Syntheism founder Alexander Bard paves the way for a new elite

It is two years since Alexander Bard founded a new religion called Syntheism in which he claimed that the "the internet is God".

Activist, musician and now religious leader - and playing "the nasty judge" on Sweden's version of Pop Idol - Bard now has a new way to spread the word with the publication of his latest book, Syntheism - Creating God in The Internet Age, out this week.

"In Christianity, one of the last things Jesus said to his disciples was 'I will always be with you', meaning that the Holy Ghost is the manifestation of God when the believers are together," said Bard. "The internet is seven billion people connected together in real time, and if that isn't the holy spirit then I don't know what it is."

In Bard's analysis of history, where feudalism had Christianity to keep people on the land and capitalism had individualism to keep people consuming, so the internet age is going to have Syntheism to keep people online.

"What we have been lacking up to now is the storytelling. Someone has to do the f****** Immanuel Kant for the new age. So Syntheism is preparing the way for a new elite and I am one of its storytellers. For my friend Julian Assange what Syntheism does is to create a bigger story for WikiLeaks. It is the popular movement that could support something like WikiLeaks eventually."

If St Paul had his vision on the road to Damascus, Bard had his "while spending the night lying next to a beautiful naked actress at Burning Man during which I realised that rather than carry on writing books about the problems the internet was causing I should write about Syntheism". Burning Man, the annual festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, embodies the same anarchistic values of the opposition to hierarchical authority and belief in voluntary self-government that are central to the ethos of the internet, said Bard.