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

Fri Feb 10 17:08:34 CET 2017

George I have a huge amount of work at the moment with college but do keep
me in the loop and if can I will contribute.

On 10 February 2017 at 16:07, Holy Mountain <kev.flanagan at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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 <087%20743%205660>
>

-- 
Skype: kev.flanagan
Phone: +353 87 743 5660
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