<nettime> a review of http://www.zombie-and-mummy.org/

[eyescratch <eyescratch@share.dj>]

Slowly the letters fill in and glow with anticipation. It is 
zombie-and-mummy.org that is filtering into existence. Pick a letter, 
you may ask? No - pick a story. 8-bit strips enshrined in the highly 
modern <iframe> tag - an acquiescence in the new navigator 7 from the 
explorer world.

Taking Trotsky at his digital best we may observe:

--->
The fundamental feature of these approchements and similitudes lies 
in their completely ignoring the material foundation of the various 
currents, that is, their class nature and by that token their 
objective historical role. Instead they evaluate and classify 
different currents according to some external and secondary 
manifestation, most often according to their relation to one or 
another abstract principle which for the given classifier has a 
special professional value. Thus to the Roman pope Freemasons and 
Darwinists, Marxists and anarchists are twins because all of them 
sacrilegiously deny the immaculate conception. To Hitler, liberalism 
and Marxism are twins because they ignore 'blood and honor". To a 
democrat, fascism and Bolshevism are twins because they do not bow 
before universal suffrage. And so forth.
<---


Of course this is not a game of zero and one, but of two zeros 
guiding us with the digital relativism Trotsky warned us about. We 
scroll left, the relativist side glance being upon us till the bitter 
end. Most likely the punch-line is missing. Being separate these two 
entities never get in each other's way, just their own. Then they 
compute in combination, the lifeless quality of their distinction 
remaining. With each passing week, the plot sickens to a new cutesy 
analogy of errors.

Trotsky continues, uninterrupted:

--->
Undoubtedly the currents grouped above have certain common features. 
But the gist of the matter lies in the fact that the evolution of 
mankind exhausts itself neither by universal suffrage, not by 'blood 
and honor,' nor by the dogma of the immaculate conception. The 
historical process signifies primarily the class struggle; moreover, 
different classes in the name of different aims may in certain 
instances utilize similar means. Essentially it cannot be otherwise. 
Armies in combat are always more or less symmetrical; were there 
nothing in common in their methods of struggle they could not inflict 
blows upon each other.
<---

For the creators it must be a weekly purging of interest that guides 
this cross-section of their guise. Yes, the word comedy floats off 
into the distance in this lingering bitterness of weekly subroutine. 
When, o, when will the times get better? Well, what do those palms 
say in this studious grip?

Trotsky, unabated:

--->
If an ignorant peasant or shopkeeper, understanding neither the 
origin nor the sense of the struggle between the proletariat and the 
bourgeoisie, discovers himself between the two fires, he will 
consider both belligerent camps with equal hatred. And who are all 
these democratic moralists? Ideologists of intermediary layers who 
have fallen, or are in fear of falling between the two fires. The 
chief traits of the prophets of this type are alienism to great 
historical movements, a hardened conservative mentality, smug 
narrowness, and a most primitive political cowardice. More than 
anything moralists wish that history should leave them in peace with 
their petty books, little magazines, subscribers, common sense, and 
moral copy books. But history does not leave them in peace. It cuffs 
them now from the left, now from the right. Clearly - revolution and 
reaction, Czarism and Bolshevism, communism and fascism, Stalinism 
and Trotskyism - are all twins. Whoever doubts this may feel the 
symmetrical skull bumps upon both the right and left sides of these 
very moralists.
<---

And moralists, they are, these two, risen from the deepest recesses 
of everybody else. By their plaintiff action they cursor our 
attention to the tides of self-delusion. Then the kitch starts 
dropping in. Every Monday.

-- 
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            N!C3 S!MULC4ST STR34M!!!  ---  hTTp://share.dj

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