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

Fri Feb 10 17:07:01 CET 2017

Hello Michel,

We had a visiting lecturer Douglas Holmes a few weeks ago who wrote a book
called Fast Capitalism which examined the rise of the far right in Europe
throughout the 1990's he interviewed Le Pen for example. He said something
along these lines, at least as I interpreted, that people tend to see the
far right as something in the past something we have moved on from, but
what is misunderstood is that the emergence of fascism was in some ways
inseparable from the emergence of Liberalism and Socialism, it is part and
parcel of modernity, the elements that fascists draw on and instrumentalise
for their reactionary anti-democratic cause are everywhere part of the make
up of the modern world. In a broad cultural sense we are still collectively
working through, both unconsciously and consciously, the enlightenment and
counter enlightenment. Listening to the lectures of liberal political
philosopher Isaiah Berlin, he presents a strong argument in support of
this. The struggle between the forces of the enlightenment and
counter-enlightenment were incredibly productive, in the progressive sense
in that it opened up great scope for debate and exploration of what it
means to be human in the modern world, giving birth to so much art and the
social sciences, but those same tendencies, the importance of culture vs
nature also gives birth to the comparison of cultures, the ranking of
cultures, the privileging of cultures, the sanctity of culture. We rush to
the defence of those marginalised by the rough reductionist mechanics of
'western civilisation' but the claim of the extreme right is that the same
respect be afforded to conserve the culture of the privileged or at least
their mythic appropriation and re-construction of it. They claim western
cultural and technological superiority is evolution at work an essential
expression of their identity and that "nature" should be let off the leash.
In this sense they are essentialist and vitalists and find common cause
with the survival of the fittest, might is right logics of
Libertarians/ancaps.They share the belief that authority is not rooted in
the constructions the rational or man made which risks critical scrutiny,
rather authority is located 'natural law' or in the mystical the mythical,
beyond the reach of reason or man made law, here is the extreme rights
obsession with new age spiritualism and the occult. The man and machine are
subservient and must always work in the service of myth. Its a pretty dark
view of human beings to say the least but it should be clear how they can
appropriate and mobilise certain cultural tendencies that normally are
considered benign. The transcendent Hero, the Superman, the Warrior for
example.

Berlin's lectures do not look so much at contemporary fascism as much as
the ideological roots in the counter-enlightenment, Vico, Harmann, Herder
and then De Maistre who he particularly terms a proto fascist. In the 3
lectures on culture he follow Vico to Harmann. Then there are two other
lectures one on Harmann and De Maistre.

http://mediapub.it.ox.ac.uk/feeds/129062/audio.xml

On 10 February 2017 at 07:41, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>
wrote:

> Dear Kevin,
>
> Thank you so much for this perspective, I wholly agree and I want to
> commend you especially for your efforts in knowing the dynamics of the
> opposite camp, as I would not have the time to do this. I urge you to keep
> on working on this track, and to become a real expert in this, god knows we
> need people like you willing to do this. We would also welcome your
> perspectives and writings on the p2p and CT blogs, and you will have seen
> george por's proposal for a political and policy oriented commons
> newsletter,
>
> I want to make a little point of localism, and Occupy; obviously, at least
> for me, it doesn't work to critique them from the outside as many
> post-Marxists do, and seeing them as the enemy either. These are both great
> and massive social mobilisations, moving into a necessary but not
> sufficient direction. Localized initiatives are not bad, just insufficient,
> swarm based mobilizations are not bad, just insufficient. At the same time,
> for those who have a more integrative understanding and understand 'power'
> and 'institutions' cannot be ignored, it's cleary not enough, and it is
> important to also point that out.
>
> One point here is that recently at the P2P Foundation I have been pointing
> at the need for our language to reflect this. So I have been introducing,
> in the context of our work on the cosmo-local DGML based forms of physical
> production, to stress, not localism, but the 'subsidiarity of material
> production' instead. I.e. we need a lot more local production, but always
> also in a trans-national framework.
>
> If ever you had some energy to maintain a newsletter of the kind george
> and I are wishing for, that would cover political commons convergences like
> the ECA, the assembly of the commons that are emerging, the policy work
> being done in so many urban settings,
>
> I would put a lot of my energy of assembling such info in a way that would
> be accessible to the editor of such a newsletter,
>
> we really need this, but at p2p-f, we are overwhelmed with our existing to
> do lists,
>
> Michel
>
> Michel
>
>
>
>
>
> <<<From: Holy Mountain <kev.flanagan at gmail.com>
> To: P2P Foundation mailing list <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>
> Cc: "staccotroncoso at p2pfoundation.net"
>         <staccotroncoso at p2pfoundation.net>, Ann Marie Utratel
>         <amu444 at gmail.com>, George Pór <george.por at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [P2P-F] Reflections on Trump,      and the role of the commons
>         as an alternative
> Message-ID:
>         <CACpSwUdZqSw4ACPO1VXL1B7s3XO1aELUz09My4yeFuUc-zbn2A at mail.gm
> ail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>
> 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/Nazi
> s%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.
>
>
> --
> 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
Phone: +353 87 743 5660
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