Soft Digital Repression: How Artificial Intelligence Is Harnessed to Consolidate Capitalist Hegemony

Digital Surveillance and Control

Digital corporations, in cooperation with major states, monitor the movements of individuals through smart devices and various means of communication. All digital activities, including supposedly secure closed meetings, are subject to constant surveillance and analysis. In practice, there is almost no fully protected digital space; data is systematically collected and then used to assess and classify individuals and groups according to their behavioral patterns and intellectual and political orientations.
In addition, digital surveillance has become a central tool for monitoring the intellectual and political tendencies of users, enabling corporations and governments to track and target them through organized disinformation campaigns or impose digital sanctions that limit and reduce their influence on public opinion. These strategies are systematically and covertly applied against labor organizations, leftist groups, and independent human rights and media institutions, all of which face increasing restrictions that constrain the spread of their ideas in the public digital space through indirect, subtle methods that are difficult to detect.
Capitalist corporations and major states employ algorithms in social networks and AI systems with precision and systematization to restrict the reach of leftist and progressive political posts, sometimes without resorting to direct deletion.
These practices make digital repression more complex, dangerous, and invisible, as the low engagement with progressive content appears to be a natural audience reaction, while in reality it results from pre-designed algorithms aimed at reducing its visibility. Many studies have documented related phenomena, such as the “filter bubble” created by algorithms to isolate users from political content that challenges their views, and reports on algorithmic bias favoring traditional right-wing discourse over leftist content. Leaks and internal documents from companies like Facebook revealed deliberate strategies to reduce the visibility of certain political or human rights movements by limiting their reach or disabling notifications, all while maintaining a façade of neutrality. These policies create a false impression among activists that their ideas are ineffective or unpopular, pushing some toward self-censorship or adjusting their discourse. See sources: (1,2,3,4,5).
Digital Disempowerment

Digital disempowerment is a new and advanced tool of class domination, where algorithms and AI are used systematically and imperceptibly, over the long term and gradually, to spread content that fosters feelings of helplessness and resignation, particularly among users with leftist and progressive orientations. This mechanism amplifies the failures and weaknesses of socialist experiments and leftist organizations, while portraying capitalism as an eternal, invincible system, thereby reinforcing the idea that change is impossible. Individualism is promoted, along with personal solutions such as consumption and self-development, isolating individuals from collective, organized political action. Moreover, debates within leftist organizations are steered toward marginal conflicts and magnified, distracting efforts and weakening the ability to resist. Major corporations analyze digital behavior to target users and groups with content that generates frustration, making them feel that socialist change is either impossible or extremely difficult. These policies and methods are not accidental but deliberate, scientific tools designed to abort or weaken the spirit of change and ensure the survival of the capitalist system without real and effective challenges.
Digital Arrest and Digital Assassination

Digital arrest represents a more dangerous stage than surveillance and control, as it goes beyond restricting content reach to imposing arbitrary restrictions on individual and group accounts, suspending them temporarily for varying periods, or permanently deleting them—what can be considered a form of digital assassination—without transparency, clear standards, or local or international laws defending users’ rights. Excuses such as “violating community standards” or “promoting violence” are often used to silence these voices, even though activist content frequently documents the crimes of capitalist states and corporations or human rights violations. One example is the digital repression practiced by social media platforms against Palestinian content documenting Israeli crimes against civilians. During the most recent assault on Gaza, companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter deleted and banned hundreds of accounts and posts documenting occupation crimes under claims of “community standards violations” or “terrorism promotion,” despite many being accurate documentation of war crimes confirmed by human rights organizations.
Human Rights Watch documented in 2023 more than 1,050 cases of removal or restriction of pro-Palestinian content on Facebook and Instagram between October and November 2023, including purely peaceful content. I personally was banned for an entire month after sharing a post by the Palestinian Left, and the secular Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/SecularFB), which had more than 200,000 followers, was shut down for publishing articles exposing Israeli occupation crimes—including articles condemning Hamas crimes.
Independent media agencies such as Quds News Network were also targeted by having their reach restricted or accounts deleted entirely, in a clear attempt to silence voices exposing violations against Palestinian civilians. Media and human rights reports also highlighted the phenomenon of “shadowbanning,” whereby pro-Palestinian posts are suppressed without deletion, especially those containing hashtags like #FreePalestine or #IStandWithPalestine, constituting an undeclared restriction on freedom of expression in the digital space. See sources (6,7,8).
Voluntary Self-Censorship

Digital repression and restricted reach of posts are accompanied by the phenomenon of “voluntary self-censorship,” where individuals and even groups begin to impose restrictions on themselves, modifying their political discourse or even changing its content, shifting to general theoretical issues and avoiding direct confrontation with capitalism and authoritarian regimes, out of fear of reduced reach, bans during digital arrest, or digital assassination through account closures by AI algorithms on digital platforms. This fear undermines freedom of expression, becoming a decisive factor in reshaping and controlling public discourse even before actual restrictions are imposed. This reinforces capitalist ideological hegemony, shrinks the space for digital resistance, and turns the internet into a self-regulated space aligned with the interests of dominant powers.
For example, during periods of mass protests in various countries against capitalist and authoritarian policies—and more generally, at different levels—many users noticed that their posts containing words like “general strike,” “civil disobedience,” “revolution,” or texts exposing crimes and human rights violations did not reach their usual visibility, whereas general analytical posts about economics and politics were far less affected. This was evident during the “Yellow Vest” protests in France, where media reports documented deletions or restrictions of posts calling for mass strikes or direct confrontation with the government. In the United States, activists in the Black Lives Matter movement reported a major decline in the reach of posts calling for civil disobedience or peaceful protest against police violence, especially on Facebook and Instagram. Similar complaints emerged from activists in India during the 2021 farmers’ protests, where platforms removed posts or blocked hashtags linked to demonstrations, such as #FarmersProtest, under the pretext of “violating local laws.” This led many activists to avoid using terms classified by platforms as “incendiary,” shifting public discourse toward less radical and revolutionary content, thereby shrinking the space for free expression and weakening the role of social media as a tool for political mobilization and radical change. See sources (9,10,11,12,13).

The Erosion of Democracy through Artificial Intelligence

After gaining control over human minds and consciousness through digitalization, the issue is no longer merely about maximizing capitalist profits but has also become a main tool for weakening and even undermining relative bourgeois democracy, rather than supporting or expanding it—even with its limited credibility in many countries, given its subordination to political money, unjust electoral laws serving particular interests, and other factors. Instead of fostering conscious popular participation in political life, digitalization and AI are harnessed to reshape and manipulate public opinion in line with ruling-class interests, influencing elections, shrinking the space for free debate, and steering political and media discourse to serve dominant capitalist powers.
Class control of AI means that this technology—supposedly a tool for enhancing transparency and democracy—is effectively used to produce and promote narratives that preserve the existing capitalist system. Big data analysis and intelligent algorithms are exploited to steer political information in ways that serve capitalist institutions, right-wing and neo-fascist movements, and authoritarian powers, thereby weakening the capacity of the masses to make political decisions based on genuine critical awareness.
Within the capitalist system, AI is not used to empower the masses or strengthen conscious, transparent decision-making, but rather as a tool to distort reality, reproduce propaganda, and enable media disinformation that undermines the essence of real democracy—based on transparency, access to information, and intellectual and political pluralism. This is done by targeting specific groups with tailored content based on their digital behavior, creating an artificial public opinion that entrenches class hegemony and deepens political and social polarization. It not only deceives voters but also reshapes the political debate environment, stripping it of substance and saturating it with propaganda serving capitalism and right-wing ideas.
The influence of AI goes beyond mere manipulation of information; it becomes a central tool in reproducing capitalist political power. By deploying algorithms in election campaigns, tailoring political messaging to capital’s interests, and influencing voters through precision targeting, platforms work to neutralize opposition voices and weaken leftist and progressive-democratic alternatives. A clear example is billionaire right-winger Elon Musk’s intervention in the 2025 German elections through his platform “X” (formerly Twitter), where he directly supported the far-right Alternative for Germany party by promoting AI-driven content, shaping public opinion and reinforcing political polarization in favor of right-wing and neo-Nazi forces.
In this environment, elections no longer reflect popular will—even in relative form—but have turned into an arena of struggle among major states, monopolistic powers, and financial oligarchies, which use the internet and AI as tools of political and ideological domination. This distorts political pluralism and corrupts existing relative democratic mechanisms, as ruling powers either weaken progressive voices or push the masses toward false alternatives that reproduce the capitalist system itself, with at most superficial change.

Alternatives Proposed by Leftist, Progressive, and Human Rights Forces to Confront This:
AI as a Tool for Human Rights Liberation
AI must be directed to serve as a tool for the liberation and respect of human rights, not for their restriction or violation. To achieve this, progressive leftist initiatives ensuring transparency, oversight, and AI use that promotes justice and equality are essential, rather than leaving it as a tool in the hands of authoritarian regimes, major states, and corporations to monitor individuals and suppress freedoms. Strict international and local legal frameworks must be created to criminalize the use of AI in violating human rights, whether through surveillance, targeting opponents and activists, or imposing digital censorship that leads to digital arrest, assassination, and restricted freedom of expression. AI applications in security must be subject to independent judicial review, with civil society organizations involved in assessing their risks to freedoms. Global solidarity networks should monitor AI abuses, boycott companies that sell surveillance technologies to authoritarian regimes, and blacklist them.
To ensure this, open-source AI systems must be supported and developed under independent bodies including civil society and human rights institutions, subject to democratic oversight that prevents abuse by governments, monopolistic corporations, and authoritarian regimes. Such systems can be used to strengthen human rights by exposing violations, monitoring government performance, and analyzing data to uncover repressive practices. Enhancing the role of leftist, progressive, and human rights organizations in monitoring AI use is essential. International coalitions can be built to pressure against exploiting this technology to consolidate domination and digital repression. AI can also serve as an effective tool to counter digital censorship through data encryption, secure communications to protect activists and dissidents, and monitoring dictatorial governments’ activities. At the same time, public awareness must be raised about the dangers of surveillance and digital control and ways to resist it, through enacting local and international laws against privacy violations and providing technical tools that help individuals protect their data and ensure freedom of expression in the digital space.
AI to Support Democracy and Popular Participation

It is vital to transform AI from a tool that contributes to the erosion of relative democracy into one that strengthens and develops it. Technology should empower the masses, enhance political participation on the basis of equality, and guarantee transparency and fairness in democratic processes. AI can be used to develop secure, transparent platforms for dialogue and electronic voting, enabling citizens to express their views and participate directly and effectively in decision-making at all levels, thus enhancing participatory democracy and returning power to the people.
AI tools can also be developed to automatically analyze and expose fake news and disinformation, protecting the public from campaigns aimed at undermining their ability to make fact-based decisions. These tools can be widely and freely employed as part of a broader project to promote media transparency and counter monopolistic media hegemony. This also requires fighting for clear international and local laws preventing AI’s use in manipulating public opinion, ensuring that information provided to the public is accurate, objective, and reflective of reality without class or ideological bias.

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Excerpts from my published book “Capitalist Artificial Intelligence: Challenges for the Left and Possible Alternatives – Technology in the Service of Capital or a Tool for Liberation?”, which has already been translated into several languages.
Free link to the book: https://ahewar.org/books/i.asp?bid=3

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Sources:

1. Filter bubble – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble
2.Jonathan Nagler et al. – How tech platforms fuel U.S. political polarization and what government can do about it – Brookings
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-tech-platforms-fuel-u-s-political-polarization-and-hat-government-can-do-about-it
2. PNAS – Algorithmic amplification of politics on Twitter
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025334119
3. Arxiv – The Political Amplification Bias of the Twitter For You Algorithm
https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.01852
4. 2021 Facebook leak – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Facebook_leak
5. Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook – Human Rights Watch (21
https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and
7. Are social media giants censoring pro-Palestine voices amid Israel’s war?
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/24/shadowbanning-are-social-media-giants-censoring-pro-palestine-voices
8. Meta ‘stifling’ pro-Palestine voices on social media, rights group says
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/21/meta-stifling-pro-palestine-voices-on-social-media-hrw

9. Why Twitter Blocked Accounts Linked to Farmers’ Protests in India
https://time.com/5935003/india-farmers-protests-twitter
10. Civil rights groups urge Facebook to fix racially biased moderation system (facebook-moderation-racial-bias-black-lives-matter)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/18/facebook-moderation-racial-bias-black-lives-matter
11. India: Twitter blocks accounts over farmers’ protest at government request – BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55898708
12. How Elon Musk’s X became the global right’s supercharged front page – The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/04/elon-musk-x-trump-far-right
13. “Yellow Vest” Facebook group with 350,000 members frozen on European election day
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/05/28/vest-m28.html

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