Re: <nettime> the great re-alignment

[Brian Holmes via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Allan Siegel wrote:

"We need to engage in processes of coalescence that substantiate different
forms of resistance."

This is exactly what I mean. However we seem to have a different
understanding of polarization, which could be interesting to explore.

The problem with polarization as I see it operating in the US is that it
drains all energies into actions and attacks emanating from
individual/small group/identitarian positions, which have no broad base in
shared values, analyses and strategies. We're against Trump/white
supremacy/neofascists/whatever, but we can't constitute an effective front,
whereas they can. When it comes to national politics, you have to have a
shared vision and the beginnings of a shared plan. The vision has to be
encompassing enough to eventually constitute a majority. The plan has to be
intelligent enough to deal with the high complexity of contemporary
societies and international relations. This in turn requires an ability to
speak to different sectors in different but non-contradictory ways. Liberal
internationalism is no longer able to do this, because the incomes,
cultural/educational orientations and lifestyles of the liberals are too
far away from any majority - they belong to an elite, and for most of the
liberal voters who are not elites, they form a kind of aspirational
position which is now guaranteed to lose, because it does not deliver for
any majority.

Of course the left and liberal internationalism are not the same. But in
the absence of left parties, they're not entirely different either. The
only shared plan of the incoherent "left" in the US is to demand more
rights for more splintered groups, with more restrictions for everyone
else. It looks just on a moral balance sheet - oppressed groups definitely
deserve better treatment - but everyone else is not only left out, they are
reviled through polarization. Worse yet, the addressee of this demand for
right is the liberal internationalist state which maintains the fundamental
inequalities of capitalism backed by military force. October 7 proved this
approach to be a dead end. You cannot demand justice from a genocidal
regime that gives every appearance of being run by bankers and arms
manufacturers. I mean the American regime, because I would really prefer to
leave Israel with its own problems.

Contemporary polarization is spatial and educational. In the caricatural
vision to which it gives rise, it's a fight between urban cognitarians and
rural proletarians. Overcoming that caricature and reconnecting with larger
numbers of people means unhitching your wagon from the liberal elites. It
means conceiving your own work, and the institutions connected to it, as
some form of public service. It means recognizing the value of other forms
of public service. And of course, it means just talking with people unlike
yourself. That has to include sectors of the white working and small
empresarial classes, because otherwise they are easily captured by the
right, as shown this week.

This is not about accomodation or some idiotic belief that we're all one
big happy family (those two things marked the Harris campaign btw). Instead
it means generating an effective resistance against the dangerous far right
emerging from the ongoing collapse of the liberal internationalist world
order.

yours for a future, Brian

On Sat, Nov 9, 2024 at 11:37 AM Allan Siegel via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> On 09/11/2024 00:34, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
> > /There's no way to know if the liberal internationalist framework will
> > entirely break down, but obviously, both free trade and multilateral
> > negotiation are threatened by Trump./
> All the facts (that are visible) and the actions of the U.S. (in
> particular) clearly indicate that the 'internationalist framework' has
> ruptured. This rupturing is symptomatic of U.S. foreign policy since the
> demise of the Soviet Union (although it began in to evolve in the
> aftermath of WWII). The inability of the U.N. or the EU to thwart
> genocide in Gaza is just the icing on the cake and the visible evidence
> of this decay. The West builds monuments to the Holocaust while enabling
> a more contemporary version of modern genocide.
>
> RESISTANCE comes not only from 'the power of coherent collectivities'
> (as Brian states) but their ability, and political vision, to work in
> concert with other organizations despite differences. This is a lesson
> from the Vietnam anti-war movements, Paris 68, and other anti-colonial
> movements from the last century.
>
> Engaging with the polarization that exists in the U.S. and elsewhere is
> obligatory if the people - as in 'we are the people' - that constitute
> civil society are going to resist the "totalitarian machine" (Roberto
> Esposito) that is the underpinning of Trump, Musk et al & the neoliberal
> apparatus that enables the Democratic Party, the reconstituted New
> Labour party and similar groupings.
>
> Fortunately, Jill Stein, Cornel West, Rashida Tlaib, Yanis Varoufakis
> (DIEM 25) and quite a few others have openly engaged in the polarization
> that continues to dismember civil society. But these fragmented voices
> of resistance have yet to coalesce into a viable alternative to the
> existing dominant political structures. We need to engage in processes
> of coalescence that substantiate different forms of resistance.
>
> best
> allan
> --
> # 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: https://www.nettime.org
> # contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org
>
-- 
# 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: https://www.nettime.org
# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org