Re: Brexit democracy
Wendy Brown was a crucial writer for all those who wanted to understand neoliberalism in the 1990s and 2000s. I subsequently lost track of her, mainly because you can't follow everything but also because I began to perceive her work as an endless critique of the adversary, with no positive content beyond the appeal to an idealized social-democratic order. I hope to be wrong in that assessment, but there are some reasons for it. For example, the fourth chapter of the "Walled States" book has a very penetrating read of material walls as supports for a fantasy of individual sovereignty, and I think the psychosocial analysis there is profound. But I do not detect either any treatment of the fundamental problem, which is how you build a social democracy that can protect people from the present dangers of economic and ecological existence, while at the same time maintaining the openness of liberal societies. I want to submit this is a real problem. The Clintonian neoliberalism of the 1990s turned entirely away from the question, on the premise that the unleashing of technology, trade and global finance would supply enough wealth to make it irrelevant. This is still the implicit answer on the Democratic side, from Soros or Gates to Obama or Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, more radical discourses from the post-68 Far Left just call for open borders, but contribute no ideas about future economic and ecological development, except the pious wish that people left alone will do their own thing and be fine. I think that an open border requires a process of codevelopment, so that people do not flee from one country to the next, but instead interact as increasingly equal and mutually respecting neighbors. That's the opposite of the relation we now have with Mexico in particular, where from Nafta to the heroin trade, gigantic problems are largely (though not only, of course) created by the US. Then, just as Wendy Brown says, the illusion of a wall is invoked against the very clear and present danger of the collapse of the Mexican state, or at least, of that part of the state which was able to support elements of social democracy. If you go to Mexico and talk to a relatively wide range of people there, then you will realize that the danger is no fantasy. The basic continuity of life for all social classes, from the rural peasants to the middle classes of Mexico City itself, is now threatened and has been so increasingly for at least the last decade. And it should be obvious that major upheavals in a neighboring land which contributes so much to the US population and economy will have major consequences on the US. People are going to flee, and some of those people really will be very dangerous. "Build that Wall" is a horrid and useless response to real problems of the neoliberal form of codevelopment, that the Left - and I mean, both the Center and the Far Left - do not even talk about. I could go further into the question of how the inability to envisage the future contributes to another clear and present danger, namely the well-named opioid epidemic, which directly involves heroin from Mexico but is even more directly caused by the stupidity of our laws and the criminal avarice of our pharmaceutical industry. However, let that be enough said for now. In the essay that Ian brings into the mix, Brown says this: "A robust language of social power is all that can provide a deep account of the devastating inequalities and the unfreedom generated by capitalism along with the legacies of racial and gender subordination. In turn, a language of society is all that can make addressing these inequalities and unfreedoms into a demand on us all, rather than the plaint of interests." I agree with that, and though it comes at the end of the essay (ie at the point where no further elaboration will occur) at least it's there in principle. Is it an appeal for a stronger state? I don't think so, at least, not so simply. Instead I'd read it as an appeal for a stronger relation between society and the state, whereby positive proposals, emanating from society in its many parts, are instantiated by administrative programs that are continually watched over and guided from the non-state public realm (which maybe should not be immediately compressed into the straightjacket of so-called "civil society"). There's the frame of the conversation that we need - at least in my view, which I'd love to discuss with you all. Otherwise the situation that currently prevails in Mexico will extend to the US, in a local variant to be sure. Instead of wondering when your city will be taken over by narcos and then "taken back" by military forces in collusion with one or another of the cartels, you will wonder when your town will be taken over by armed militias, before being taken "back" by something very new, ie an organized neofascist military state with the full force of the law. In my vi
Brexit democracy
Greetings, It is encouraging to see Wendy Brown’s name appearing in this discussion and so I will add a bit more of her insightfulness: "the institutions as well as the political culture comprising liberal democracy are passing into history, the left is faced both with the project of mourning what it never wholly loved and with the task of dramatically resetting its critique and vision in terms of the historical supersession of liberal democracy, and not only of failed socialist experiments.” She stated this over 10 years ago; pre-fiscal crisis, pre-Trump and Brexit. So, resetting ‘critique and vision’ are definitely called for. Unfortunately, it is misleading (or inadequate) to view the current malaise simply through the lens of national politics; the crisis we are in the midst of is truly global with dimensions that are difficult to imagine or even adequately articulate. In this context, the mud slinging in regards to Russia’s meddling in US and UK politics is but a sideshow to the recurrent - East/West - political interventions that erupted during the Cold War and continued unabated with the demise of the Soviet bloc. We hardly returned to an age of innocence and political cleanliness with the fall of the Berlin Wall. (See the late Tony Judt’s historical analysis for the machinations taking place during the post-WW II period). To reset ‘critique and vision’ it would help enormously to view issues both on an international scale and locally. To think of politics, and indeed citizenship, as multidimensiona, multicultural and transcending borders which are fluid when it comes to capital but rigid when it comes to people. Fernand Braudel’s description of the ruthlessness that characterised late-stage capitalism is close to the mark when considering the world we now live in wherein the mask of a fraudulent sense of ‘morality’ promoted by political elites is each day shredded into smaller and smaller pieces. To paraphrase Braudel, we are living in barbaric times in which there are no rules; oligarchs, plutocrats and deep-state manipulators are continuously shuffling the deck to gain advantage, to liquidate adversaries. In this sense Trump and Brexit represent a form of desperation in which the elite of the 1% have jettisoned the norms of liberal democracy in order to encase themselves in a nostalgia for a bygone era - riddled with corruption, injustice and enumerable inequities - that we have struggled to overcome and eradicate. cheers allan # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Brexit democracy
Wendy Brown is an indispensable thinker for these times. In addition to Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, her recent short text that explores the progression from neoliberalism to neofascism is a must-read: http://www.publicbooks.org/defending-society/ (and for more depth on this subject, see her latest book "Undoing Demos" from MIT) On Mon, Nov 6, 2017 at 11:09 AM, Ivan Knapp wrote: > Not new to anyone here i'm sure, but this thread can't help bringing to > mind Wendy Brown's ever more prescient work on this subject- especially > chapter IV > > http://www.tepotech.com/chiapas2015/Brown_Walled_States.pdf > > On 6 November 2017 at 15:44, Brian Holmes > wrote: > >> On 11/06/2017 05:13 AM, David Garcia wrote: >> >> The success of the slogan ‘Take Back Control” is cruscial to understand >>> it speaks to the profound loss of agency that so many of us feel and how >>> for many the capacity to disrupt politics as usual gave Brexit voters a >>> sense of power. >>> >> >> This is spot on for the United States as well. Alas, in our country the >> wording for a very similar sentiment was very different: "Build That Wall." >> The many degrees of hatred condensed in such a statement have made it >> almost impossible to have any conversations with core Trump voters, who >> definitely want to hang on to their sense of empowerment. However, you can >> have conversations with centrist people who simply never would have spoken >> to strangers about politics before. Not just the Republicans, but also the >> plutocracy, the corrupt Democratic establishment and sometimes even the >> police and the military are critiqued in ways that were formerly taboo. >> Universal health care and climate change mitigation are increasingly seen >> by the Center Left as urgent needs. But it's tough to get to the three key >> questions: How do we restore democratic equality? Who is the 'we'? And is >> 'restore' the right word? >> >> The Right has presented us with the demand for system change. So doing, >> they have responded to a deep and fully justified anxiety which the >> Democrats - and to some extent, even the post-68 Left - could not voice. >> But it's clear that Trump cannot produce the change, only its media-driven, >> hate-drenched simulacrum. The real thing is so much harder to achieve. It >> requires a political, economic, philosophical and even spiritual shift in >> each of the people who would be its agents. You cannot get that from a >> single leader or a single doctrine, much less a slogan. I can only speak >> from my own narrow position in society, among academics, artists and >> activists in a Midwestern city. Before we could successfully argue with >> Republicans on a train, we would have to have much deeper conversations >> among ourselves, while at the same time becoming much more sensitive to >> worlds beyond our enclosing spheres. >> >> Brian >> >> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission >> #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, >> # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets >> # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l >> # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org >> # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: >> > > > > -- > > Ivan Knapp > knapp.i...@gmail.com > 07984620700 > > # distributed via : no commercial use without permission > #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: > # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Brexit democracy
Not new to anyone here i'm sure, but this thread can't help bringing to mind Wendy Brown's ever more prescient work on this subject- especially chapter IV http://www.tepotech.com/chiapas2015/Brown_Walled_States.pdf On 6 November 2017 at 15:44, Brian Holmes wrote: > On 11/06/2017 05:13 AM, David Garcia wrote: > > The success of the slogan ‘Take Back Control” is cruscial to understand it >> speaks to the profound loss of agency that so many of us feel and how for >> many the capacity to disrupt politics as usual gave Brexit voters a sense >> of power. >> > > This is spot on for the United States as well. Alas, in our country the > wording for a very similar sentiment was very different: "Build That Wall." > The many degrees of hatred condensed in such a statement have made it > almost impossible to have any conversations with core Trump voters, who > definitely want to hang on to their sense of empowerment. However, you can > have conversations with centrist people who simply never would have spoken > to strangers about politics before. Not just the Republicans, but also the > plutocracy, the corrupt Democratic establishment and sometimes even the > police and the military are critiqued in ways that were formerly taboo. > Universal health care and climate change mitigation are increasingly seen > by the Center Left as urgent needs. But it's tough to get to the three key > questions: How do we restore democratic equality? Who is the 'we'? And is > 'restore' the right word? > > The Right has presented us with the demand for system change. So doing, > they have responded to a deep and fully justified anxiety which the > Democrats - and to some extent, even the post-68 Left - could not voice. > But it's clear that Trump cannot produce the change, only its media-driven, > hate-drenched simulacrum. The real thing is so much harder to achieve. It > requires a political, economic, philosophical and even spiritual shift in > each of the people who would be its agents. You cannot get that from a > single leader or a single doctrine, much less a slogan. I can only speak > from my own narrow position in society, among academics, artists and > activists in a Midwestern city. Before we could successfully argue with > Republicans on a train, we would have to have much deeper conversations > among ourselves, while at the same time becoming much more sensitive to > worlds beyond our enclosing spheres. > > Brian > > # distributed via : no commercial use without permission > #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: > -- Ivan Knapp knapp.i...@gmail.com 07984620700 # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Brexit democracy
On 11/06/2017 05:13 AM, David Garcia wrote: The success of the slogan ‘Take Back Control” is cruscial to understand it speaks to the profound loss of agency that so many of us feel and how for many the capacity to disrupt politics as usual gave Brexit voters a sense of power. This is spot on for the United States as well. Alas, in our country the wording for a very similar sentiment was very different: "Build That Wall." The many degrees of hatred condensed in such a statement have made it almost impossible to have any conversations with core Trump voters, who definitely want to hang on to their sense of empowerment. However, you can have conversations with centrist people who simply never would have spoken to strangers about politics before. Not just the Republicans, but also the plutocracy, the corrupt Democratic establishment and sometimes even the police and the military are critiqued in ways that were formerly taboo. Universal health care and climate change mitigation are increasingly seen by the Center Left as urgent needs. But it's tough to get to the three key questions: How do we restore democratic equality? Who is the 'we'? And is 'restore' the right word? The Right has presented us with the demand for system change. So doing, they have responded to a deep and fully justified anxiety which the Democrats - and to some extent, even the post-68 Left - could not voice. But it's clear that Trump cannot produce the change, only its media-driven, hate-drenched simulacrum. The real thing is so much harder to achieve. It requires a political, economic, philosophical and even spiritual shift in each of the people who would be its agents. You cannot get that from a single leader or a single doctrine, much less a slogan. I can only speak from my own narrow position in society, among academics, artists and activists in a Midwestern city. Before we could successfully argue with Republicans on a train, we would have to have much deeper conversations among ourselves, while at the same time becoming much more sensitive to worlds beyond our enclosing spheres. Brian # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: Brexit democracy
Thanks to Patrice for the posting For the record I am and remain a Remain Voter and will continue to fight for a reversal of what I believe will be a nihilistic decision that will curb the life chances of future generations. But the narrative of the piece posted by Patrice carries the underlying belief that the referendum was a “fix” built wholly on the lies distortions of the Brexiteers. Though correct in many details is false in the larger sense of failing to capture the spirit and depth of what really went on. Belief in the power of media manipulation alone is itself naif and underestimates the social pressures, histories. In fact all sides attempted to manipulate the argument. There are no innocent parties here. Cameron government put the full weight of the state’s machinery and the business establishment behind its campaign to mobilsie opinion and it failed ! To take just one wholly undemocratic example it used government information money to disseminate huge quantities of what was effectively Remain propaganda through people’s virtual and actual letterboxes. Moreover actual participation in the event was large and has dwarfed the usual turn out at elections. Brexit was part of everyday discussion in ways that have never been the case in my life-time so as a manifestation of “demos” I think there was something to celebrate. The other night on the train home I got into an argument with a group of Brexit voting builders about their belief that the NHS was being ruined by “health tourism” from Europe (this is nonsense the NHS can’t survive without European labor at all levels). But beyond the particulars ofthe argument there was a passionate sense of ownership that these guys felt for THEIR Brexit decision. The discussion went back and forth it was heated. Those surrounding us many in the carriage took off their head phones and listened intently and chipped in. But what struck me was how it all remained very good humored. We had all stepped outside of our bubble. I don’t think either side made any converts. But we parted with hand-shakes all round and sheepish grins to others in the carriage. It made me think that this is how we have to start by listening hard and sticking with the detail of the arguments in all their complexities and never sinking to ad hominem smears or the pseudo explanations of conspiracy theories. I continue to argue with people whenever I get the chance. I have never done this before. We Remainers must come to terms with the huge and rare sense of political agency that winning this referendum gave to many who in most cases feel powerless in the world of “subsistence managerialism” ( a term lifted from articulate pro-brexit blogger Pete North).Sure there were conspiracies but they were on al sides and so marginal in their impact. The desire of a large part of the population for Brexit can’t simply be dismissed as an aberration brought about by a willey, shadowy network of Brexiteers. The success of the slogan ‘Take Back Control” is cruscial to understand it speaks to the profound loss of agency that so many of us feel and how for many the capacity to disrupt politics as usual gave Brexit voters a sense of power. I am tempted to say fleeting.. but its not.. they still feel the echoes of that rush of blood. I am of course convinced that the though the truth will take a while to sink in but the hang over will be a price not worth the paying. But confirmation bia (on all sides) is a powerful fact of political life. Does anyone out there on the list have a slogan that we Remainers can deploy as effectively.. The only (lame) suggestion I have heard is “Take Back Control” - based on the fact that we have not gained control but lost it.. swapped it for an alternative box full of abstract nouns like “sovereignty" Sometimes Psychology trumps both politics and economics. We are an off-shore island with a semie detached relationship to a large powerful continent. Many brits have struggled over 40 years to feel the sense of collective affinity required to be part of any European convergence. It is not simply political, that narrow stretch of water means that our island psychology has given rise to a sense of island exceptionalism, making us poor partners - The particular British/English psychology was recognised 50 odd years ago by de Gaulle and was a key reason he gave for blocking our early attempts to join what was then the Common Market". He believed we would never fit in. We may learn from our mistakes and future generations may have a change of heart (there are signs of this) but for now, sadly.. very sadly de Gaulle may have been right. David Garcia > > Brexit: Democracy robbery? > > > > It is increasingly surprising that this vote, whose anti-European camp was > largely financed by a handful of English and foreign plutocrats who had in > mind a profound transformation of the country's economy in favour of opaque
Brexit democracy
From Sauvons l'Europe newsletter http://sauvonsleurope.eu/brexit-hold-up-sur-la-democratie/ In French Deepl.com translated: Brexit: Democracy robbery? By Arthur News/editorial comment November 6,2017 We have already written about the confiscation of the most basic democratic principles in the United Kingdom since the Brexit referendum, because the will of the people expressed to one or two percent more on the basis of a fabric of lies is a new democratic Grail that can suffer no defilement. As a result, Parliament had to be kept out of the way, official reports on the effects of Brexit cannot be made public and Her Majesty's Government is asking Her Majesty's opposition to sanction opposition MPs who do not support the Government's position. Through our friend Jean-Guy Giraud, we discover that more than half of Leave's campaign contributions, nearly £15 million, were made by only five people (including the Conservative Party treasurer). This is quite legal in the United Kingdom, but should lead any sincere democrat to question the meaning of a democracy where five individuals alone can fund the bulk of an election campaign. In all honesty, we should add 250,000 pounds spent by the now-famous Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, the DUP, whose donee is unknown because of provisions linked to local "events", and which represents three times its largest campaign to date. A shell detail, this quarter million was mainly spent on the purchase of pro-leave pages in Metro, which is... not distributed in Northern Ireland. On the expenditure side, things are also surprising. In contrast to a classic election campaign, Leave camp entrusted more than half of its campaign budget to Aggregate IQ and Cambridge Analytica, for the implementation of targeted arguments based on individual profiles collected on social networks, at a time when Facebook still allowed this practice. The essence of the campaign was not to convince voters, but to motivate the probable Leavers and push the probable Remainers to abstain by bombarding them with demoralizing news about the British political system. The incredible abstention rate of young people, the vast majority of whom are pro-European and major consumers of social networks, shows that this strategy has had a real impact. For the record, Cambridge Analytica's Managing Director was Steve Bannon, who later became Trump's special advisor to the White House. This does not mean, of course, that the Russians did not seek to interfere in this election. Finally, a number of large donors from the Leave camp and the Conservative Party are now pushing for a Hard Brexit without an agreement. The implicit, and sometimes explicit, idea is then to turn the United Kingdom into a tax and financial paradise on the doorstep of the Union, like a kind of huge Hong Kong with Stilton It is increasingly surprising that this vote, whose anti-European camp was largely financed by a handful of English and foreign plutocrats who had in mind a profound transformation of the country's economy in favour of opaque finance, and who resorted to methods of mass manipulation to win, is still being presented here and there as a summit of modern democracy. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
