[P2P-F] Reflections on Trump, and the role of the commons as an alternative

Thu Feb 9 16:21:51 CET 2017

I completely agree Michel with your analysis of how the left have been
co-opted into supporting the neoliberal agenda. The other trend on the more
radical left over the last 30 years has been the rejection of parliamentary
politics in favour of localism. The risks of a puritan anti-state left
politics are that they have no organised opposition to challenge the
capture of the state by reactionary right wing forces. If the left is not
occupying those seat the right will.

Liberals have successfully co-opted aspects of the left into the
institutions of capitalism, with the collapse of the soviet union, the end
of history, the establishment left that includes academics without a
serious alternative assumed liberalism was a given and committed to working
for change from within a liberal framework.

No one expected a resurgence of fascism. Spend any time researching this
and you quickly realise it is huge. It is important to think about the
young people who are being recruited to extreme right, what paths have lead
them to participate in these communities.

The extreme right have not had the privilege of access to government,
academic institutions or mainstream media and so they waste no time trying
to get papers published or to lobby governments to support their policies,
no they are entirely focused on recruiting online not through reason but
through myth, tapping into young peoples anxieties and offering them
insurgent narratives, vision and mythology.

Where do young people go to learn about the world. Youtube. The extreme
right have made really effective use of this as a medium for recruitment.
Unlike academics, politicians so on who mostly talk to each other. The
right engage with these young people in 'debate'.

The problem is also the narrative. Liberals and the left offer complex
narratives. Liberal politics has become a bureaucratic and there are
establishment gatekeepers. The extreme right offer simple narratives with
naive hero myths which appeal to young people who the right claim are
raised being taught left politics of victimhood and blame in universities.

The promise of figures like Trump is that he does not care for checks and
balances, he is the image of the authoritarian who overcomes, the
complexities of politics, the cynical power plays of bureaucrats and
experts, he does this by sheer force of charismatic will, cheered on by his
followers who have simply lost patience with the status quo.

This is the modus operandi of fascism.

This has emboldened the far right, those who previously entertained these
ideas in private for fear of social censure are coming out and organising.

Berger is an expert on online extremism and has done significant work on
how Isis use social media to recruit and organise at scale. In this video
he explains how the far right are using the same tactics but do not face
the same kinds of limitations as Isis. He talks about the relative impact
of small groups on shaping public discourse. He is not at all convinced
that western governments have the capacity to effectively deal with this
turn.

We are looking at highly organised fascist recruitment and propaganda
machine. It cannot be tolerated and must face full resistance that means
alliances of everyone committed to democratic process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65YJmfRbbPw

https://cchs.gwu.edu/sites/cchs.gwu.edu/files/downloads/Nazis%20v.%20ISIS%20Final_0.pdf

Part of that is offering real alternative political imaginaries, and making
those imaginaries available and accessible to young people is essential.
What would a popular alternative movement look like? One that moves beyond
the horizontalism of Occupy and aims effectively to get hands dirty, to
take power and put it to work for the kind of world we want to live in.

On 8 February 2017 at 15:38, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>
wrote:

> ok, let's see if any contributors/coordinators emerge , will check your EE
> resource,
>
> Michel
>
> On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 10:04 PM, George Pór <george.por at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> My publishing capacity is fully taken by, at least for now, till I design
>> myself out of leading Enlivening Edge <http://www.enliveningedge.org>,
>> where we (re-)publish stuff like David's "Can Capitalism Survive Without
>> the Commons? What Can Bind People Together
>> <http://www.enliveningedge.org/views/can-capitalism-survive-without-commons-can-bind-people-together-beyond-minimal-social-civic-ties/>
>> ?"
>>
>> However, if someone on this list has appetite and capacity to launch
>> something, I'd be happy to feed it with pointers and occasional editorials,
>> me too.
>>
>> george
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 2:56 PM, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> hi george,
>>>
>>> yes , that would certainly be useful, but to be honest, I'm not sure
>>> that either I or my colleagues have the time and space to add another
>>> medium to our work, about from commons transition dot org ...
>>>
>>> if you were to launch something, I'd be happy to feed it with pointers
>>> and occasional editorials and such,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 9:30 PM, George Pór <george.por at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Michel,
>>>>
>>>> Fully agree.
>>>> Let's see what responses your Theses on Trump will get.
>>>>
>>>> Wouldn't it be useful to have a new publication focused on supporting
>>>> the work with "younger staffers, working with think thanks, organizing
>>>> workshops with people in political movements that are open to commons ideas
>>>> ..."?
>>>>
>>>> george
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 2:22 PM, Michel Bauwens <
>>>> michel at p2pfoundation.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> dear George,
>>>>>
>>>>> yes, I agree with you, we have to operate at both these levels, and
>>>>> I'm guessing the grassroots level dialogues are already happening,
>>>>>
>>>>> but changing the thinking of people who have been working with one
>>>>> particular paradigm  all their lives is much more difficult, if not almost
>>>>> impossible <g>, so I would suggest working through younger staffers,
>>>>> working with think thanks, organizing workshops with people in political
>>>>> movements that are open to commons ideas ...
>>>>>
>>>>> personally, I am also very happy with the progress of the Assemblies
>>>>> of the Commons in France, though most are not focusing on this political
>>>>> work, but they are in dialogue with municipal officials for their projects;
>>>>> and initiatives like the Commons Transition Coalition in Melbourne. The
>>>>> work of the European Commons Assembly which continues and develops after
>>>>> the meeting, is also heartening, and simliar initiatives are under way in
>>>>> germany, finland and the netherlands I heard
>>>>>
>>>>> I think a good question to ask is: what do they need that is related
>>>>> and compatible with the commons approach, and is there any way that we can
>>>>> assist them, so that goodwill and dialogue become possible,
>>>>>
>>>>> the UK is a bit of an outlier no, more like the USA than Europe ?
>>>>> apart from open and platform coops, I'm not hearing much that is
>>>>> specifically commons oriented  ? Glad to be proven wrong though <g>
>>>>>
>>>>> Michel
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ***
>>>>>
>>>>> Message: 2
>>>>> Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2017 13:30:22 +0000
>>>>> From: George Pór <george at community-intelligence.com>
>>>>> To: P2P Foundation mailing list <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>
>>>>> Cc: commonswatch at lists.p2pfoundation.net, Anna Betz
>>>>>         <anna at enliveningedge.org>
>>>>> Subject: Re: [P2P-F] Reflections on Trump,      and the role of the
>>>>> commons
>>>>>         as an alternative
>>>>> Message-ID:
>>>>>         <CAHrdgzVwxXGNB3C6owYyDe51TFtNLZTcpOSHc38v+xCoDPn=UA at mail.gm
>>>>> ail.com>
>>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>>>>
>>>>> hi Michel,
>>>>>
>>>>> Huge thank you for the clear and a concise articulation of what I've
>>>>> been
>>>>> thinking in the last few weeks!
>>>>>
>>>>> > The p2p/commons approach has a crucial role to play in making the
>>>>> Sanders
>>>>> coalition more realistic, by offering new strategies for
>>>>> re-industrialization which are not based on going back to the old
>>>>> models,
>>>>> but on going forward towards a cosmo-local model of production, which
>>>>> offers solutions not just for the US workers, but for the populations
>>>>> of
>>>>> the world, and through its stress on mutualization and the commons, has
>>>>> solutions for the ecological and climate crisis.
>>>>>
>>>>> The question I hold is, how can we most effectively play that role?
>>>>> Isn't it by opening dialogues, both at the thought leadership and the
>>>>> grassroots levels?
>>>>>
>>>>> *solidarity!*
>>>>>
>>>>> george
>>>>> --
>>>>> Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at:
>>>>> http://commonstransition.org
>>>>>
>>>>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
>>>>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>>>>
>>>>> <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
>>>>> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>>>>
>>>>> #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at:
>>> http://commonstransition.org
>>>
>>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
>>> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>>
>>> <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
>>> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>>
>>> #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at:
> http://commonstransition.org
>
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>
> <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>
> #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/
>
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Skype: kev.flanagan
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