Re: <nettime> CfP: Critical reflections on pandemic politics: left-wing,

On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 6:06 PM Ted Byfield <[email protected]> wrote:

This kind of 'concern trolling'–esque appropriation of leftish discourse in the service of rightish agendas is becoming pervasive in the US at least — and elsewhere, I'm sure, albeit with less detail.

As with most of these discursive tendencies it's first and foremost impersonal, which can make it hard to counter without opening oneself up to charges of relying on ad hominem. I think that helps to account for its rise as a rhetorical strategy: it 'works' mainly because it lays basis for a scripted form of pseudo-argument — pious platitudes about science, openness, debate, democracy, whatever. But, as I think you suggest, Florian, it would be a serious mistake to see it as merely rhetorical: it has concrete consequences.

It might be useful to think of this turn in terms of rightist 'culture-jamming,' 'overidentification,' and related ideas.

Cheers,
Ted

On 20 Jan 2022, at 7:00, Florian Cramer wrote:

>> - Government propaganda and censorship around lockdown and vaccination
>>
> [...]
>
>> - The role of mass and social media in anti- or pro-lockdown or vaccine
>> propaganda, political polarization and forms of media virality (eg. via
>> covid-19 memes)
>>
> [...]
>
>> - Mandatory vaccine rollouts as assaults to the feminist appeal to bodily
>> autonomy
>>
> [...]
>
>> - Ethical considerations regarding mass experimentation, moral shaming and
>> lateral citizen surveillance
>>
> [...]
>
>> - Teleological and theological narratives of science as salvation (eg. via
>> vaccinations)
>
>
> All beautiful examples of a "Querfront" discourse where extreme right
> positions are packaged in left-wing rhetoric. Not a single point, however,
> on minorities and vulnerable people and communities endangered by
> anti-vaccer egoism, and neo-Darwinist politics - for example in the UK,
> Sweden and the Netherlands, of "herd immunity" through survival of the
> fittest.
>
> You should invite Dutch experts Willem Engel and Thierry Baudet as keynote
> speakers.
# 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: [email protected]
# @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

# 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: [email protected] # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: