Max Haiven's The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to 21st-Century Fascism argues that financialization has trickled down into our personal lives, turning each of us into a speculative player in a maze of unwinnable games: education, housing, fitness, relationships. When we realize the game is rigged, we can lose our minds, but our rage can be redirected away from the ruling class and onto scapegoated "cheaters": migrants, trans people benefits claimants, DEI hires.
Max walks me through his three-part model of manifest, latent, and microfascism, and why 21st-century fascist group activity looks more like a Fortnite lobby than a Nuremberg rally. We get into Silicon Valley's Dungeons and Dragons-derived worldbuilding, the fragility of fascist friendship as seen in the QAnon collapse, the problem of who owns the platforms we play on, and the distinction between revenge fantasy and an avenging imaginary.
Before the interview: a note on Olivia Chow's re-election and the Bradford campaign's Victory app.
Now on Patreon: "The Anti-Imperialists Come to Town," ahead of the Seeds Beneath the Snow symposium in Toronto, November 6–8.
Sources
The Player and the Played, free open access edition (MIT Press Direct)
Billionaires & Guillotines board game by Max Haiven (Pluto Press)
Revenge Capitalism by Max Haiven (Pluto Press)
On Microfascism: Gender, War, and Death by Jack Z. Bratich (Common Notions)
Everything to Play For by Marijam Did, open access edition (OAPEN)