Re: The Meaning of Boris Johnson
David, your second paragraph sums up a really complex situation in a few words, thank you. It's fairly easy to understand how right-wing populists raise the anger of the people. They do it with fear, born largely of their own mismanagement. Fear of the pandemic, of economic disruption, of war, of climate change - and maybe most of all, fear of the "return of the state" that's more-or-less required by all that. But you put your finger on something else, which is that these populist (and yet usually upper class) politicians have to go on *pretending* to believe in their old conservative lines about lowering taxes and shrinking government. Where will the pretence lead them? Right now BoJo is trying to save his political ass by exploiting the fear of war, and more, the nationalist pride of militarism - which would be the logical supplement to the old conservative lines. In fact he's pretty much openly claiming a military role for post-Brexit "Global Britain." How do you see this latest development? Is it going to work? Could warmongering nationalism be the new rhetorical resource of the right, beyond Johnson? Or is this just his last desperate gambit on the way out? >From my viewpoint it is sickening to see this kind of political theater played in the face of genuinely dangerous situations. best, 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:
The Meaning of Boris Johnson
Old friend of nettime Patrice Riemens recently mailed to ask me how I felt about the weird/surreal state of the UK political scene. This maybe of interest to some if not I will no doubt be corrected. - Rory Stuart, one of the old-style Tories purged by Johnson and Cummings has created a fabulous taxonomy to illustrate Johnson’s gifts “as the most accomplished liar in British public life –perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister,” “He has” according to Stuart ”mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true.” But despite all of this it is just about possible to argue that Johnson has read the runes better than many other Tories and that much of the weirdness of UK politics is to some extent froth. His administration is perhaps less of an outlier than it appears. He is a man of few fixed ideological beliefs which is how (like Merkle) he has held together a coalition with contradictory ideologies.. The ‘greased piglet’ is hard to pin down. Like many countries and regions, Johnson has had to respond to the biggest change brought about by the pandemic which has been to accelerate a shift in favour of a greater role for the state. Including the nation state in part because of the pandemic pressure to close boarders. Unlike other Tories Johnson is at ease with this along with other aspects of an interventionist state, despite frequently pretending otherwise.. The return of the nation state is part of what is becoming a more geo-politically charged world which includes a new awareness of the entanglement of supply chain pressures with questions of security and risk (e.g. Russian pipeline). The newly empowered state is also a consequence of the eye-watering amount of borrowing required to keep our economies from flat-lining. So even for Tories on the right of the party any return to the old fiscal narrative will be pretty much impossible. And Johnson has been quicker to recognise this than other Tories. Despite Thatcherite nostalgia there can be no going back to the Cameron Osbourne response to the 2008 crisis. Johnson’s conservatism recognises that there can be no return to small state with low taxes conservatism. His claims to NetZero ambitions means that world has gone..(But of course he often has to pretend otherwise) The post-covid mad Johnsonian UK has the appearance of a hyper-weird outlier. But wipe the froth of the Johnson Cappuccino and he maybe less of an outlier than it first appears. David Garcia # 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: Cold War Tactics To Battle Fake News
@ 3. I’d argue that education ≠ education. It might depend strongly on the kind of education and the question which attitudes it tries to transport and which intentions it fosters. One should not forget that the field of education underwent a big transformation as well highlighting instrumental knowledge appropriation over reflection and so on. That might play a role. The leaders of the Nazis were often also educated very well which didn’t prevent what happened. Especially pure instrumental knowledge/education –> Adorno/Horkheimer's dialectics of enlightenment. But I agree however that education respectively trying to alter mindsets isn’t enough and technological logics have to change too. The problem I often have with technological solutions is on the one hand well expressed in the solutionism debate. On the other hand those technological solutions often do not seem to foster so much a sense for an alternative understanding of community but an individualistic standpoint in a manner like ›everybody for oneself‹ in the first place and only in the second step the established ›social atoms‹ can then join and build a community. This seems to be the model behind many technological approaches (also blockchain and stuff like that). And I’m not sure if this captures what an alternative approach to community is or could/should be. In other words: technological approaches mostly remain within the same epistemic frame like what they try to tackle. And I’m not sure if this works and could lead to a better sense of community. It´s tricky… > Am 11.02.2022 um 10:02 schrieb carlo von lynX : > >TL;DR >1. Sweden returns to cold war tactics to battle fake news; >2. Habermas himself is afraid social media may break democracy; >3. Education is not the answer. > > > 1. > https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/06/sweden-returns-to-cold-war-tactics-to-battle-fake-news > >A top official from Sweden’s new “psychological defence” agency said the > country had decided to bring back the cold war-era government body amid fears > over Russian aggression against Ukraine. […] >“Authoritarian states have for years been trying to influence elections. > The difference today is that through social media you have better > opportunities to influence people. That’s why we need to have the capacity to > monitor for an interference in our democracy.” >The mission of the Swedish psychological defence agency, which has around > 45 staff and is expected to grow, is to “safeguard our open and democratic > society, the free formation of opinion, and Sweden’s freedom and > independence.” […] > > Will a control room monitoring approach be able to achieve a lot? > What can they do? Anonymously cruise the Facebooks and Telegram > channels? Watch helplessly how transactions happen on the darknet? > It's like riots and looting going on for years now, and all they > do is put on a black hoodie and walk along, counting the number > of shops affected? > > "Open and democratic society" sounds a lot like Popper and Habermas. > > > 2. > https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/9783748912187-470/ueberlegungen-und-hypothesen-zu-einem-erneuten-strukturwandel-der-politischen-oeffentlichkeit?page=1 > > Recently Habermas himself, aged 92, contributed a statement on > the state of democracy in the age of social media as a closing > remark in the Leviathan book series. Unfortunately his original > words are all behind paywalls, so all we can see are others > talking about it: > > https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/juergen-habermas-strukturwandel-der-oeffentlichkeit-in-der-2-0-version-a-2e683f52-3ccd-4985-a750-5e1a1823ad08 > >»Ein demokratisches System nimmt im Ganzen Schaden, wenn die Infrastruktur > der Öffentlichkeit die Aufmerksamkeit der Bürger nicht mehr auf die > relevanten und entscheidungsbedürftigen Themen lenken und die Ausbildung > konkurrierender öffentlicher und das heißt: qualitativ gefilterter Meinungen > nicht mehr gewährleisten kann.« > > A clear word of warning that the lack of qualitative filtering > in social media can damage a democratic system. I will not dare > to provide an accurate translation here. > > > 3. Education is not the answer. > > The Spiegel author goes on to theorise an old popular Internet > meme whereby dealing with the Internet could improve if people > receive better education and learn how to distinguish good and > fake information. I observe how the people on the cutting edge > of disinformation are extremily well educated, competent enough > to think they can work their way through scientific papers and > such, and yet end up with all kinds of wrong conclusions and > see no contradiction in digging through all this complexity to > ultimately sum it up into a simplifying conspiracy world view. > This meme is over ten years old and I think it is crap: > > Education is NOT the solution when humans are systematically > provided with factoids that seem
Cold War Tactics To Battle Fake News
TL;DR 1. Sweden returns to cold war tactics to battle fake news; 2. Habermas himself is afraid social media may break democracy; 3. Education is not the answer. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/06/sweden-returns-to-cold-war-tactics-to-battle-fake-news A top official from Sweden’s new “psychological defence” agency said the country had decided to bring back the cold war-era government body amid fears over Russian aggression against Ukraine. […] “Authoritarian states have for years been trying to influence elections. The difference today is that through social media you have better opportunities to influence people. That’s why we need to have the capacity to monitor for an interference in our democracy.” The mission of the Swedish psychological defence agency, which has around 45 staff and is expected to grow, is to “safeguard our open and democratic society, the free formation of opinion, and Sweden’s freedom and independence.” […] Will a control room monitoring approach be able to achieve a lot? What can they do? Anonymously cruise the Facebooks and Telegram channels? Watch helplessly how transactions happen on the darknet? It's like riots and looting going on for years now, and all they do is put on a black hoodie and walk along, counting the number of shops affected? "Open and democratic society" sounds a lot like Popper and Habermas. 2. https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/9783748912187-470/ueberlegungen-und-hypothesen-zu-einem-erneuten-strukturwandel-der-politischen-oeffentlichkeit?page=1 Recently Habermas himself, aged 92, contributed a statement on the state of democracy in the age of social media as a closing remark in the Leviathan book series. Unfortunately his original words are all behind paywalls, so all we can see are others talking about it: https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/juergen-habermas-strukturwandel-der-oeffentlichkeit-in-der-2-0-version-a-2e683f52-3ccd-4985-a750-5e1a1823ad08 »Ein demokratisches System nimmt im Ganzen Schaden, wenn die Infrastruktur der Öffentlichkeit die Aufmerksamkeit der Bürger nicht mehr auf die relevanten und entscheidungsbedürftigen Themen lenken und die Ausbildung konkurrierender öffentlicher und das heißt: qualitativ gefilterter Meinungen nicht mehr gewährleisten kann.« A clear word of warning that the lack of qualitative filtering in social media can damage a democratic system. I will not dare to provide an accurate translation here. 3. Education is not the answer. The Spiegel author goes on to theorise an old popular Internet meme whereby dealing with the Internet could improve if people receive better education and learn how to distinguish good and fake information. I observe how the people on the cutting edge of disinformation are extremily well educated, competent enough to think they can work their way through scientific papers and such, and yet end up with all kinds of wrong conclusions and see no contradiction in digging through all this complexity to ultimately sum it up into a simplifying conspiracy world view. This meme is over ten years old and I think it is crap: Education is NOT the solution when humans are systematically provided with factoids that seem to confirm their prejudices, and ultimately they care more about being *right* rather than finding out truths, facts, science. Sometimes Internet activists remind me a bit of the Catholic church. Nothing may come to harm the institution, so we try to find recipes that sound like a solution when they actually do not achieve anything. Do not feed the troll! Federation is the answer! Blockchain is the answer! Education is the answer. First XML was the answer, then JSON. Just don't do any real change to our beloved playground. # Thanks to you-know-who-you-are for pointing me to these articles. # 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:
