Re: <nettime> [SPAM] PTS post trump syndrome - the suicide of the west

[David Garcia <d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk>]

Brian wrote
> 
> One thing stands out to me: Bernie Sanders could have swept last
> night's election. The establishment consensus of the hypocritical
> oligarchies has to be cleared entirely away, in favor of a new
> social-democratic populism with the governing capacities required to
> transform complex and highly stratified societies.

Why has the right been so much more successful in finding a language to mobilise 
working class rage than the left? Terms like the 1% and Black Lives Matter are powerful
but have still failed to cut through and capture the wider popular and electoral-imagination 
outside of Spain and Greece.  

Can we forge a populist language in words and images for the left? 
Can we invent a rhetorics that do not restrict its apeal to the head OR the heart but goes straight 
for the GUTS. Something really visceral. Why does the devil STILL have all the best tunes? 

After yesterday we just can’t go on -clinging to our average day- there can be no more -business as 
usual-. The artists, writers, and story tellers among us have the urgent task is to invent a populist 
political language of our own that reaches beyond our usual tribal afiliations. Something that can 
cut through both the hatespeak of the populist right and the technocratic patronising tone 
that has not come to terms with working class rage sadly typified by Clinton's characterisation of the -
basket of deplorables-. I would boild the entire failure of campaign down to the attitude that this blunder
revealed. 

And we must achieve all of this without slipping into what Auden called -the windiest millitant trash- 
or worse into tribalsised, lefist version of ad hominem attack (you Blairite!), or other forms of 
hate speech ourselves. Its a tall order.

David Garcia


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