concentration camp deaths: ~11 million
Swiss border rejections of Jewish refugees: ~24,500
Total World War II deaths: 70-85 million
Red privilege and racist authoritarianism (New England Reds, Red Shirts, Red Summer… MAGA)
Colonial slave trade participation (1670s-1800s)
Connecticut ports trafficked ~12,000 enslaved people directly
New England merchants deeply embedded in triangle trade
Yale, Brown, and other universities built with slavery profits
Maritime trade routes connected to Caribbean plantations
Prestigious New England families’ fortunes tied to slave trade
Indigenous displacement (1630s-1770s)
90% population decline of native peoples
Pequot War massacres and enslavement (1636-1638)
King Philip’s War devastation (1675-1678)
Systematic land seizures through “legal” mechanisms
Cultural destruction via forced assimilation
Disease and starvation from destroyed food systems
Industrial militarization (1800s-present)
Major arms manufacturers established:
Colt (Hartford, CT)
Winchester (New Haven, CT)
Smith & Wesson (Springfield, MA)
Weapons supplied to:
Both sides of Civil War
American westward expansion
International conflicts
Domestic civilian market
Created massive wealth while enabling violence
Established political influence through arms manufacturing
Modern defense contractors continue this legacy
Related: MAGA narratives such as “Waving the Red” in large crowds to symbolize “going back” have a specific American history.
2024 white youth display their red hats for the American Republican party campaign to turn back time2023 Nazis in Orlando, Florida seek attention by wearing red in a political rally to promote the Republican party.1939 Nazi red banners symbolized the repeal of democracy by a violent race-based dictatorship.
Red Shirts were often worn by local chapters of what were socially known as “rifle clubs” but were in fact paramilitary groups across the South who worked to intimidate local freedmen and White sympathizers. Red Shirts often gathered at political rallies for candidates like Wade Hampton, or stood at polling places during elections, using intimidation and the threat of violence to prevent local Black residents from voting.
Surely you know this American national “rifle club” reference? Think about who was commandeered into running American guns into 1980s South Africa to prop up apartheid, and then setup domestic chapters to intimidate voters. Perhaps you’ve even seen their merchandise?
Room 641A’s real legacy isn’t about technical infrastructure or corporate jurisdiction — it’s about how easily critical knowledge gets buried. The old Wired documentation of the 2006 case seems to have disappeared.
Former AT&T technician Mark Klein is the key witness in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s class-action lawsuit against the telecommunications company, which alleges that AT&T cooperated in an illegal National Security Agency domestic surveillance program. AT&T whistle-blower Mark Klein says this secret room in an AT&T switching center is home to data-mining equipment that can spy on internet communications. Mark Klein
Former AT&T technician Mark Klein is the key witness in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s class-action lawsuit against the telecommunications company, which alleges that AT&T cooperated in an illegal National Security Agency domestic surveillance program.
Klein’s evidence is a collection of sensitive documents he retained when he retired from AT&T. Those documents are now filed under court seal, but Wired News independently acquired and published a significant portion of them in May, 2006. Those excerpts follow.
Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco
This four-page excerpt is from a 60-page document a management technician “left lying around on top of a router,” says Klein. It describes AT&T’s efforts to install splitters on internet fiber optic cables at the company’s San Francisco internet hub. Page 2 describes the splitter and lists the equipment at the receiving end of the tapped lines. Page 3 is a diagram depicting the tap, and page 4 details some of connections between the splitter cabinet and what Klein calls a “secret room” housing the equipment.
0_2
1_2
2_3
3_2
SIMS, Splitter Cut-In and Test Procedure
A departing AT&T technician gave this 44-page document to Klein as he cleaned out his desk. These two pages, excerpted by Klein, show AT&T re-rerouting its high speed data circuits through the splitter cabinet that performs the physics of the alleged wiretaps. The work was apparently overseen by AT&T’s Network Operations Center in Bridgeton, Missouri. “SIMS” is an unexplained reference to the secret room, according to Klein.
__4_3
5__
Cut-In and Test Procedure
These two pages, excerpted by Klein from another “Cut-In and Test Procedure” document, further illustrate AT&T re-rerouting its high speed data circuits for the surveillance, according to Klein. Page 1 diagrams the new connection through the splitter cabinet, and page two shows AT&T phasing in the fiber optic splitters on its high-speed links to other ISPs, including ConXion, Verio, XO, Genuity, Qwest, PAIX, Allegiance, Abovenet, Global Crossing, C&W, UUNET, Level 3, Sprint, Telia, PSINet, and the Mae West interconnect.
Many people later described the program as a Bush administration implementation of mass surveillance. Here’s the POGO recap:
…despite the fact that intelligence failures related to 9/11 were primarily based not on a lack of data points but on an inability to connect the dots, the Bush administration launched an effort to collect dots on an unprecedented scale. The President’s Surveillance Program, known by the code name Stellar Wind, undertook three audacious aims: First, to collect the content of international communications on a mass scale. Second, to collect telephony communications records (who you call, when, and for how long) on a nationwide scale. And third, to collect internet metadata, also on a bulk scale. These systems were built on nationwide dragnet orders demanding companies continuously supply private information not on suspects, but rather from all individuals across the United States.
According to another Wired article (also with dead links to the source material), Klein cited the Bush administration in his decision to reveal the secret rooms.
Klein said he came forward because he does not believe that the Bush administration is being truthful about the extent of its extrajudicial monitoring of Americans’ communications. “Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA’s spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA’s charter or with FISA,” Klein’s wrote. “And unlike the controversy over targeted wiretaps of individuals’ phone calls, this potential spying appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of internet communications of countless citizens.”
One of the nice things about Klein (arguably giving him legit whistleblower credibility) is how he wanted the right people to know what was going on, but he himself didn’t want to be known.
Klein has not spoken publicly since May, 2006 when he spoke on the courthouse steps in San Francisco. […] They are vacumming everything going across those links, I’m certain of it. That’s the physical arrangement; there’s no dispute about it, I looked at the cables, I traced the cables. I know where they went. The documents show where they went; they go to the secret room. I was watching [President Bush’s December 2005 press conference about the wiretapping program] and I was getting angrier and angrier — so most people hearing that would think ‘I don’t make calls to Al Qaeda so that doesn’t affect me.’ That’s what they wanted you to think. They tried to make you think it was about phone calls, but a lot of it is also about the internet and about gobs and gobs of information going across the internet and that affects everybody. And that’s the part they haven’t let out, and that’s the part I decided had to be uncovered.
The NSA’s domestic spying program thus wasn’t uncovered by leaked classified documents but by technical blueprints “left lying around on top of a router” for regular staff to see. Surveillance’s vulnerability lies in a dependence on oath and obedience, calling upon ordinary technicians with access to physical infrastructure to maintain loyalty beyond the pale.
And now two decades later these documents have largely vanished, much like the technicians reading them. What remains are secondhand summaries, dead links, and sealed court records. The erosion of technical evidence leaves a new era of protocol designers with incomplete knowledge, making future systems susceptible to repeating past vulnerabilities.
The Bluesky protocol, despite being a modern, decentralized platform, reflects some of these same risks. Bluesky’s heavy reliance on centralized Relay and indexing services echoes the architectural flaws that made Room 641A possible:
Relays act as central aggregation points where all user data must flow.
App Views maintain centralized indexes, which require comprehensive network visibility.
Federation is only implemented at the application layer, while network traffic flows remain concentrated.
Unlike fully peer-to-peer systems, this design creates predictable chokepoints vulnerable to Room 641A-style interception. While software inherently depends on hardware, Bluesky’s architecture amplifies surveillance risks by consolidating traffic through critical points.
Until we integrate the lessons from seasoned experts and whistleblowers like Klein into system design, we’ll continue building flawed platforms while convincing ourselves that they are entirely new.
Even more forgotten? Terry Childs, a network administrator for the city of San Francisco, was arrested in 2008 for refusing to hand over administrative passwords to the city’s FiberWAN system, effectively locking the city out of its own network. While these actions sparked significant controversy, there was never enough public exposure or reporting about how he had pulled a “641A” — engaged in tapping the data center (drilled holes into a wall and split fiber from the backbone into a reinforced cabinet with encrypted servers).
…Hugging Face released a dataset composed of one million Bluesky posts, complete with when they were posted and who posted them, intended for machine learning research.
The buried lede here is that someone had to use Facebook to make an official statement about elections.
In a Facebook address Tuesday watched by tens of thousands of people, Venancio Mondlane again demanded a recount of the October 9 vote which the electoral commission said was won by the Frelimo party in power for almost half a century.
“We lost 50 people shot by the authorities who were supposed to protect these people,” said Mondlane, referring to a police crackdown on waves of protests he called against the election.
The conflict stems from Mozambique’s post-colonial history, one of my longest and most focused research areas, as I wrote on this blog in 2006:
It begs the question what Mozambique would have looked like if someone hadn’t assassinated Mondlane (February 3, 1969). Killing a powerful liberal-but-left American university professor of history, a respected leader within FRELIMO, ended his moderating influence over a freedom movement. FRELIMO was operating more peacefully under Mondlane as he and immediate colleagues left out rigid dogma or hierarchy; they openly invited interplay of conflicting views and positions. His assassination by the US regressed freedom and propelled turmoil.
Eduardo Mondlane was a Mozambique-born professor who taught Anthropology in America. From 1962 served as the president of a group fighting to liberate Mozambique from Portuguese colonialism, until he was assassinated (allegedly by the CIA) in 1969.
Basically FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front) ruled since independence from Portugal’s fascist dictatorship in 1975. The party transformed from the fight for liberation into (arguably due to American assassination and subterfuge) political dominance, maintaining power through a combination of legitimate support and contested electoral processes.
Several key aspects stand out in terms of today’s news:
The use of Facebook for official opposition communications reflects both the weakness of traditional media access for opposition voices and the growing importance of social media in African political discourse. This echoes patterns seen in other African nations where social media becomes a crucial platform for opposition voices when traditional media is state-controlled.
The allegations of 50 deaths in election-related violence, if verified, would represent one of the more serious instances of electoral violence in recent Mozambican history. However, election violence has been a recurring issue in Mozambique, particularly during local elections.
The demand for vote recounts is a common opposition strategy in contested African elections, seen previously in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and other nations where ruling parties maintain long-term control.
How much of this violence is attributable to Facebook owning the platform in Mozambique for public discourse? I’m not saying Facebook necessarily was causal in the violence, rather that it’s more a symptom of broader issues in Mozambican democracy. The platform’s unnatural high-exit barriers and undemocratic privatization of infrastructure reflects the lack of alternative spaces for political opposition to communicate with supporters. And also that Facebook may be causal.
When Facebook becomes the de facto platform for political communication, it intentionally creates a dangerous anti-democratic dependency where a private foreign company effectively controls access to political discourse. Facebook’s algorithms and content moderation policies tend to amplify political tensions and shape how opposition movements organize and communicate. This isn’t unique to Mozambique, given we saw similar dynamics in Myanmar, Ethiopia and… the United States.
Facebook causing violence, like Tesla causing chemical spills, isn’t the core issue here as bad as it may seem, however. Facebook’s dominance was a symptom of institutional weaknesses that has setup a transition into becoming the cause (perhaps similar to how FRELIMO went from liberation to domination). A foreign-state service monopoly mindset of American businessmen likely exacerbates this. The key issue is in fact the privatization of what should be public democratic infrastructure.
Just as FRELIMO’s transition from liberation movement to ruling party was enabled by control of state resources, Facebook’s transition from communication platform to political infrastructure was enabled by network effects and data monopolies.
The critical difference lies in accountability. While FRELIMO must at least maintain some veneer of democratic legitimacy in a government role within Mozambique, Facebook faces no such local (or even international) constraints. This creates an unprecedented situation where crucial democratic infrastructure is controlled by an entity with no democratic accountability to the population it serves.
The Myanmar and Ethiopia parallels also obscure how Mozambique represents something distinct and more like the United States. We are witnessing a case where Facebooks’s role in political communication was normalized before its potential for amplifying violence was fully understood. This makes it an important case study in how privatized democratic infrastructure becomes dangerously entrenched even in the absence of acute crises.
Arguably the “soft” path to platform dependency might actually be more dangerous than the more visible crises in Myanmar or Ethiopia.
