Rutger Bregman's Avatar

Rutger Bregman

@rutgerbregman.com

Historian | Author of ‘Utopia for Realists’ (2014), ‘Humankind’ (2020) and ‘Moral Ambition’ (2025) | Co-founder of The School for Moral Ambition | moralambition.org | rutgerbregman.com

23,458
Followers
16
Following
213
Posts
08.02.2024
Joined
Posts Following

Latest posts by Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com

Post image

The international boycott of ChatGPT has absolutely exploded.

2.5M people have already joined, and this is just the beginning.

Go to quitgpt.org.
Cancel your subscription, delete your account.
And tell at least one person why.

My op-ed: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

04.03.2026 09:03 👍 877 🔁 505 💬 41 📌 52
Post image

This is the most important thing happening in the world right now.

Trump and Hegseth want killer drones + mass surveillance of Americans.

Anthropic refuses to build it. While most tech companies fall in line, they are prepared to pay the price for their principles.

25.02.2026 10:12 👍 187 🔁 83 💬 7 📌 7
Post image

What conservatives did to Bud Light in 2023, that's what progressives should do to ChatGPT in 2026.

OpenAI is so vulnerable right now. With enough pressure, I think it's actually possible to take the whole company down.

quitgpt.org

25.02.2026 08:26 👍 263 🔁 131 💬 11 📌 3
Video thumbnail

The BBC just remade Lord of the Flies — the story that taught generations humans are fundamentally savage.

But when it ACTUALLY happened in real life? Six boys shipwrecked for over a year built a functioning society.

20.02.2026 15:42 👍 144 🔁 37 💬 5 📌 5

Just before what could be the greatest wave of job loss, democratic erosion and threat to humanity itself, the Left - the people who are supposed to care most about these things – are going: LALALALALA it's not happening, it's all fake, AI is absolutely incapable of anything 🙃

17.02.2026 08:49 👍 64 🔁 12 💬 11 📌 4
Post image

Luckily 'the politicians left of center are in better shape on “take AI seriously, please” than the intellectuals.'

17.02.2026 08:39 👍 24 🔁 1 💬 2 📌 0
Preview
The left is missing out on AI As a movement, it has largely refused to engage seriously with AI, ceding debate about a threat and opportunity to the right

Absolutely brilliant piece about the Left's TOTAL blindness on AI. Their dismissal of AI risks mirrors how climate deniers treat CO2.

Will probably get a lot of nastiness for this on Bluesky, but I guess that's part of the same problem.

www.transformernews.ai/p/the-left-i...

17.02.2026 08:36 👍 95 🔁 26 💬 45 📌 45
Video thumbnail

I tell Ryan Holiday something unexpected: ego can push people to do the right thing.

History's biggest moral revolutions didn't just happen from obligation, they happened because people cared about their legacy. Vanity isn't pure, but it's powerful.

16.02.2026 14:29 👍 53 🔁 11 💬 8 📌 0
What was the ‘True Radical Programme’? How Utopian Dreams Became Reality | The Reith Lectures
What was the ‘True Radical Programme’? How Utopian Dreams Became Reality | The Reith Lectures YouTube video by BBC Sounds

This is from my third BBC Reith Lecture. Watch the whole video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXS-...

09.02.2026 13:02 👍 40 🔁 10 💬 0 📌 0

So here's my question:
What comes after neoliberalism? Where is the progressive conspiracy that could define the next century?

09.02.2026 13:01 👍 33 🔁 9 💬 6 📌 1

And most of all: perseverance.
Of the 12 founders of the British Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, only one lived to see slavery abolished. Of the 68 women at Seneca Falls in 1848, only ONE saw women win the vote. She was sick on election day.

09.02.2026 13:01 👍 22 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0

What did these movements have in common?
Long-term thinking. Donors who thought in decades, not election cycles. Policy shops that translated ideals into legislation. Cultural platforms that shaped opinion from the classroom to the dinner table.

09.02.2026 13:01 👍 22 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
Video thumbnail

The best conspiracies are the ones that change the world.
In 1884, the Fabian Society plotted to bring us the 8-hour workday and votes for women. In 1947, a handful of intellectuals met in Switzerland to roll back the state. They called themselves 'neoliberals.'

09.02.2026 13:01 👍 119 🔁 33 💬 2 📌 0
Video thumbnail

Just before Trump's re-election, I attended a tech conference in Silicon Valley. Over dinner, a tech bro spoke in ways that reminded me of 1930s fascists. I pointed this out. He replied, without irony:

"Yeah, I think we should get a little fascy."

06.02.2026 13:30 👍 221 🔁 84 💬 6 📌 7
Preview
QuitGPT — OpenAI Execs are Trump's Biggest Donors Join the movement. Delete ChatGPT. Cancel your subscription. It's time to quit.

Join the grassroots movement now: QuitGPT.org

04.02.2026 13:22 👍 125 🔁 58 💬 5 📌 0

Here are the facts: OpenAI's president gave $25 million to MAGA Inc, the biggest tech donation of the cycle. Their technology is being used by ICE. And they're vulnerable (down 20% market share this year and burning through cash).

04.02.2026 13:14 👍 92 🔁 20 💬 2 📌 0
Video thumbnail

One of the most effective things you can do right now to fight Trump and ICE is to cancel your ChatGPT subscription.

04.02.2026 13:14 👍 447 🔁 271 💬 28 📌 36
Video thumbnail

Europe loves to lecture the world about values, but morals without power is just vibes. We regulate AI we don’t build, sell handbags instead of hardware, and rely on others for our security and energy.

If we really believe in liberal democracy, we’d better be willing to back it up.

03.02.2026 13:17 👍 95 🔁 23 💬 9 📌 2
Post image

some additional context

02.02.2026 12:40 👍 113 🔁 45 💬 6 📌 0
Preview
March for Billionaires — San Francisco, Feb 7 Stand up for the entrepreneurs, innovators, and risk-takers who build our economy. February 7, 2026.

This is actually real: marchforbillionaires.org

02.02.2026 12:37 👍 49 🔁 18 💬 13 📌 7
Post image

Finally. A voice for the voiceless.

02.02.2026 12:37 👍 113 🔁 23 💬 13 📌 8
Video thumbnail

ICE's $100M ad campaign is using the same playbook as the Gestapo & Stasi. The goal? To make repression sound reasonable and patriotic.

29.01.2026 14:15 👍 294 🔁 141 💬 11 📌 12
Video thumbnail

We’re hiring a marketing specialist at the School for Moral Ambition (NYC).

If you’re a marketer who wants to work on something meaningful with a small team, this might be for you.

27.01.2026 13:06 👍 45 🔁 12 💬 0 📌 1

This isn't about moral purity or personal virtue. It's about facing reality.

Because moral progress begins with a willingness to look—especially when what we see is uncomfortable.

26.01.2026 13:30 👍 42 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 3

Here's a comparison that makes the abstraction impossible to ignore:
All wild animals on Earth: 100 million tons All farmed animals: 700 million tons

When we talk about "animals" today, we're mostly talking about a few species bred and killed at industrial scale.

26.01.2026 13:29 👍 32 🔁 7 💬 1 📌 0

For a long time, I didn't grasp the scale myself. I was a pretty committed carnivore.

Like most people, I had no real sense of what this system actually entails. And that ignorance isn't accidental—there's a powerful incentive to keep it that way.

26.01.2026 13:29 👍 11 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0
Video thumbnail

We think of wars as the pinnacle of human violence. The numbers tell a different story.

Every year, humans slaughter around 80 billion animals. That's more suffering than all wars combined.

26.01.2026 13:29 👍 82 🔁 19 💬 5 📌 4
Preview
Q&A with Rutger Bregman | The Reith Lectures Edition Join us for an exclusive online Q&A with Rutger Bregman, our co-founder and author of Moral Ambition. On Wednesday 4 February, Julia van Boven, co-founder of The School for Moral Ambition, will host a...

Want to ask me a question? Sign up for the upcoming live Q&A about the Reith Lectures on February 4th, on the Moral Ambition Community Platform. community.moralambition.org/networks/eve...

23.01.2026 13:17 👍 26 🔁 8 💬 1 📌 0
Are we living through the fall of civilisation? | The Reith Lectures 2025
Are we living through the fall of civilisation? | The Reith Lectures 2025 YouTube video by BBC Sounds

(From my 1st BBC Reith Lecture, watch the full lecture here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUJ-...)

23.01.2026 13:17 👍 49 🔁 10 💬 2 📌 0
Video thumbnail

Rome didn’t fall overnight. It rotted in public first.
Tell me this all doesn’t sound too familiar…

23.01.2026 13:16 👍 237 🔁 87 💬 6 📌 4