We All Work For Lumon Industries, Praise Kier

Severance and techno-fascism, a glimpse into what they have in store for us, and an idea to fight back (through LinkedIn)

If you’ve read our debut article “It’s Even Worse Than You Think” or have learned about the neoreactionary movement (i.e., “Dark Enlightenment”) through other means, then you’re aware that we are currently witnessing what amounts to a hostile takeover of the US government, executed in part by billionaire techno-fascists (e.g., Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel) who aim to replace democratic governance with authoritarian technocratic cities – what they call “network states”.

You may also be aware of the compelling evidence that our social media is compromised, as these technocratic billionaires appear to be leveraging AI and suppressing information to quell dissent and facilitate their endgame. On top of that, Elon Musk has received unfettered access to our most sensitive personal information through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and is working with Peter Thiel's Palantir to create a tool for mass surveillance. To make matters worse, our legacy media is failing to call it like it is, presumably out of fear of investigation or lawsuits. During a time of international crisis, many of us are being left in the dark. By design, they’ve overwhelmed us while strategically separating us. They want us to feel alone, scared, and in disbelief. They want us to feel powerless. 

But we are not powerless. We are the many, and unlike them, we are creative. 

You see, these techno-fascists have come to believe that they’re the cognitive elite because they built tech platforms, amassed billions, and created Artificial Intelligence (AI). The hubris – these tech platforms are built on our data, from our content. They would not exist without the ingenuity of everyday people generating original material on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok; creating new websites to be discovered on Google; and running small businesses to populate Amazon. Their wealth is not from outmaneuvering their competition through some capitalistic genius. No, the billions they’ve hoarded come from subverting governments to build monopolies and then applying rents on these platforms that people and businesses have no choice but to use. 

As for AI, no one says it better than the incredible and brave

Carole Cadwalladr

, who’s been fighting Big Tech for years and helped expose the Cambridge Analytica scandal:

“AI is actually dumb as a rock. I’m going to turn to Sam Altman and say… ‘This does not belong to you. ChatGPT has been trained on my IP, my labor, my personal data, and I did not consent.’”

Excerpt from “This Is What a Digital Coup Looks Like”, a TED Talk by Carole Cadwalladr

AI is not intelligent, nor is it a god as many in Silicon Valley believe. It’s a machine, trained on our labor and data, and controlled by a select few. We are not up against evil geniuses. We’re up against a group of boys who became too powerful and wealthy at too young an age, and are so deeply insecure that they must cosplay as rulers to feel important and loved.

So yes, this moment in history is scary because these techno-fascists hold an obscene amount of money and power, but we also must acknowledge their flaws and the ridiculousness of their vision. And that’s exactly what the television show Severance does so well. In this article — and in an attempt to educate on the fascist neoreactionary ideology — we will explore the world of Severance where the main characters live in a corporate-run surveillance state and are functionally slaves to a weird, fascist tech lord. 

However, before we dive into our comparison between Severance and the techno-fascists’ vision, we’re going to be upfront about our goal with this post. It’s simple: we want to start a viral LinkedIn movement to expose as many people as possible to this fascist ideology. At this time, we believe creativity is needed to break through our media to the masses, and LinkedIn, as a professional networking service, is not only an unexpected area to reach people — it’s also a great place to reach workers. Our plans for this viral movement are at the bottom of this article, so if you just want to jump straight to taking action (or you don’t want Severance spoiled), scroll down to “Let’s Start a Movement”. Note, you will need a LinkedIn account to participate.

And if you’re new here, welcome to the truth, welcome to the resistance, welcome to 50501: the people’s movement Lumon Industries. 

Warning: spoilers for Severance ahead.

Let’s Talk Severance

In the world of Severance, a biotechnology company called Lumon Industries has developed a technology where people can sever their consciousness, effectively splitting them into two distinct individuals. One of those individuals, the “Outie,” exists only outside of work, whereas the other, the “Innie,” lives permanently inside the workplace. The Outie and Innie have no knowledge of each other’s experiences, despite them being the same person.

The pretense for this technology is that it’s a revolutionary advancement that will facilitate the mission of Kier Eagan, the company’s founder, to remove all pain from the human experience (e.g., the main character, Mark Scout, can go to work without dealing with the grief of his wife’s death). But beneath this seemingly altruistic goal there are darker intentions that mirror the world techno-fascists envision for us. Lumon Industries is not just a biotechnology company — throughout the show, viewers learn that it functions as a totalitarian organization built around the quasi-religious philosophies of its founder, Kier, in effect turning the company itself into a cult. The company owns an entire town, surveils its residents, controls all narratives, indoctrinates children, and enslaves workers, all to accomplish some nebulous yet obviously nefarious end goal rooted in Kier’s vision.

Let’s break down the world of Severance.

They’re In a Cult

At the center of Lumon Industries is the aforementioned religious cult, revolving around praising the founder, his family, and his vision for the world. Companies have had a long history of lionizing their founders, from Henry Ford to Steve Jobs, but perhaps no business-man has inspired a more cult-like following than Elon Musk. Musk is worshipped by his followers, and it has validated his self-importance. This fervor surrounding businessmen, who are almost always white, is a crucial part of the neoreactionary movement. Followers of the movement believe that businessmen should run governments as monarchies, where there are CEO-dictators making all decisions. Many of these techno-fascists also view AI as a deity, believing — through a twisted morphing with Christian ideology — that this technology will lead them to a promised land that exists beyond our human bodies. Why do you think Musk is building technology to place computer chips in human brains? In Severance, it appears Jame Eagan, the current CEO, has similar goals to our techno-billionaires in defying death and merging with machines — a feat, requiring massive amounts of data collection.

Data and Surveillance Drive Their Vision

The show of Severance is one of data, of being constantly watched, where our deepest thoughts and emotions are harvested by companies to enable them to profit off us. Every day, Mark and his fellow severed employees go to work on their computers in “Macrodata Refinement” (MDR). Their task? Look at a screen full of random numbers, find groupings of numbers that evoke certain emotions, and then place those groupings of numbers into the correct “temper” (i.e., emotional category). While this occurs, there are Lumon workers, on other computers in a non-severed area, watching the macrodata refiners group data. Often stating the work is “mysterious and important”, the refiners themselves do not know what they are doing and why, other than that their efforts serve Kier’s greater purpose.

This setup feels oddly similar to our experience on our smartphones and computers today. When we scroll our Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok feeds, mindlessly clicking the like button or spending additional time on a certain video, we are providing information to the companies’ algorithms. The algorithms develop profiles for us, gaining an understanding of what we like, don’t like, how certain images and videos make us feel, etc., and the companies that own those algorithms exploit these profiles to generate profit. The same process happens every time we interact with AI like ChatGPT. What is perhaps most terrifying about this today is that they no longer want to use this data just for profit — they aim to use it for control.

The Plan: Divide and Conquer

Ultimately, these techno-fascists see humans as tools for harvesting data to enable them to impose their own visions for the future. In other words, they need us for data collection but also know that if we knew their true intentions there would be an uprising — so they lie to us. They do everything they can to control the narrative, and thus control us, ensuring they remain in power. In the world of Severance, this is apparent through the constant monitoring of Mark by his supervisors, both in and outside of the workplace, in an effort to keep his Innie and Outie completely unaware of each other’s experiences and unquestioning of Lumon’s intentions. This is why the severed human is perfect for any authoritarian regime — workers are kept deliberately ignorant and isolated from one another. It is a system of division and distortion, which is the only way fascism prevails. In other words, a severed world is every fascist’s dream.

And these techno-fascist broligarchs are working overtime to make this dream our reality. They’ve already divided us, leveraging our data and the platforms we’ve come to rely on. These tools are used for surveillance, policing, and information control today. The State Department is looking through social media to target visa applicants and holders, and people are getting stopped at airports because of their social presence. Data and artificial intelligence have been used for years in policing, despite its documented biases and contributions to mass incarceration. This will likely get worse as Peter Thiel’s analytics and AI-empowered Palantir company seeps into every area of the Federal government. Perhaps most apparent is how these companies have exacerbated the information divide, fragmenting us into digital echo chambers; they have cut us off from one another, from our communities, and ultimately a shared reality. This severance gives them power, a power they will continue to weaponize to enrich themselves. While this will eventually impact all of us, its sharpest consequences will be first felt by Black and Latino communities, historically targeted by surveillance and policing, and frequently scapegoated (another hallmark of fascist regimes).

Their Supremacy Relies on Racism

Fascists co-opt the story of nature to justify their supremacy over others in society (i.e., Social Darwinism), and Severance does an excellent job of underscoring this subjugation in relation to race. We see this dynamic through the experiences of Mr. Milchick, an unsevered Black man managing the MDR team. Despite not being severed himself, he is forced to behave differently within the predominantly white company, effectively experiencing his own version of severance. Banseka Kayembe explores the relationship of capitalism, race, and systems of power in the article, “Severance Knows You Can’t Talk About Capitalism Without Talking About Race”:

“In Severance, the suggestion is that race isn't a separate issue from capitalism, but that it can determine how different characters experience power, labor, and control within Lumon’s corporate dystopia. It’s revealed in Season 1 that Lumon was established in 1865, the same year slavery was abolished in the U.S. suggesting that the company represents the evolution from chattel slavery to corporate exploitation. After abolition, the U.S. economy found new ways to extract labor from Black people: sharecropping, prison labor, and low-wage industrial labor. It also begs the question was the company’s wealth originally built on slavery? Lumon seems to be a corporate embodiment of how racial and economic oppression are symbiotic, and essential to how our modern world functions.”

Except from “Severance Knows You Can’t Talk About Capitalism Without Talking About Race”, by Banseka Kayembe

These unfettered capitalistic and fascist ideologies are intertwined with slavery. It’s not only Curtis Yarvin, the intellectual leader of the neoreactionary movement, who is a slavery apologist – today, there is investment in labor camps in El Salvador, a rise in migrant slave-like labor, exploitation of incarcerated labor in U.S. prisons, and an increase in child labor violations. Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted and Poverty, by America writes in The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project that it’s impossible to understand American capitalism without understanding its connection to race and slavery:

“If today America promotes a particular kind of low-road capitalism — a union-busting capitalism of poverty wages, gig jobs and normalized insecurity; a winner-take-all capitalism of stunning disparities not only permitting but awarding financial rule-bending; a racist capitalism that ignores the fact that slavery didn’t just deny black freedom but built white fortunes, originating the black-white wealth gap that annually grows wider — one reason is that American capitalism was founded on the lowest road there is.”

Except from The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, by Matthew Desmond

The severed employee is the perfect employee, because the severed employee is a slave.

Labor Rights Are Human Rights

Although we have not yet fully regressed to slavery, a lot of the severed experience feels awfully similar to how we censor ourselves at work on a regular basis, not because of a computer chip in our brain, but because of cultural norms. Often showing up with a mask on, never our whole selves. Speaking differently, because of a white, heterosexual, and male dominated work culture. Never talking of politics, despite its implications directly affecting us. Hiding how we are feeling, the emotions we might be carrying from trauma. Trying our best to take care of our family, even though work and the government insufficiently support us. Worrying about our healthcare when we lose or change jobs. Knowing business will put business first, and that’s just the way it is. 

But what if this doesn’t have to be the way it is? What if there’s another way?

The most important takeaway from Severance is that if Innies do not have rights, then neither do Outies. We cannot be separated from our work-selves because we are our work-selves. The human experience does not simply stop at the doors of your office. You carry your full self through those physical and virtual doors: your race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, and disability; your education and socioeconomic status; your traumas, fears, and anxieties; your emotional, mental, and physical health; your dreams, hopes, and aspirations; your love for your family and friends. You are you wherever you are, including in the workplace. To deny us our rights as laborers is to deny us our rights as humans.  

We refuse to continue severing our labor from our humanity. 

It’s time for a change.

Let’s Start a Movement

At this point, it should be obvious that the world the techno-elite are driving us towards is one that looks eerily like Severance’s. If you’ve skipped the article to jump straight to the action, the best comparison is likely American company-owned coal towns, where workers and families are trapped in towns owned by their employers. In some ways, we’re already living in a severed society that places profit over people, but the good news is we’ve not fully transformed into this feudalist dystopia yet. We still can build a society that treats us as our whole selves. It will however take each of us to band together and act.

“Technofeudalism erects a great new barrier to mobilisation against it. But it also bestows a great new power upon those who dare dream of a coalition to topple it. The great new barrier is the physical isolation of [waged workers] and [tech platform users] from one another. We interact with and are subject to cloud capital via our individual screens, via our personal mobile phones, via the digital devices that monitor and manage Amazon warehouse workers. Collective action is made harder when people have fewer opportunities to come together. But herein lies the great power that cloud capital presents to its potential rebels: a capacity to build coalitions, organise and take action via the cloud.” 

Except from Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis

So, in honor of the May Day (International Workers’ Day) protests and in hopes of building a large enough coalition to topple the techno-fascists, we want to use the absurdity of the broligarchy’s ideas and their own platforms against them to reveal their dark intentions to as many people as possible. 

They want to flood the zone with headlines and AI bullshit?

Time to fight fire with fire.

Here’s the game-plan:

(This virtual protest should take no more than 5 minutes)

1. Go to your LinkedIn experience page and click, “Add position”.

   1. Toggle “Notify network” off. (We do not want to use an automatic notification for this. We’ll be writing a custom post, more in Step 2).

   2. Change Title to “Macrodata Refiner (Severed Employee)”.

   3. Select Employment type of “Full-time”.

   4. Change your Company or organization to the “Lumon Industries” company. It appears as a Biotechnology Research company.

   5. Ensure “I am currently working in this role” is selected.

   6. Choose the latest Start date for the month (e.g., April 2025)

   7. (Optional) Update Profile headline to “Macrodata Refiner (Severed Employee)”

   8. Save your new job!

2. Next, go to write a new post and share the following:

   1. “I am excited to start my new role as a Macrodata Refiner on the Severed Floor. I am told this will be very good for me, and even you! You can learn more about my new role here: bit.ly/praisekier
      
      #PraiseKier”

   2. We also suggest adding some personalized text at the end. Here’s a couple examples: “PS: no, my account has not been hacked, I’m just fed up with the state of the world and want to do something about it” or “PS: I’m bringing attention to techno-fascism and an upcoming May Day protest for labor rights” or whatever you want! 

Are you… disgusted by the dystopian world the broligarchs want us to live in? Upset at your law firm for bending the knee? Frustrated by how your university has capitulated to Trump? Distressed about working at a company while they actively support this? How about just generally angry at the world and wanting to take action to educate folks and do your part in resisting? Then this is for you.

We will note however that this action will not be for everyone. Some individuals could be at risk of further surveillance and real danger, whereas others may face the consequence of job loss. We completely understand if you are in a position where you cannot afford to participate in this action and will always support individuals choosing what is best for them. However, if you are in the camp where you won’t face consequences, but you’re fearful for other reasons (e.g., what others may think of you), we’d encourage you to ask a family member, friend, or colleague to join you in this protest. Just get one other person. Click the buttons and post at the same time. There is power in numbers, and that’s the whole point of this movement. 

We can take this on, together.

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For a vision of what a democratized future could look like where the people take the power back from the tech overlords, check out Dr. Jason Hickel’s (Economic Anthropologist) interview with Yanis Varoufakis (Former Finance Minister of Greece).

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This article was written by R, an anonymous member of 50501 NY. This is not an official statement of the 50501 movement (but it is an encouraged action from 50501 NY 🙂).