Anthony

@[email protected] @[email protected] Though I’m probably a bit older than you both, occupy was also the moment where I first engaged in a protest for a sustained period of time and then continued to do so after. There was a lot of incoherence around occupy that took me years to get my head around. But I’ve come to believe a totally horizontal, leaderless movement organized through social media platforms is dead on arrival. I thought I’d throw a few observations into the mix if that’s OK.

It was pointed out above that such a thing is like shouting “NO!” at the government; I fully agree with that. Bevins argues (at least in interviews; haven’t had a chance to read his book yet) that these spontaneous NOs can be dangerous: if they go far enough they can create a power vacuum that the most prepared (read: organized and ruthless) forces quickly move to fill. This is the real story of what happened in several countries during the Arab Spring, by Bevins’s read (I take it). So while folks are excitedly believing they’re participating in the birth of a new form of democracy, what they’re really doing is inflicting a dark Shock Doctrine on themselves. I have to confess that I, too, did not see this at the time.

There must be some kind of theory of change, pre-organizing to build power, and a clear-eyed recognition of the situation to avoid these DOA movements and have some hope of bringing lasting, meaningful change for a lot of people. Much of the US left (such as it is) seems allergic to looking reality squarely in the face. I’d almost go so far as saying there should not be attempts at lefty mass protest until such power is built, such theory is developed, and widespread recognition of our situation, grounded in reality, exists, exactly because of the danger that actors with very different goals from ours are better positioned to take advantage of the chaos mass protests generate.

Personally I’d refer to (what used to be) social media as “surveillance media”. The form the modern US state takes is public-private partnership, with many state functions dispatched by private corporations and actors. Though Musk clearly has his own aims, he is almost surely playing a state role with Twitter not too different from the one he plays through SpaceX. So, though social media’s always been corporate mediated, I’d add that recognizing the role of public-private partnerships in the modern US context leads to the probability that Twitter has become something else. In that view, the finances are almost irrelevant, and LOLing about this or that number going down or this or that many advertisers leaving the platform amounts to copium. If Twitter really is performing useful functions for the state then it will continue to exist no matter how much money it “loses”; failing to perform those functions is what would put it in jeopardy, not revenue figures.

Yes.

Right! And the US Democratic party seems to be obsessed with means testing, so that many times when there is government assistance available people who need it are forced to subject themselves to intrusive surveillance, frequent paperwork and sometimes shifting requirements, etc. It’s rare (in my experience) to hear anyone critique this state of affairs, let alone make substantive moves to change it.

@[email protected] You don’t have any idea what I’m interested in.

I am definitely not interested in being condescended to, that’s for sure, so bye.

@[email protected] Thank you for supplying the “someone has to pay for it” canard, which is one of many reasons the US doesn’t have a functional left politics. Neoclassical economics brain poisoning.

@[email protected] I did not draw a dichotomy nor make a universal definition. I stated that the left is concerned with freedom from domination, which is undeniably true. What else do words like “equality” and “equity” mean? I did not state or suggest that this was the only concern, but it’s clearly an important one.

@[email protected] One way to think about “the left” is that it values freedom from domination. Who in the US is fighting to reduce the level of domination we experience in important areas of life (health care, education, food, housing to name a few)? Should we really have to pay and put ourselves into debt–thereby becoming dominated–to go to school, live somewhere, or maintain our health? Even the so-called left in the US supports this arrangement generally; at best they fight over the details, not the structure itself.

@[email protected] In 1995 I worked at a company with several active web sites. Early days of the web, very important to the company. I was hired to take care of the hardware and software running the existing web sites and help in developing new ones.

One day I walked into my office, which had the production web server in it, carrying a Diet Coke (I was young and inexperienced). I opened the Diet Coke and it spewed an epic fountain right onto the production server. It was as if that server had a gravitational pull that drew all liquid towards it. I panicked and started unplugging every cable in sight, thinking this was better than risking a hardware-destroying short.

Needless to say the web sites were down for awhile. I believe I managed to save the hardware from myself though.