[P2P-F] Statement on the P2P Foundation

[Kevin Carson]

It grieves me to write this, but I feel I have no choice but to do so
if I want to be able to live with myself in good conscience.

I remember some time ago that Michel posted something on the P2P
Foundation email list reflecting the mindset of Jordan Peterson and/or
Quillette (I forget the details) and expressed my negative reaction to
it, and didn't think any more about it afterwards because I didn't
notice anything further along those lines on-list and the Blog has
also apparently steered clear of such issues.

But earlier this year a comrade at C4SS.org informed me that such
material -- alt-right or "Intellectual Dark Web"-adjacent -- was
appearing on the P2PF Facebook group, which I don't follow because I'm
not on Facebook. They suggested I might want to think about how
closely I associated myself with the Foundation, and avoid any public
interviews or guest articles that promoted them. That made me uneasy
enough that I minimized the amount of P2PF material I shared on
Twitter and limited it to the stuff I considered genuinely
indispensable, and any material I saw on the Blog I shared from the
original source rather than the P2PF Blog reprint as I would have
earlier.

I still wasn't prepared to make a sharp, public break because I had no
idea just how toxic things had gotten.

But in the past couple of days it's come to my attention that the
Facebook group is rife with tropes from the Intellectual Dark Web,
along with explicit promotions of Quillette, Aero and the like as
antidotes to "Political Correctness" and "identity politics." Michel
and others have also explicitly iterated common alt-right "reverse
hierarchies" tropes suggestive that those in movements like Black
Lives Matter and Me Too, as the common bar room refrain puts it,
"don't just want to be equal, they want to be superior!" The
wrong-headed (and just plain incorrect) assessment that "identity
politics" promotes disunity in economic- or class-based movements also
makes a predictable appearance, as does the spurious claim that these
things "push people farther right."

On top of everything else, those who have called out Michel and others
for the direction they are taking have been banned from the Facebook
group, and have been subjected behind the scenes to campaigns
harassing and attempting to discredit them. This is despicable.

As I noted at the outset, this is very hard for me. Michel has shown
me great kindness in the past and promoted my work on the P2PF Blog in
ways that have been invaluable. Aside from such personal
considerations, a great deal of earlier work by Michel, Franco
Iacomella and others is still of monumental importance, and I will
continue to cite it in my own work when appropriate.

Nevertheless, I cannot continue to associate myself with an
organization whose internal culture has been overrun and contaminated
with such ideas, and where such ideas are actively promoted by the
leadership. You are giving aid and comfort to a toxic ideology that
came to prominence thanks to utterly wretched movements, hatched in
the bowels of 8chan, like GamerGate and ComicsGate, which proliferated
on social media and in turn gave birth to the alt right, and are now
being mainstreamed by Quillette, the "Intellectual Dark Web," and
pundits ranging from Reason's Robby Soave and Cathy Young on the right
to people like Aimee Terese, Jimmy Dore and Michael Tracey on the
"Dirtbag Left."

For this reason, I publicly disassociate myself from the Peer-to-Peer
Foundation, Michel Bauwens and anyone else engaged in the activities I
described above. I will unsubscribe from the Foundation's email list
and no longer promote its content on social media. When I do cite
their valuable older work in future publications, I will always add a
footnoted disclaimer stating my views on the course they have chosen
to take.

I urge Michel and others sharing his views to strongly rethink the
direction in which they are headed. The possibilities of Wikileaks,
and its accomplishments in 2010-11 in helping to launch the Arab
Spring, M15 and Occupy, were of inestimable value. Julian Assange
chose to undermine and compromise Wikileaks by hijacking it as a
personal marketing and propaganda vehicle, using it to promote his
anti-"SJW" agenda and his alt right allies, and pursuing a personal
grudge by intervening in support of the GOP in the American 2016
election. This was an act of utter selfishness and amounted to
sabotage of Wikileaks' potential. I believe that Michel's embrace and
promotion of the ideas he has chosen to identify with have discredited
and sabotaged the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives, and
seriously undermined its mission.

To repeat, I beg you to rethink this and take action to restore your
credibility. If nothing else, this is required by the P2P ethos
itself, and by the stake many people and groups not represented in
your inner circle have had in the success in your original mission.

If anyone still affiliated with the P2P Foundation shares my concerns,
I ask you to make your voice heard and use your influence to the best
of your ability within the organization, to rescue it from this
cancer.

Sincerely,
Kevin A. Carson

-- 
Kevin Carson
Senior Fellow, Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org

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