<nettime> Notes on the counter-revolution 2

[Keith Hart <keith@thememorybank.co.uk>]

   I came across these anecdotal scribbles recently. They were written in
   the context of September 11th, the War on Terror and the invasion of
   Iraq which began while I was teaching in the US. I was led by various
   encounters and developments to reflect on whether American society was
   descending into fascism. The style is historical generalization and a
   sort of ethnography of what I found in daily life there. The obvious
   reason for posting these pieces now is that they provide one point of
   comparison between the world today and the events of 2001-2003 and
   especially a chance to contemplate concretely their historical
   relationship. Some of these pieces were posted on nettime then and
   provided a rare opportunity to meet Dan Wang in Chicago.

   The idea of what I might call the long counter-revolution expresses a
   sense that since 1945 the world has seen cumulative strides towards
   greater freedom for many and this poses a challenge to methods of
   command and control by governments and corporations. The end of the
   Cold War produced, at least on the surface, a belle epoque in which the
   balance between freedom and oppression was temporarily lifted in the
   former's favor: freedom from nuclear terror, reduced fear of state
   apparatuses, the internet, greater mobility of people, goods and money,
   the emergence of China and India as capitalist powers.

   September 11th enabled the Bush regime to prepare the way for Trump and
   for other despotic rulers round the world, so effectively that Cheney
   can now come out as a liberal and some commentators pine for W's
   "normality" Now the economic, legal and political achievements of the
   postwar decades are being rolled back by a constellation of social
   forces bent on establishing another thousand year Reich that this time
   will last, unless progressives come up with more effective political
   strategies than we have for decades now. The roots of American Fascism
   Mks 1 and 2 lie in the 90s when Clinton, Blair and the Eurocrats made
   their Faustian pact with a rampant finance capital.

   But here the focus is on 2001-2003. There is an Academia discussion for
   three weeks from March 21st at

   https://www.academia.edu/s/�notes-on-the-counter-revolution.

   Keith

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