Re: Moving Nettime to the Fediverse

[analoguehorizon]

Out of the woodwork we come.

My handle is @fl...@social.coop (https://social.coop/@flgnk) which is
a cooperatively run instance. I'm not involved in the organization
side, but as a coop member I think it is safe to say 'we' raise money
for the running of the instance using OpenCollective (
https://opencollective.com/socialcoop ), things are organized and
decisions are made through Loomio ( https://www.loomio.com/socialcoop/
). There is a little more detail on how these pieces fit together here
- https://wiki.social.coop/How-to-make-the-fediverse-your-own.html
The coop emerged out of group that came together out of a campaign to
buy twitter and turn it into a coop.

I asked around earlier in the week and found that @nemo...@mamot.fr
has been keeping track of collectively organized instances -
https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fediparty/wiki/Collectively-owned-instances

I've enjoyed the change to Mastodon, I've been finding the pirates,
hackers and free culture (an old term) folks that I've missed on
twitter. To be honest, it's been refreshing, as there still seems to
be some energy about these 'old ideas' that I have not encountered in
some time. Maybe it was always there, I just wasn't looking in the
right places.

There really is a wave of people joining. It makes it a lot easier to
switch when you can find people you know there. This is a very useful
tool to find your twitter people on Mastodon -
https://fedifinder.glitch.me/

I think it's an interesting experiment to have a Nettime instance on
Mastodon, and perhaps it could be something more. But keep the list
going too. I've been on so many lists that died, it really does take a
long time to build up a convivial dynamic among list participants and
it would be a shame for that to be lost.

Kind Regards

Kevin



On Wed, 30 Nov 2022 at 16:19,  wrote:
>
> Nothing brings the gently glowing embers of
> nettime to life quite like the prospect
> of its immanent demise, when the mods launch
> one of their cunningly infrequent "shake-em-up"
> interventions.
>
> Whatever the outcome of this latest experiment
> the kick-up-the-arse alone makes it worthwhile.
>
> Thank You Mod-Fathers
>
> David Garcia
>
>
> On 2022-11-30 07:31, bernd kasparek wrote:
> > Dear nettimers,
> >
> > I joined this list some months ago, have never posted but always read
> > with great interest and consequential enlightenment.
> >
> > I of course fully agree with the argument about technical fixes to
> > social problems, but still feel that this is something that should be
> > explored more empirically in the context of the usage of this list.
> >
> > On the technical points: Yes, mail has become more difficult lately,
> > but it is not impossible to run your own server. Furthermore, it is
> > possible to run a mailman instance that is in full compliance with
> > SPIF, DMARC and DKIM, with the only caveat being the rewriting of the
> > from: header (the "... via mailinglistname" you might see on other
> > mailing lists).
> >
> > But I really wanted to make a different point: I thoroughly enjoy
> > nettime as a mailing list, I enjoy the long form mails exceeding 2k
> > characters, I enjoy the built-in offline availability my MUA offers
> > me, the discoverability, the searchability, the threadedness, etc. I
> > am not convinced (but I am open to persuasion) that Mastodon et al.
> > offer all that. Fundamentally, I do believe moving to social
> > media-esque formats will alter the way we discuss and read each other
> > and believe these consequences should be discussed a bit more in-depth
> > before making such a move.
> >
> > I fully understand that infrastructure maintenance is tedious, boring
> > and too often un-gratifying. But maintaining a mastodon instance will
> > also be that, once the initial setup is done. The plight of the
> > sysadmin is independent from the particular kind of tech she
> > maintains. If I can help out there, I'm happy to join the effort.
> >
> > best wishes
> >
> > Bernd
> >
> >
> >
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Re: Strom vs Morozov: knockdown punch

[analoguehorizon]

Just came across this -

https://shows.acast.com/jacobin-radio/episodes/dig-its-still-capitalism-w-evgeny-morozov

On Fri 8 Jul 2022, 03:08 Molly Hankwitz,  wrote:

>
> Hello, Boris, and Brian,
> Thank you for all of your writings and reviews. Boris, those descriptions
> of how corporations will fill the gap of the state by providing travel
> money for women employees seeking abortions...are chillingly correct, and
> scary and partly what I do really like about Safiya Noble's position (her
> name has been misspelled by me, apologies - Noble, not Nobel - forgive me
> for being obsessed, but imho she is moved to write because she is deeply
> concerned with the loss of public assets to the private sector...this all
> seems to be one ball of wax...
>
> womens' rights being subsumed under employee contracts of individual
> corporations and the rights of corporations to acquire (say in higher ed)
> public assets as their own...this further eroding the public sphere(s)...
>
> I got around to reading the Morozov not the Strom piece
>
> There are two conditions of the present which resonate with me in these
> discussions of capital accumulation, yet which aren't about customary
> conditions of factory labor, or other examples of capitalist economies
> because they are unusual circumstances...they are such flagrant examples of
> exploitation that they stand out.
>
> Situation 1: Bezos making 49 billion dollars of income during the 2 years
> of  massive humanitarian loss and pain due to COVID. Okay, so he happens to
> own a global delivery business, which did well during this time...but can't
> such individual, highly predatory capitalism be regulated, unlawful or
> fined heavily as a blight? Should anyone be able - without some kind of
> payback - to exploit humanity so flagrantly without some kind of fine or
> sanction?
>
> Example 2. Ukraine war...oil and gas prices sky high at the expense of
> 100s of 1,000s of refugees, loss of life, loss of environment, loss of
> architecture, loss of cultural identity...should oil companies be able to
> reap profit while a war persists? maybe we need a global court to judge
> such huge profits at humanity's expense?
>
> These profits so frequently allowed to move forward without consequence or
> questioning in the fiction of an objective stance -
>
> so when Mozorov and Noble both analyze how capable big tech (Google) is of
> amplifying financial gain and the objectification of the vulnerable
> ...maybe these giant shifts in scale can be a start to understanding what
> capital is doing. (Thanks Brian and Boris and Felix for trying). I think
> about screens, screen time, the small screen of our smartphones as pieces
> of peasant turf in the fragmented feudal fiefdom, once part of a pastoral
> commons, more public and less exploitable, and now mined and marred by
> proximity to the minute by minute data-extraction of cyber-markets. I guess
> that might go to digital labor, but much is so unconscious that maybe
> better to stay on the giant global events and who is profiting?
>
> molly
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 3:52 PM Brian Holmes 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> First, Strom focuses on something that has been central to this list
>> forever, namely tech. He does so in response to some really simplifying and
>> even spurious talk about technofeudalism (by Varoufakis and others), but
>> also, in response to the rather dogmatic and reductive Marxism displayed by
>> Morozov himself, who btw has been the best net critic publishing in the
>> mainstream press. That last detail suggests that Morozov's dogmatism might
>> be a significant symptom of a larger failure to grasp the present, and for
>> that reason the debate in the New Left Review becomes quite revealing (plus
>> I actually recommend the Morozov article on its own merits as well, there's
>> a lot of interesting stuff in there about various strands of Marxism).
>> Problem is, Morozov does not seem able to grasp his main object of
>> interest, which is the internet and networked societies, with the
>> conceptual tools he is trying to use. He returns to the Book I of Capital
>> paradigm, where an industrial firm makes a widget and competes with other
>> industrial firms to sell it on the market. This is the simplified schema of
>> typical dogmatic Marxism, which ought to have disappeared when the
>> Grundrisse and the notes for the unfinished books of Capital were published
>> in the Sixties and Seventies. But it didn't disappear and here's Morozov
>> defaulting to it! Strom, on the contrary, says that under cybernetic
>> capitalism, the firm acts to shape all the factors that constitute the
>> market, namely distribution, sales, financing, government regulation and
>> security, as well as the wage regime that sustains worker/consumers and,
>> even more crucially, the cultural environment that stimulates and channels
>> consumer desire. That kind of shaping was done throughout the twentieth
>> century - just consider the 

Re: Anne Applebaum

[analoguehorizon]

What are the odds of a left majority parliament in France?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/04/french-socialist-party-agrees-alliance-with-far-left-for-june-elections

On Wed, 4 May 2022 at 02:26, Brian Holmes 
wrote:

> That's brilliant Frederic. I have not followed French politics for years
> and I am glad to hear what you say!
> Here, maybe I am missing it, but it seems there is no parallel.
> Tell more about it, what you think are the strong points.
>
> On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 3:19 PM Frédéric Neyrat  wrote:
>
>>
>> dear Brian,
>>
>> "Archaic communism" is certainly a wrong way to speak about Mélanchon: I
>> mean, it's certainly what Macron thinks, what all the persons who used to
>> vote for the "Parti Socialiste" (sic) in order to set up a neolibreal
>> society think, what many former leftists in Multitudes think (some
>> renegades, to use Badiou's concept), but to call "archaic communist" an
>> anti-nuclear Party promoting one of the most daring ecological programs
>> that exists nowadays is weird, to say the least. That being said, there are
>> many problems in La France Insoumise, but Mélanchon was able to evolve in
>> so many good ways that, well, what do you want? And it seems that a leftist
>> coalition is possible these days for the next elections. That's not bad I
>> think. That's something al least.
>>
>> In solidarity,
>>
>> Frédéric
>> __
>> 
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 3, 2022 at 3:08 PM Brian Holmes 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I think this debate is totally interesting, and I certainly would be
>>> against screening articles for political correctness! The latter can only
>>> be achieved by debate and real understanding.
>>>
>>> What's characteristic about this moment is that established political
>>> positions have collapsed, including that of the socialist Left whose
>>> blindspot has always been communist authoritarianism, whether historical in
>>> the case of the USSR or extant in the Chinese case. This could be an
>>> important chance for everyone to learn something new, and crucially, to
>>> come up with new policies. But it isn't happening, not yet anyway. Instead
>>> we have a "fog of partisanship" in which center left, center right and far
>>> left all rehash their worldviews, even as the old authoritarian demons
>>> reassert themselves and the new challenges of climate change start getting
>>> serious. The victor of the ideological struggle, for the moment, is the
>>> emergent national-populist right, whose core program of deglobalization and
>>> re-shoring is buried under culture wars and the thrill of polarization. We
>>> may soon get the chance to see what that buried agenda gets turned into in
>>> the USA, where the culture-war rhetoric appears primed to score major
>>> electoral victories.
>>>
>>> Under these conditions it becomes harder to categorize and label
>>> individual positions. As in the case of Applebaum, valuable concepts and
>>> assessments are mixed with confusion and self-justification. You have to
>>> simultaneously identify the true parts AND remember the enormous mistakes
>>> that these individuals have made, as well as the horrors perpetrated within
>>> policy networks that they still support. It is so easy for an old Cold
>>> Warrior to talk about the cities bombed during WWII, and still easier to
>>> just forget Fallajuh in Iraq, where the Americans, acting in a rebooted
>>> Cold War mode, committed one of the most murderous acts in human history.
>>> To think there is no danger of another Fallujah is, imho, as naive as to
>>> think that Russia should not be confronted today.
>>>
>>> The article that Michael Benson sent on Applebaum continually makes the
>>> point that she is unable to ascribe any fault to her own side for
>>> generating the fascistic national-populism that so many of her old friends
>>> now embrace. Perhaps the author is keenly aware that the center left is, if
>>> anything, worse on that score. Global neoliberalism and the ardent belief
>>> that borderless commerce would soothe the slumbering authoritarian beast
>>> were the creations of the center-left in the Clinton-Blair-Schroeder years.
>>> Not only did that fail spectacularly with Russia and China, it also failed
>>> with the US, British, French and perhaps other working classes, leaving
>>> them desperate on both the economic and cultural levels, and therefore open
>>> to all kinds of opportunistic rhetoric.
>>>
>>> I was certain that capitalist globalization would ruin national systems
>>> of solidarity, spark a populist backlash and supercharge climate change, so
>>> I opposed it. Now in the US, neither the center nor the far left can even
>>> talk about political economy in any coherent way - the center because it
>>> can't admit abysmal failure, and the socialist left, because it has
>>> accepted its role in the culture war, which is to call the other side
>>> racist pigs and consider that a platform. In France the situation is worse:

The Hackers BBC series

[analoguehorizon]

Haven't seen this posted here. A great short series with Gabriella Coleman.

'Gabriella Coleman investigates one of the most misunderstood cultures of
the modern world.'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0012fjk/episodes/guide
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Re: The Dawn of Everything (very short review)

[analoguehorizon]

Hi Felix,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I've been enjoying listening to various
podcasts and interviews with Wengrow but I haven't got around to the book
yet. LSE have had a seminar series recently on Graeber's work which is
worth checking out. The final seminar is this week -
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/join-david-graeber-tribute-lse-anthropology-friday-seminar-series-tickets-164329216109
You can also find videos from the previous seminars here -
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc8UhtfokLNhzkGgeKvJWVw/featured
The journal focaal has been publishing some texts related to the seminar
series - http://www.focaalblog.com/

Best





On Mon, 6 Dec 2021 at 12:28, Felix Stalder  wrote:

> So, I finished reading "The Dawn of Everything", the new book by David
> Graeber and David Wengrow. In many ways, it's the perfect book for our
> dark historical moment. It's all about historical possibilities, yet not
> in the future, but in the past. Thus, an escape and an inspiration.
> It's an amazing read, so full of detail that's impossible to summarize.
> You really should read it yourself.
>
> I'll just focus on the structure here. The book aims to deconstruct the
> dominant linear narratives of human culture, in which the "agricultural
> revolution" (which wasn't revolution) and the emergence of cities (which
> were frequently used only for seasonal gatherings) inexorably lead to
> inequality, domination, and "the state". There are two conventional
> versions of this story: the loss of freedom/equality (Rousseau, Hariri,
> etc) or the gain of civilization (Hobbes, Diamond, etc). Graeber and
> Wengrow argue, in dizzying archeological and anthropological detail,
> that both are wrong and severely curtail our imagination of social
> potential. Their baseline assumption is that humans since the neolithic
> are our cognitive equals. No more, but also no less intelligent than we
> are, hence also no less capable of making decisions their own lives,
> individually and collectively. So, no more treatment of foragers as
> semi-apes living in small bands, unable to overcome by supposed
> constants like Dunbar's 150 people threshold (after which social
> stratification sets in).
>
> And decisions they made. The historical record reveals a "carnival
> parade" of social forms, most of which do not fit the linear accounts.
> Thus, non-modern societies have something to teach us, because they have
> solved many of the problems we are grappling with. And, indeed,
> historically they have. E.g. they make a strong case that the
> enlightenment notion of personal freedom was first formulated by the
> indigenous critique of European culture, by people like the Wendat
> leader Kandiaronk. To structure the historical diversity of social
> forms, they develop the notion of three sources of freedom: the capacity
> to move away (and be received somewhere else), the capacity to refuse to
> obey commands, and the capacity to collectively remake social relations.
> At the same time, there are three sources of domination: violence
> (sovereignty), knowledge (bureaucracy), and charisma (competitive
> politics). It's easy to be reminded of Max Weber's definition of forms
> of legitimate power (traditional, charismatic, rational) here, but
> Graeber/Wengrow's notion is much more flexible because these sources are
> not mutually exclusive, but rather they can be layered in top of own
> another.
>
> While the three freedoms are related (take away one and the others will
> start to crumble), the sources of domination are not. Often, only one of
> them played an important role, while others were absent. Sometimes two
> were co-present and only in the modern state, all three come together.
> And, this is their political point, they don't need to stay together in
> the future.
>
> While the book is great, it has a glaring hole in it. What is almost
> entirely missing is the discussion of how this "carnival parade" of
> social forms structured the relation to the environment, or, more
> generally, how they were embedded in, and impacted on, the metabolic
> system. While for much of the historical period they cover, this might
> not have been too much of a concern, it is clearly one for us now and if
> we are to remake our social relations, then this will be a key dimension
> to transform. But it would probably be too much to ask from one single
> book, already long enough, to cover everything, even with this title.
>
>
>
> --
> | || http://felix.openflows.com |
> | Open PGP | http://felix.openflows.com/pgp.txt |
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Re: Was cultural Marxism the leading force behind the new world order

[analoguehorizon]

Hi Orsan,

I recently listened to this interview with Quinn Slobodian in the second
half he talks about the developments from Mises to Rothbards Anarcho
Capitalism and it's links to the American Paleocon movement and
subsequently the development of the Alt-Right.

https://www.blubrry.com/thedig/39413662/a-history-of-neoliberalism-with-quinn-slobodian/

I found his new book useful too
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674979529

Best

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 3:34 PM Örsan Şenalp  wrote:

> Dear Ico,
>
> Thanks a lot, this is a very good reply to those at the extreme right and
> conservative side. I wonder how would you make of and counter the
> confirmation of such a crazy position by someone who is a fellow at Mises
> Institute, anarcho-capitalist someone?
>
> Best,
> Orsan
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Re: Troll factories in some shitty St Petersburg office?

[analoguehorizon]

Part of the power ascribed to Neoliberalism is it's valorization in the
theoretical abstractions of the left, which mirrors in many ways how
capitalism is conceptualised as an all encompassing totality rather than a
material process, historically and geographically located.

Terms like neoliberalism are a challenge but it is critical to locate it's
intellectual developments and impacts in historical terms. The project of
the Mont Pelerin Society, the works and influence of the Austrian school of
economics are central intellectual pillars for the development of global
networks of think tanks for the advocacy of 'free market' policy
prescriptions.

In 'Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste' Phillip Mirowski uses data
collected by Bernard Walpen on the growth of Mont Pelerin Affiliated Think
Tanks which is outdated at this stage Fig. 2.1 https://imgur.com/a/aDoUj

You can also check out - The Atlas Network which boasts '475 free-market
organizations in over 90 countries'

https://www.atlasnetwork.org/partners/global-directory

This is the result of concerted effort since the cold war to influence
policy and it has had very real impacts. Heritage, Heartland, Cato have
successfully influence policy in the US. Atlas is a broad church of free
marketeers and includes neoliberals and libertarians. Some libertarian
organisations maintain relationships with extreme right wing networks. It's
hardly a coincidence that members of the Students for Liberty have
repeatedly hosted 'alt right' speakers in universities in US and Europe in
the name of 'free speech'. As Nancy MacLean puts it the neoliberal project
is to put 'Democracy in chains' and I would say they are succeeding.

Mirowski defition of neoliberalism in his postface of the Road to Mont
Pelerin was an eye opener for me.

https://www.google.ie/search?q=mirowski+defining+neoliberalism+postface=utf-8

Bernard Walpens work on MPS is here -

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en_sdt=0%2C5=Bernhard+Walpen%3A+Die+offenen+Feinde+und+ihre+Gesellschaft=

On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 9:02 PM, Eric Beck  wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 18, 2018 at 2:23 PM, Brian Holmes <
> bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> This is the endgame of the neoliberal program for the total makeover of
>> society, which began in the early Seventies with the Powell memo and the
>> Trilateral Commission declaration on "too much democracy." I
>>
>
> Naw. Neoliberalism is not really an institution-conceived and -directed
> thing like you seem to think. To the extent that the term usefully
> describes anything, it would apply to a more or less improvised set of
> policy and political responses to both the economic downturn of 1973-82 and
> worldwide resistance and refusal. I know apres Harvey the left thing to do
> is draw a straight line from the Chicago School to Chile et al., as if all
> 'ruling elites' had to do was devise a program and administer it on the
> world. But that's bad history as well as bad theory and is closer to
> rightwing conspiricizing ("inter-elite conflicts") than Marxist analysis.
>
> Does this bad theory matter ultimately? Probably not, but only because
> people resisting the current world tend to not care when intellectuals (or
> is it soothsayers?) notify them that the endgame is here. Just as the
> intellectual/philosophical reasonings behind neoliberalism came only after
> their policy tenets were implemented, so left conjunctural analysis tails
> popular movement, but usually does it poorly and misses the point.
>
> It is remarkable, though, that you can write mellifluously about Russia
> and Trump and psy-ops etc., but end up not having a single word to say
> about the fact that the fascist US president and his coterie are working on
> many fronts with the Russian state and its offshoots on reviving a
> pan-Western traditionalism that is racist, sexist, antiqueer, and
> eugenicist. That stuff is less sexy than brainwashing is, but it hits
> people where they live and comprises the actual content that's being
> whispered into people's ears.
>
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Re: Return to feudalism

[analoguehorizon]

Excuse the tangential thinking

Protection of property rights and ability to extract rents depend on the
capacity of regulatory apparatus, state or private, to perceive
infringement and enforce those protections. At the same time its important
to make such a spectacle in prosecuting the few that are caught copying and
sharing that it scares enough people into paying. The continued practice of
internet piracy can be considered as one measure of that current regulatory
capacity as it applies to informational goods. Every university pushes
their graduates into the logics of intellectual property. Protection is the
default and piracy is expected, the goal is to make as much cash as
possible before the novelty wears off. Bureaucracy is an essential element
in certifying who can afford to create and enforce protections. If you can
afford to jump through all the hoops then you can probably afford legal
protection. Even when knowledge commons are created, there is no guarantee
that commoners ability to contribute will be sustained through time. Most
licenses are liberal in the sense that they do not distinguish between
types of commercial use. The military industrial complex benefits from
FLOSS just as much as the student developer or entrepreneur. Do
Corporations have greater staying power in their capacity to leverage the
value of open collaboration over time compared to distributed networks of
collaborators? The peer production license is one attempt at redrawing
those boundary lines of who can make commercial use of knowledge commons
but when it comes to property and this goes for copyleft and the commons
too, protection depends on capacity to enforce compliance. I suspect
Digital Commons are far more about avoiding bureaucracy than they are about
protection of property rights. How many technical innovations in FLOSS code
are copied verbatim by proprietary developers and commercialised? How often
are the microsofts of this world held to account for stealing from the
knowledge commons? Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think it happens very often.
Who wants to deal with all the hassle of bureaucracy? Who can afford to
take a case against microsoft or google?

It comes back to the capacity of the regulatory apparatus. I used to be
more involved with free culture activism. I remember a time not so long ago
when people thought the big threat to a free and open internet were the
record and movie industries. Wikileaks and Snowden pulled away the curtain
and revealed a reality far more terrifying. I think this took a lot of
people back. Peoples worst nightmares of the surveillance state are real
and already here. 1984 is already here it's just not evenly distributed.
They just haven't come for you yet. Maybe that is a measure of their
regulatory capacity. Maybe they have a threat model that doesn't see pirate
or hacker transgressions as a threat to established power. Maybe the
powerful are just buying time till AI does the regulation and enforcement
for them. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

My wishful thinking is that the world is big enough that the absurdity and
extremism of this particularly western obsession with property will run
itself into the ground. The tech business model is already such a big pump
and dump hype machine. If inequality keeps going as it is soon enough 1
person will own everything and we'll all be serfs again but remember what
happened to feudal kings. Unless of course the king or whoever it is puts
some kind of drm, malware on everything and threatens to lock up the
planets personal devices, no more memes and cat pics if king Zuckerberg is
in any way threatened.

I'm reminded of De Niro as the terrorist plumber in the movie Brazil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eosrujtjJHA

On 17 September 2017 at 19:39, Morlock Elloi  wrote:

> This meme cannot be repeated often enough (even if one starts to resemble
> RMS).
>
> While esoteric discourses about consequences can be amusing, we really
> need to get back to the root causes. They are not novel, just often
> forgotten.
>
> From https://theconversation.com/the-internet-of-things-is-sendin
> g-us-back-to-the-middle-ages-81435 :
>
> The underlying problem is ownership
>>
>> One key reason we don’t control our devices is that the companies that
>> make them seem to think – and definitely act like – they still own them,
>> even after we’ve bought them. A person may purchase a nice-looking box
>> full of electronics that can function as a smartphone, the corporate
>> argument goes, but they buy a license only to use the software inside.
>> The companies say they still own the software, and because they own it,
>> they can control it. It’s as if a car dealer sold a car, but claimed
>> ownership of the motor.
>>
>> This sort of arrangement is destroying the concept of basic property
>> ownership. John Deere has already told farmers that they don’t really
>> own their tractors but just license the software – so they can’t fix

Re: Nancy Fraser: A Triple Movement? Parsing The Politics...

[analoguehorizon]

Thanks Brian

Just came across some really interesting posts on the use of data
analytics. Linked below.

Anyone who is paying any attention will recognise that we are in
a period of crisis. Those with wealth and power are no exception.
I suspect there is an intentional and pre-emptive push to drive
authouritarian sentiment, to secure power, explicitly alligned with
protecting the interests of 'property' ie. the elite, in the name
of law and order, from the threat of the mob (as Hoppe descibes the
rest of us). I don't think it is such a wild idea to consider that
some people in positions of power and priviledge are willing to act
strategicly in this way. Alliances do not have to be explicit, they
can be an alliance of interests, a gamble in a race for power, they
can work out who ends up on top when they get there. How someone goes
about weighing up the odds well thats where data comes in. More on
that below.

On a side note both Mises and Hayek were sympathethic to fascism and
believed that dictatorships were justified in times of crisis, it
should be no surprise that Neoliberals and Libertairians who worship
them could share those same sympathies. Hoppe is just an extremist
example. His ideas are like hitting a wall the notion of essentially
re-establishing a hi-tech feudalism is just insane.

Hayek once said - "Personally, I prefer a liberal dictator to
democratic government lacking in liberalism"

Some more quotes here - You can find the original sources with google
search -
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/3submo/mises_hayek_on_fascism_authoritarianism_mussolini/

There is no shortage of useful idiots trolling and baiting people on
twitter and the media.
Stoking racial divisions and anti-immigrant sentiment is good old divide
and rule. People are not inherently racist but divisions, the fear of the
other, are being manipulated the question is to what end?

So what do I mean by manipulated.

For a start mid campaign Trump hired Bannon who is now his chief
strategist. Bannon is on the board of Cambridge Analytica their UK
subsidiary was involved in the Brexit campaign and they worked with the
Trump campaign. Jonathan Albright has been doing some really interesting
data analysis. I'm not sure if he can point the finger directly at CA but
nevertheless what he finds reveals that there is sophisticated use of
powerful data analytics to target, track and influence voters including the
use of AI for gaming Google rank, Youtube and so on for political ends.
With two elections in the bag we should assume the worst that this same
kind of high tech manipulation will be deployed for political allies in the
upcoming European elections. After all Le Pen was at Trump towers only last
week.

Start with these 2 posts from  Jonathan Albright in Nov

This first one sets the context -

What’s Missing From The Trump Election Equation? Let’s Start With
Military-Grade PsyOps

https://medium.com/@d1gi/whats-missing-from-the-trump-election-equation-let-s-start-with-military-grade-psyops-fa22090c8c17#.b0ao5jlhl

This second one is the proof of concept.

https://medium.com/@d1gi/the-election2016-micro-propaganda-machine-383449cc1fba#.8ridfqxvw

He has continued with this analysis in subsequent fascinating posts. Read
them all. Amazing graphics.

https://medium.com/@d1gi



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Re: Nancy Fraser: A Triple Movement? Parsing The Politics...

[analoguehorizon]

Thanks Felix this is quite useful

A big issue is the polarising nature of politics being characterised
as left or right.

The right are attacking emancipatory forces in general. They make
no distinction between - liberal currents that gravitated in the
direction of marketization and socialist and socialdemocratic currents
were more likely to align with forces for social protection.

It is all bundled in as progressive and left.

The distinction is important. From the radical left, capitalism is
the cause of social problems and economic change, redistribution
etc are the solution. Liberals don't see capitalism as part of the
problem. Both converge on the emancipatory, the common ground is
gender, multiculturalism etc but they differ when it comes to class.

This becomes extremely divisive for 'progressive' forces as a whole
particularly in the context of two party systems such as in the US or
UK for that matter.

The right accuse progressives of being hypocritical for empty
moralising or 'virtue signalling' when it comes to the interests
of working people. The basis for this is that by an large the
establishment left, Labour and the Democrats went along with a lot of
NeoLiberal policies for the past 30 years that have been disastrous.

The center left made its claims to a moral high ground over the right
based on its support for the interests of liberal emancipatory forces.
The common ground. They can only play that tune and ignore the economy
for so long. At the same time social democratic forces that would
favour a shift away from austerity and neoliberalism were co-opted
into perhaps what they believed was a lesser evil. It is not really
the economic policies that are the target of the right it is the
social and cultural. Whats worse is that the right are cynically using
this populist rhetoric to pit ordinary people against each other
and distract them from the disaster that is the economy. While they
continue to gut the welfare state. What is missing from the picture is
class. What is needed is class solidarity that rejects the divisive
language of the right and works for real economic reform.




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Re: The Meme Wars

[analoguehorizon]

Hello,

I never post here but hey,

I've also been doing a lot of reading over the past month and wanted to
share some of what I've learned. Basically I've been on the internet
forever and somehow never ended up in the libertarian internet. I'm in
Europe too and actual anarchism still has some grounding here. So I mostly
tried to avoid the libertarian stuff until well cant really do that
anymore. I could assume that people know this stuff but then maybe some of
you are like me and prefer the comfort of your own bubble and only now dare
venture beyond wondering wtf is going on. I am definitely among those who
didn't see this coming. I don't mean Trump but the whole cultural turn
towards fascism. If you spend anytime browsing these sites as I have done
over the past months you realise it's huge.

This resurgence of the right is not as some like to portray just a
spontaneous movement of young conservatives having some fun breaking
progressive taboos and speaking their minds. There are elements of that of
course but with some investigation it appears more strategic as the result
of concerted alliance building between extremists both in Europe and the
US. There are movers and shakers they all know each other, read each others
stuff, do some back patting and hang out at the same conferences.

This is essential reading - https://medium.com/return-of-the-reich  I've
returned to it again and again. Read the whole thing. It's mostly focused
on Europe but touches on connections to the US.

For a start in terms of theory and strategy it's fair to point the finger
at an alliance between right libertarians and the far right and to consider
this in terms of the crisis of neoliberalism (Which I will leave to you).
Essentially what they want is the would be NeoLiberal end game if those
sissy Neolibs weren't so socialist. But thankfully there are still a few
pure blooded Aryans with the strength of Odin to do what must be done.

So who has fostered the switch from anti-state libertarianism to an
alliance of libertarianism and fascism that practice entryism.

Hans Hermann Hoppe has explicitly called for libertarians to take power in
order to dismantle democracy and has made efforts over the last 10 years to
build alliances through his Property and Freedom Society. He has also
emphasised the importance of a cultural movement.
http://propertyandfreedom.org/

He is a nasty piece of work to say the least. Really listen to the whole
thing. I mean he really really hates democracy.

What must be done
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_ybi1MeC3c
https://mises.org/library/what-must-be-done-0

In terms of alliances just as a sample -

Richard Spencer spoke about the Alt-Right at the annual PFS conference as
early as 2010
http://propertyandfreedom.org/wp-content/docs/pfs-2010-program-final.pdf

Jared Taylor of American Renaissance attended in 2013.

This is to name just a few alt-right celebs you can find many more listed
both as past speakers - http://propertyandfreedom.org/past-speakers/ or
here http://propertyandfreedom.org/meetings/

What is notable is not just the guests but the lineage. Hoppe is a fellow
of Mises.org  one of the biggest sites for Libertarian thinking on the
web.  The Ludwig von Mises Institute was founded by Lew Rockwell.

For Hoppe the Neoliberals are too socialist. He explains here how after
attending the Mont Pelerin Society(MPS) meetings he felt the need for a
more radical alternative.

Here are Hoppes reflections on the first 5 years of PFS - Its good for the
lineage.
http://libertarianstandard.com/articles/hans-hermann-hoppe/the-property-and-
freedom-society-reflections-after-5-years/

Lew Rockwell also set up another site LewRockwell.com

Hoppe has had a long association with Rockwell and published on the site
since 1999. Youtuber Stefan Molyneux has been writing for Rockwell back as
far as 2005. He started video blogging on Youtube not long after.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/stefan-molyneux/
https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/hans-hermann-hoppe/

If you don't know Molyneux he has over 500,00 subscribers alone to his
Youtube channel and 144 million views and is a major public advocate for
the alt-right. Though he occasionally gets some flack for not being fascist
enough (life is hard like that sometimes)

Stats - https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/stefbot
https://www.youtube.com/user/stefbot

Now I'm not saying Molyneux is working with Hoppe. I have no evidence for
that. Really what I want to point out is that a lot of these people are
essentially coming from the same intellectual culture in and around, the
Mises Institute, Lew Rockwell, PFS and they are all generally aware of each
others work and have broadly shared views. That gives them coherence.

Now these institutes and societies are a bit academic and stuffy so how
does this really connect with the counter culture. This is where people
like Spencer come in but also NRX.

Richard Spencer is really an important person in this whole network