Re: <nettime> The Left Needs a New Strategy

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 11:54 PM Brian Holmes <[email protected]> wrote:

Perhaps this thing called the Left exists in a world where actions have consequences.

Or perhaps the Left has too long lingered in its own beautiful realm of theory only to find that the far right has guns and are willing to use them to take power.

That would be a good reason to have a strategy.

Agreed

Many situations today require it.

...*may* require it! ..more and more...or less and less depending on which side organized forces like National Guard and Capitol Police are on....we are now dependent on them to keep democratic institutions which rest their success upon delicate ideas of 'civil society'

Consider a New York Times article datemarked Jan. 8, by a German woman named Anna Sauerbrey, under the title "Far-Right Protesters Stormed Germany’s Parliament. What Can America Learn?"

The Reichstag wasn't really stormed, it turns out, but Sauerbrey claims that QAnon and similar practices are on a threatening rise in Germany. According to her we should learn that you can't negotiate with a fringe that has gone aggressively nuts. Instead you have to crack down with force. Apparently the German secret services are now tracking AfD members personally and they've got an eye on people organizing anti-mask movements too. She puts it on the level of friend or enemy:

"Of course, attempts to win voters back, to wrestle them from the grip of the cult, must never stop. But there are no policies and no recognition politics we could offer people who adhere to a cult. Instead, to protect our democracies, we must watch them, contain them, and take away their guns."*

It is a conundrum as the State and its forces are a problem...I've been thinking about The Media's role in fomenting anger...but, I, for one, fully accept and support the FBI going after and arresting the ruffians who were in the Capitol building threatening our elected officials. I also fully support 20,000 National Guard being in Washington DC to protect the inauguration. If right wingers come there with guns to hurt our *elected officials* then they should be arrested and if they resist, perhaps wounded...I am not a gun person by any means, but they have NO right....

So, this is exactly like the police repression of the German 1960s -- except the target today would be the extreme right at the very moment when it's threatening bloody murder.

yep

I don't know anything about it, and I'd love to hear German people tell more.

sure...the unfortunate ramping up of right-wing groups, as I understand it has ramped up...in Europe...under Trump and with Brexit stuff...is an outcome of easier NCTs and social media...?

Here in the US, a majority of liberals and leftists have suddenly gotten the brilliant idea that it might be necessary to do something

collective about gangs of delusionary racist dudes with guns.

Brian I take the sarcasm here, but haven' the majority of liberals and *lefties* been doing this for years with anti-gun legislation and trying to teach restorative justice and trying to preach peace? That's collective action...at least putting other values on the *table*

In terms of defense, Antifa has been fantastic so far, but, uh, what if some more former marines go into serious action? Does the example of the 1930s offer any guidance? What exactly should we do right now?

Good questions...how far will or does the infiltration go and will our police forces actually step in to protect us from the fall of civil society?

Answering questions like this is crazy, when they are suddenly asked point blank, as they are today, constantly. You can't answer without a strategy.

I support impeachment,

closure of media channels to hate groups,

imprisonment of seditionists and seizure of arms stockpiles.

May I add...removing the Republican representatives who aided and abetted the coup attempt?

Limiting the tenure of those voted against the election results without legitimate proof of fraud.

Removal of (if at Capitol) and database of...cops & military with connection to far right groups

I've written many times that far right uprisings are a clear and present danger.

There are so many angles to this deplorable story that one approach cannot cover them all. is this a kind of affective dissonance?

The Left can help develop a collective will in society.

How about, the Left can help develop 'collective will' - can there be intersectionality in collective will? Can we agree on what we are striving for and strive from different positions?

It would be insane to let fascists take over as a point of anti-state pride.

They can only take over by ideas and the force to enforce them...their state v current state. I know which I choose.

At the same time, friend-enemy relationships are intrinsically deadly.

You don't want to become either the State or its Enemy. Life is elsewhere. You have to oppose fascism collectively - I mean nationally, in a broad consensus - and deviate *at the same time*. You have to fight back with institutional power and at the same time, turn away toward social creativity.

I've lost you in 'social creativity'? This term is vague to me. like 'body positivity' which i just learned about.

There is an obscene reaction in the US because of the massive unstoppable revolution coming from people of color and the young, who've had it with the system.

Let's qualify that as have had it with 'inequities in the system'...'the system' is still to unilateral....are we taking electoral college, or capitalism as a system or all of these...?

The only way to get out of the death spiral we're in now is to shift the rules of the game, invent a new economy, change the relationship to nature and above all to each other. People are starting to see that even if doing this takes a whole lotta time, there is no alternative. The world is too damn precarious. I think the pandemic has brought a root-level realization of these ideas.

Much time to think has emerged from the limitations of pandemic life.

At the same time it has revealed the extraordinary intersection of all sectors of society, and shown how much we all depend on others. Something quite good could come out of this moment -

If we could ever develop a strategy, a shareable strategy.

hmmm - ok - maybe...but we'd have to relinquish individual control mechanisms first...agree to listen and to learn from each other and to develop the patience that it takes to understand ideas and opinions different from our own....Americans, esp right wing Americans have "issues" with control. We have binary conflicts of black and white because of issues of control. This entire melee of this last week is about control and the willingness of others to control without democracy. I'd take democracy, capitalism, and the electoral college over the far-right any day. I only hope that our police and our National Guard don't turn their guns onto a democratic system which has begun to change by virtue of the vote....as leadership like Ocasio-Cortez and Stacy Abrams have shown.

Molly

BH
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