Re: <nettime> Bridging the Gap between Technology and Progressive Politics in Europe

[carlo von lynX <lynX@time.to.get.psyced.org>]

Late reply, but somebody brought it up only now...

On Tue, Dec 04, 2018 at 08:37:46AM +0100, Geert Lovink wrote:
> Only an internal group of elite members was involved in the decision-making process (using the platform called Rousseau).

Incorrect. “Rousseau” is like internal.diem25.org — a voting system that lets everybody participate, but the elites decide what questions are put to vote and they decide whether they like the results or prefer to tweak them (since there is no way to check).

Both platforms have evolved out of the experience with liquid democracy which is not suitable for this purpose because everyone can promote the issues to vote upon and all voting is transparent so there can be no final control by any elites. In other words, liquid feedback was too democratic for them, so they invented something less democratic.

> In the previous decade, the left has lost a connection to both vital elements. It neither understood the organizational dimension of the internet, nor did it find ways to reinvent the relation to the local. What lessons are to be learned from the ‘unconventional’ way the right-wing populism in Europe has gained visibility and influence?

That is also incorrect. M5S was not a right-wing movement at the beginning — it still is a mixed cauldron of populism, which by nature of being populist tends towards the right. Also, M5S replicated the success recipe of the Swedish Pirates, described in Falkvinge’s book “Swarmwise”. If you read that, you’ll see how they essentially copied the whole strategy — they merely removed the little democracy that Rick still left had in his approach. The Swedish Pirates later rejected Falkvinge’s method and became a mostly left-leaning democratic political party, because they did not like to become a populist movement.

Internet-based democratic movements have been invented by the political left, the Pirates to be exact. The reasons why the Pirates have only succeeded in Czechia may have nothing to with it… after all there are tremendous powers out there that do not want successful leftist movements and have all the tools like Facebook-based psychological manipulation to make sure nothing that doesn’t go in line with their interests gets anywhere. This will probably also apply to DiEM25.

> Facebook is perceived as the number one enemy, yet everyone keeps using it.

Because you can't beat the cloud on market competition grounds. You have to regulate it.

> In the meanwhile, can we develop a Five Year Plan to organize the mass exodus? Can open source still help us in this effort to develop alternatives, or has it proven to be too nerdy, too far away from people, several decades after these principles were first launched?

Yes we can and yes it can, and I described it already several times, so I just leave you with a write-up on the matter:  https://youbroketheinternet.org/programme

Until we deploy such regulation, open source will be more a part of the problem (as in the cases of Android and iOS) than of the solution. There is nothing the anarchist free world can do about these developments, just like nothing has been fruitful since we first got together at unlike-us gatherings. We need LAWS.

Geert, feel free to call me up and talk things over with me next time you write up something like that.  ;)  Remember the heated debate between Elijah and me in 2012? Well, seven years later it should be pretty clear who was right and who was wrong.

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: