Τhe renewed protests against racism and police brutality over the last years have supplied a fresh impetus for thinking about the nature of capitalism, its relationship to racism, and the construction of alternatives to both. Few thinkers speak more directly to such issues than Frantz Fanon, the Martinican philosopher, psychiatrist, and revolutionary who is widely considered one of the twentieth century’s foremost thinkers on race and racism.

Fanon had direct experience of French colonial rule, from the Caribbean to North Africa, and brought that experience to bear on his intellectual work. He played an active role in the Algerian revolutionary movement that struggled for independence in the 1950s, but he warned that independent African states would simply replace the colonial system with a national bourgeoisie unless they followed the path of social revolution.

Some of Fanon’s key works have been available in English translation for many years. However, the recent publication of over six hundred pages of Fanon’s previously unavailable writings on literature, psychiatry, and politics makes this a fitting moment to reexamine his thought anew.

Denaturalizing Racism

Born in 1925, Fanon grew up in French-ruled Martinique in the Lesser Antilles. He originally thought of himself — as was true of many others at the time — as French and not “Black.” That began to change when he enlisted as a soldier in the Free French Forces during World War II. The experience brought the racism of French “civilization” painfully home to him.

Returning to France in the late 1940s, Fanon immersed himself in the literature of Négritude, a French-speaking black pride movement. At the same time, he absorbed the latest European intellectual developments such as phenomenology, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. This led to his first book, published in 1952 when Fanon was only twenty-six: Black Skin, White Masks.

Fanon’s great breakthrough in Black Skin, White Masks was to analyze racism in sociogenic terms, denying it any natural basis. Skin color may be biologically determined, but the way that we see and interpret it is conditioned by social forces which are outside of our control.

This phenomenon is so pervasive that race and racism come to appear as “natural,” transhistorical phenomena. For Fanon, such mystification cannot be stripped away by mere enlightened critique since it is deeply rooted in objective social realities and must be challenged at that level.

In recent decades, the “social construction of race” has become such a cliché that the radical implications of Fanon’s theoretical breakthrough are easy to miss. If race is socially constructed, it follows that specific social relations are responsible for its birth and perpetuation. What might those relations be? Fanon insists that they are economic:

The true disalienation of the black man implies a brutal awareness of the social and economic realities … the Black problem is not just about Blacks living among whites, but about Blacks exploited, enslaved, and despised by colonialist and capitalist society that happens to be white.

However, this did not mean that race is secondary to class, or that the struggle against racism was subordinate to the fight against capitalism. A phenomenon is not exclusively defined by its origin. Racism takes on a life of its own and defines the mental horizons of individuals long after some of its economic imperatives have faded from the scene. Fanon therefore insisted that “the black man must wage the struggle on two levels,” objective and subjective. Any “unilateral liberation is flawed, and the worst mistake would be to believe their mutual dependence automatic.”

Unfortunately, that “mistake” characterized the dominant forms of Marxism in Fanon’s time: they saw racism as (at best) a secondary consideration, while failing to produce a credible Marxist theory of racialization. For this reason, despite his firm opposition to capitalism, Fanon never associated with any existing Marxist tendency. As Sylvia Wynter summarizes Fanon’s novel position: “A solution will have to be supplied both at the objective level of the socioeconomic, as well as at the level of subjective experience, of consciousness, and therefore, of ‘identity.’”

From Object to Subject

For Fanon, the positive affirmation of identity was a critical moment in the development of self-consciousness. The liberation of black people as subjects hinged on the recovery of a sense of selfhood and dignity that has been robbed from them by the “white gaze.” Taking pride in the racial attributes denigrated by society in people of color would be a crucial way of challenging the naturalization of social relations that underpins racism.

Fanon developed this perspective through a critical engagement with Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. He argued that mutual recognition was impossible in a society defined by the racial gaze, since it meant that people of color were viewed as things: “I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects.”

This was the central issue for Fanon: racism does not merely deprive its victims of economic resources and social status. It also dehumanizes and depersonalizes them, leaving Blacks to “inhabit a zone of non-being, an extraordinarily sterile and arid region, an incline stripped bare of every essential from which a genuine new departure can emerge.” This produced an inferiority complex, a sense of lesser human worth. Those he called the “wretched of the earth” could transcend this only by securing recognition of their humanity, based on a positive affirmation of their racial or national characteristics.

Recognition is a much-misunderstood term in Fanon’s work. In modern political thought the phrase “politics of recognition” refers to mutual acknowledgement of the “equal rights” of citizens. All contractual relations, whether in politics or economics, involve recognizing the rights of the other party. Fanon did not speak of recognition in this sense at all.

He had no illusion that racism could be overcome by pleas for formal equality, since as he saw it, people of color were not perceived to be fully human and were thus written out of the social contract. He criticized those who sought recognition within existing society, viewing this as an effort to “become white,” whose practitioners remained subject to an inferiority complex.

Fanon aimed for a much deeper kind of recognition, one that would acknowledge the human dignity and worth of the marginalized and oppressed. Achieving that goal, he boldly stated, “implies restructuring the world.”

Fanon’s approach therefore offers an alternative to the way that debates on race, class, and identity often line up in the left today. He opposed the kind of abstract revolutionism that conceived of the proletariat as the guarantor of liberation while downgrading the importance of the struggle against racism. He also rejected the version of identity politics that looked for self-expression and solace within the structure of existing capitalist relations. This was especially evident in his work as a psychiatrist.

Sociotherapy

Fanon began studying psychiatry in Lyon in the late 1940s, and he originally submitted the text of Black Skin, White Masks as his PhD dissertation in 1951. His academic supervisors quickly rejected the work for its unconventional content. Fanon responded by turning in a technical study on the psychiatric implications of Friedreich’s Ataxia — a neurological degeneration of the spinal column.

The dissertation, which has only recently been published in English, is the last place one might expect to find a discussion of social relations. Yet Fanon’s insight on the sociogenic character of racism shone through here as well. He insisted that mental illness, while it might have organic origins, was “always psychic in its pathogeny.”

Fanon refused to reduce even neurological illnesses to their biological component. He was interested in the psychic toll they took on the living individual, guided in his approach by an implacable humanism:

The [individual] human being ceases to be a phenomenon from the moment that he or she encounters the others’ face. For the other reveals me to myself. And psychoanalysis, by proposing to reintegrate the mad individual within the group, establishes itself as the science of the collective par excellence. This means that the sane human being is a social human being: or else, that the measure of the sane human being, psychologically speaking, will be his or her more or less perfect integration into the socius.

This perspective would guide Fanon over the next eight years in the time he spent working at a series of psychiatric clinics, first in France, then in Algeria and Tunisia, where he practiced — initially under the tutelage of François Toquelles — “sociotherapy.” This meant liberating patients from prison-like conditions and seeking to integrate them into society.

Fanon and his colleagues made use of techniques such as occupational therapy, having patients produce newspapers and plays, and allowing them to freely associate with each other in the institution. In the course of this work, Fanon was still prepared to administer pharmaceutical drugs, and he even deployed shock therapy. But he did so while seeking to create a humanist environment that treated the patient as a person.

An openness to human possibilities grounded this approach, both in Fanon’s work as a psychiatrist, and in his later role as a revolutionary activist. His dissertation quoted a comment from Jacques Lacan:

There is an essential discordance within human reality. And even if the organic conditions of intoxification are prevalent, the consent of freedom would still be necessary.

If an “essential discordance” defines our nature, it cannot be overcome; in this perspective, alienation must be viewed as an integral part of human existence. Fanon responded by asking: “Would it not be better to leave open a discussion that involves the very limits of freedom — that is to say, of humanity’s responsibility?”

The opening pages of Black Skin, White Masks contained a vivid declaration: “Man is a ‘Yes’ resounding from cosmic harmonies.” Fanon conceived of freedom as a “world of mutual recognitions,” insisting that a desire “to touch the other, feel the other, discover each other” was an essential part of humanity’s very being.

The Algerian Revolution

After practicing psychiatry for several years in France, Fanon moved to Algeria in 1953, where he took up a position at the Blida-Joinville hospital, outside of Algiers. He did not make this move for political reasons, knowing little of Algeria at the time, and having had minimal contact with African liberation movements.

Fanon quickly discovered a “Manichean” society where the French settlers, about 10 percent of Algeria’s population, lived in a different world from its Arab and Kabyle masses. The latter were subjected to discrimination that was far more brutal than anything he had experienced in the Antilles. When the Algerian revolution broke out in November 1954, led by the newly formed National Liberation Front (FLN), Fanon embraced the movement’s aims and its advocacy of armed struggle.

Fanon now combined his psychiatric work with involvement in a revolutionary movement. He secretly hid FLN militants in the hospital and provided therapy to victims of rape and torture. He also became increasingly active in political debates within the FLN.

However, the links between Fanon’s psychiatry and his politics ran deeper than this. As Robert Young has observed, Fanon drew an analogy between societies under colonial rule and mental patients in need of treatment:

The revolution was the necessary form of shock that would enable the reconstruction of the colonized society . . . Fanon’s politics of freedom were closely modeled on, and derived from, his therapeutic practice.

Fanon conducted a series of detailed studies of Algerian society and culture in the 1950s, discussing the role played by religion in Muslim countries, the radically different sense of time that distinguished North Africans from Europeans, and the way that family and clan communities in Algeria were increasingly defining themselves by reference to a broader national community.

He looked in particular at the frequent refusal of the colonized to confess to having committed a crime, even in the face of clear evidence of their guilt:

We might be able to approach this ontological system that escapes us by inquiring whether indigenous Muslims really think of themselves as engaged in contractual agreements with the social group that now exerts power over them. Do they feel bound by the social contract? . . . what would the significance be of the crime, trial, and sentence if they did not?

As Fanon pointed out, confession depends on prior recognition, something that was missing in the colonial context: “There can be no reintegration if there has not been integration.” Since the social contract excluded the colonial population, they felt no obligation to abide by its legal or juridical norms.

The refusal to confess, he concluded, was an act of revolt. The failure of the system to recognize the humanity of colonized people impelled them to press for the complete uprooting of existing institutions, not mere reforms. The colonized subject — from the Arabs and Kabyles in Algeria to Blacks in sub-Sahara Africa or Black Americans in the US — would therefore be the vanguard force in battles for social transformation, according to Fanon.

Stretching Marxism

Fanon contrasted the revolutionary praxis of the colonized with the passivity and betrayals of the European Left. The French Socialist and Communist Parties supported the war of French imperialism against the Algerian revolution, which led to over half a million deaths.

A Socialist premier, Guy Mollet, presided over the violent clampdown in Algeria, while the Communist deputies in the French parliament voted in favor of war credits, despite their formal commitment to Leninist anti-colonialism. With the important exception of figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre, there was little active support for Algeria’s revolution from even the most radical sections of the European Left. This led Fanon to become increasingly critical of the paradigm that defined much of Western thought.

These considerations were central to Fanon’s last and most famous book, The Wretched of the Earth. He began writing the book after learning that he had incurable leukemia and died shortly after it appeared in 1961. Scholars often overlook the fact that The Wretched of the Earth does not completely turn its back on Europe. Instead, Fanon set out to critically rethink dimensions of European thought, including Marxism.

Fanon insisted that a Marxist analysis “should always be slightly stretched when it comes to addressing the colonial issue.” In Marx’s analysis of capitalist accumulation in Europe, the development of capitalism had torn peasants from the “natural workshop” of the land and transformed them into urban proletarians, who in turn would become a massive, compact, and revolutionary force through the concentration and centralization of capital. Fanon saw that this process was not being repeated in Africa.

The destruction of the continent’s traditional communal property forms did not lead to the formation of a massive, radicalized proletariat, since the colonialists did not industrialize Africa but rather underdeveloped it through the brutal extraction of labor power and natural resources. The peasantry remained the greater part of the population, while the working class in towns and cities was relatively small and weak. Because of this, Fanon argued that the peasantry and the lumpenproletariat would serve as the principal force of the revolution, not Africa’s nascent working class.

Some writers have criticized Fanon for exaggerating the role of the peasantry and overlooking moments when labor movements did play an important role in the African independence struggles of the 1950s and ’60s. While there is some justice in these criticisms, it is worth noting that Fanon agreed with Marx’s view that a social revolution could be successful only if it was the product of “the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority.”

Fanon, like Marx before him, rejected the notion that a successful revolution could be achieved by a minoritarian working class that was led — in practice or at least in theory — by a “disciplined and centralized” vanguard party. He was trying to sketch out a path for Africa’s revolutions that would not repeat the mistakes of revolutions that had preceded them.

A New Humanism

The most important contribution of The Wretched of the Earth lay in its prophetic warning of the fate that might befall the African revolutions if the struggle for independence did not develop into a social revolution — one that would establish what Fanon called “a new humanism.” Fanon was a passionate supporter of national liberation through armed struggle, but not as an end in itself.

By taking the form of a national struggle, he argued, the Algerian movement had avoided racial exclusiveness, bringing together Arabs, Kabyles, and Black Africans — as well as those white Algerians who were willing to surrender their privileges. However, he predicted that these struggles would fall prey to the machinations of the national bourgeoisie, unless they made a rapid transition to the phase of social transformation after independence.

By this Fanon meant a vision of development that would stand in opposition to Western-style capitalism as well as the top-down Soviet model of industrialization. He wanted the revolutionary masses to create a decentralized society in which they would have effective and not merely nominal control of its economic and political processes. For this reason, he came to oppose the form of organization being adopted by virtually all of the African revolutions (including the Algerian one): “The single party is the modern form of the bourgeois dictatorship — stripped of mask, make-up, and scruples, cynical in every aspect.”

Fanon contrasted the rich capitalist countries, in which “a multitude of sermonizers, counselors, ‘mystifiers’ intervene between the exploited and the authorities” to prevent a head-on clash, with colonial states where “direct intervention by the police” would “ensure the colonized are kept under close scrutiny, and contained by rifle butts.” The experience of recent years shows that the gap between the colonized world of which Fanon wrote and countries like the US has narrowed considerably. The buffers between the authorities and the exploited in the US are rapidly dissolving, while the racist animus that has pervaded every stage of this country’s history is now manifesting itself on a level not seen since the reversal of Black Reconstruction.

In light of the failed and unfinished revolutions of the last century, what remains critical is Fanon’s idea that successfully uprooting oppressive economic and political structures also requires us to transform the most intimate human relations, beginning with the way that we perceive each other in a racialized society. As Raya Dunayevskaya once put it: “It is not the means of production that create the new type of humanity, but the new type of humanity that creates the new means of production.”

written by Peter Hudis

source: Jacobin magazine

The post The Revolutionary Humanism of Frantz Fanon appeared first on Void Network.

The talk situates these formations within a social and political context in which various modes of difference were being mobilized to illustrate and expand the symbolic flexibility and the “writerly” potentials of socialism – particularly by the politically imaginative work of the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, the 1978 Socialist-Feminist Conference, the radical queer activist group Gay Liberation Front, and others.

The talk uses these formations as the context for arguing that this decade of socialist experimentation was one in which black queer activists and artists were central. More directly, those activists and artists were part of various projects to revise socialism in accordance with an interest in politicizing homoerotic desires and eroticizing anti-racist and socialist visions.

This lecture was recorded on December 3, 2013 at Barnard College in New York City.

SEE ALSO

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These events were not an aberration from democracy, because simply the USA were never democratic in the first place. They weren’t democratic when they had slaves, they certainly weren’t democratic when the segregation laws were in place, the separation of normal citizens and Others due to the Color of their skin and of course they remained un-democratic when the Jim Crow laws withdrew and the ugly systemic racism was swept under the rag.
Some, let’s say, unrelated numbers to keep in mind. USA at the moment is the country with the largest prisoner population, over 2,5 millions. Over 2/3 of those people are people of colour and the vast majority of them remain imprisoned for non violent crimes or inability to pay their fees. So this was not an aberration, because Uncle Sam was never democratic to begin with, at best USA could be categorised as a capitalist oligarchy. What happened yesterday, was the crumbling of this democratic imagination in the eyes of the people. It was shown what actually happens when the settlers get mad. And what happens is that they are able to storm the Capitol, with of course let’s not forget this, the tolerance ( some might say help even) of elected “democratic” government officials.

2.

This brings us to the next point. United States of America have been constructed as country, a nation, since the beginning under very strict rules regarding class and race. It’s not as simple as to just say that what happened yesterday was solely due to the colour of the protestors skin. Surely the case would be different if we were talking about Black Lives Matter activists, but that’s not all there’s to it.
The head of the Proud Boys, who were among the initiators of yesterday’s events, is as you know, Enrique Tarrio, who became the leader, after founder Gavin McInnes ( also one of the founders of VICE) stepped down. Enrique is non white. He is of Cuban heritage. He is what many latino activists call a “gusano”, a worm, a reactionary. And as we learned from Scarface, gusanos were the Cubans that left Cuba after Castro took power. Why? Because ideology, that’s why. Because they were power hungry reactionaries, ultra conservative anti-communists, owners of land, who in more than one cases worked with either Batista or the American Secret Services.

Similar cases have been in found, in the face of Rafael Cruz for example, Republican Ted Cruiz’s father, who is also a big time conservative and a pastor.
Likewise in the case of Mark Rubio, who in a bizarre twist, originally said that his parents were exiled from Cuba from Castro, however it was later revealed that this happened during Batista’s regime.
It’s not the first time after all that reactionary Cubans are used for Uncle Sam’s dirty work.
The decade of the ‘60s is full of examples, as we read from Mike Davis, were Cuban paramilitaries carried out bombings on leftists, anti-war activistes, latino activists and feminists. We should bear in mind that one the people arrested for the Watergate case, was a Cuban ex patriate, who also server in the CIA.
So let’s not be so surprised when non white folk support either Trump or the far right in general. It’s not only about colour, it’s also about ideology and class.

3.

True enough, as I said earlier, if instead of white MAGA’s we had BLM activists in yesterday’s events, the National Guard would have descended upon with heaven’s fury, as of course they did earlier this year. Rubber bullets would rain upon the protesters. And, if by any miraculous chance, some made inside the Capitol Building, the Secret Services would have executed them on sight. And of course the very next day, on CNN, on FOX, on MSNBC, we would hear tales about violent extremists, totalitarian ideologies, communist terrorists, Russia, China and cultural marxism, by Republicans and Democrats alike. These are all very true. And some of those commentators, feeling emboldened by the prevailing hate, would even resort to the old familiar Nixon and Reagan rhetoric, about vicious black criminals and super predators.

Because this kind of rhetoric is not a privilege only to Republicans. It’s also part of the Democrats. Because it’s as American as apple pie and it goes back to the colonial era, where colonisers needed to dehumanise the slaves, the Others, in order to justify the unspeakable brutalities they inflicted upon them. And these brutalities carried on until the 60’s. We’ve all heard about the trees baring strange fruit after all. And we should also bear in mind that this all started because the colonisers wanted to rob Africa and the Americas, from spices and gold. The cheap labor in the form of slaves was the fat bonus that came later. How could the colonisers say no to unpaid labor, the bloody labor that would later create the Land of Liberty.
And this is why we say, that class and race, are inseparable.

4.

The basic reason that there was no heavy repression yesterday, has also a lot to do with the demands of the protestors. Trump is not an anomaly. He is not an aberration. He is a systemic symptom. He is a billionaire, right from the belly of the beast. The government officials yesterday would not green light an operation because they thought that Trump is one of them. What drove them in the end, to call on law enforcement, was the fact that this was public. It was because CNN was broadcasting, in a sense. Because we also know, that the USA have no problem with coup d’etats, as long as they are happening on the other side of the iron curtain or under the guise of the night. If a coup happens in broad daylight, with national television on it, it has failed.

The demands of protests during 6/1/2021 in Washington, as it seems are demands that the Police likes as well. And we can tell this, from the hundreds of selfies, cops took with protesters on the Capitol Building. The National Guard didn’t seem to mind a lot, as well, since it’s head, personally appointed by Trump, was holding them on position.
On the other hand, demands from protests like the ones for social equality and justice, for defunding or abolishing the police, that came from the racist murder of George Floyd, are demands that no government official wants. Democrat or Republican. And this was obvious as soon as Biden was elected. It was also clear from Obama’s words that “ slogans like Defund The Police are snappy and polarising”
This is something we’ve said for a long time, that Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin. They both serve this capitalist oligarchy to the letter. As long as our analysis doesn’t factor in accounts of race, class and gender ( who I didn’t mention because I don’t think it’s relevant to this specific event, but is essential in the larger picture) then we are doomed to watch history repeat itself.

5.

Α lot of non white American folk, even black, supported Trump. Apart from the gusanos, there is another important factor. Ever since the 70’s, politically speaking, race was disconnected from class. The general idea that, in the Land of Opportunities you could make it, regardless of race, gender, religion and what not, became prevalent, as a direct result of the New Deal hegemony. From then on, we came to today, where we learn that race is a different thing from class and from gender. We also learn that these 3 things have nothing to do with each other. But a look again, the numbers will prove us wrong.
The prison numbers don’t lie. The ones that suffer come from a specific class and have a specific colour. Also we look at the numbers of police killings. The ones who are being eaterminated in alarming rates, come from a specific class and have a specific colour ( or the absence of it, they are not white).

Constantly referring to class, while avoiding all other issues, is class reductionism and wrong. Constantly referring to race and gender while overlooking class is liberal identity politics and also wrong. Lets try intersectionality for a change, it might work for us. Otherwise we can’t see the forest for the trees.

______________

written by Kostas Savvopoulos (phd Candidate of Political Science)

The post Capitol Riot: The Grambling of Democratic Imagination appeared first on Void Network.

WHITE WOMEN MUST HOLD EACH OTHER ACCOUNTABLE FOR RACISM

We know that 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump. We know that some white women are so blinded by their privilege, their racism, and a patriarchal system that insists their lives as wives and mothers are “precious” that they happily carry water for the white men in hoods and iron crosses. We know that some white women march right alongside them in neo-Nazi rallies, drop racial slurs on social media, and push racist legislation in Congress. And we know this has been going on for a long, long time—well before Trump’s Klansman father was born. However, viewing white women’s involvement in perpetuating white supremacy solely through their relationships with men not only denies their agency, but assuages their culpability. As the old saying goes, men talk, women do.

Historian Elizabeth Gillespie McRae’s new book, Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy, is a fascinating, meticulously researched, and damning look into the myriad ways white women have consciously worked to aid racial segregation in the Jim Crow South and sanctify their racially pure vision of white motherhood. The book focuses on four women—Florence Sillers Ogden, Mary Dawson Cain, Cornelia Dabney Tucker, and Nell Battle Lewis—across multiple generations of white-supremacist activism; it takes us from Deep South racism in the “progressive” 1920s to the mob of screaming white mothers who greeted Black schoolgirl Ruby Bridges in 1960 New Orleans through the Boston school busing controversy of the mid ’70s.

For decades, these four women and others performed “myriad duties that upheld white over Black: censoring textbooks, denying marriage certificates, deciding on the racial identity of their neighbors, celebrating school choice, canvassing communities for votes, and lobbying elected officials.” They taught their children that racial hierarchies were not only scientific and just, but actually God’s will; that Black people preferred segregation; Black boys were unintelligent and sexually overdeveloped; Black men were dangerous; and falling in love, marrying, or having children with Black men was the most horrific thing a white girl could do and would hasten the extinction of the white race. (The alt-right “white genocide” meme is nothing new). They formed political action committees, penned newspaper columns, passed out pamphlets, rallied for white-supremacist politicians, and leaned on their maternal image to manipulate the discourse.

After 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling destroyed the fictional idea that white people were the most responsible shepherds of racial justice and Black Americans were happy under segregation, these women pivoted to a family-focused political ideology that painted the Supreme Court decision as federal overreach that threatened mothers’ authority over their own children. This tactic attracted more moderate and liberal types to their cause, and effectively feminized mass resistance (a term used for the package of laws passed in 1956 that aimed to uphold Jim Crow and delay school integration). For white-supremacist women, the home and the school were their battlegrounds, and their most sacred duty as mothers was to keep them free of Black influence. According to McRae, without their efforts, “white supremacist politics could not have shaped local, regional, and national politics the way it did or lasted as long as it has.”

One of the more intriguing political tidbits from the book is the way white-supremacist politics criss-crossed party lines, with its proponents hopscotching between Democrat, Republican, Jeffersonian Democrat, New Right, and the catchall “conservative” tag. To simplify a complex development, following decades of pushing white supremacist policies, the Democratic Party’s growing acceptance of desegregation and racial equality inspired a mass exodus of white Southern women, and led them to seek representation elsewhere. McRae is careful, however, to illustrate that white-supremacist politics were not confined to the South; in cities like Milwaukee, Detroit, and Boston, white supremacy manifested under the cover of dog whistles and obfuscation, where parents weren’t racist for not wanting their white kids to share classrooms with Black students, they were just “concerned about school choice.”

The parallels between the past and our current state are stark, and often unsettling. Everything old is new again, just repackaged and refurbished to suit a new audience. We can find echoes of newspaper owner, columnist, and constitutional fanatic Mary Dawson Cain in the rise of both conservative pundits like Tomi Lahren and white supremacy mouthpieces Lauren Southern and Brittany Pettibone, all of whom espouse “traditional” viewpoints that range from casually racist to virulently white supremacist. Nell Battle Lewis—with her liberal education, outraged editorializing, and patronizing “color-blind” view of her Black acquaintances—is the spiritual foremother to today’s “woke” white feminists, who “don’t see color” and sport vagina hats with pride, but balk at any sort of intersectional analysis of feminism, privilege, or power.

We see the ideological granddaughters of Cornelia Dabney Tucker—who organized the sending of countless handwritten letters decrying the Brown v. Board of Education ruling—in the white women who now send panicked tweets about Black Lives Matter. Elsewhere, Florence Sillers Ogden’s efforts to brand the labor movement as “un-American” and blame outbreaks of racist violence on First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s willingness to freely socialize with people of color would fit right in on any race-baiting FOX News segment. Roosevelt was a target of ire for white segregationist women—her progressive politics and commitment to racial equality rendered her little more than a communist witch in their estimation; one can’t help but think of the way Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton—herself a polarizing, deeply flawed, yet (comparatively) progressive political powerhouse—was treated during her presidential run, and how much of the white female electorate turned on her in the end.

As I read their stories, I saw my mother’s face. The same cold, quiet cruelty that emanates from the photos in Mothers of Massive Resistance stared back at me 15 years ago, when she told me that my boyfriend Aaron* wasn’t allowed to come to our house for junior-prom pictures. He was a skater kid from a nice family who lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood my family could have never dreamed of affording or fitting into—but since he had locs and dark skin, she forbid me from seeing him again. I remember how she told me, in what she must have imagined to be a comforting tone, “He’s a nice kid, but it just ain’t right.”

The lessons I learned about whiteness, class, and the lengths that white folks will go to protect their ideas have been a foundational part of my political development, and are why I felt it was important to engage with this book and the uncomfortable history it reveals. The task of dismantling white supremacy rests on the shoulders of those who benefit most from it. It’s on us to confront racist, white supremacist white people who assume they can count on us to smile along or stay silent when they step out of line; it’s on us to ditch that poisonous “color-blind” worldview and understand the ways in which race, identity, and political/social power intersect; it’s on us to publicly, materially, enthusiastically, and genuinely support people of color, to confront and interrogate our own internalized racism and learned prejudices without expecting people of color to educate us.

It’s on us to protest side by side with people of color against this racist, fascist, xenophobic regime. When the cops show up, it’s on us to recognize that no matter our specific identities, they will see us above all as white women, and this affords us a vast measure of safety and privilege. We must understand that it is up to us to put our bodies on the front lines to provide cover for those who are under greater threat. It’s on us to do that work, to shut up and listen, to make space for marginalized voices and recognize when we’re veering into performative, self-serving, or otherwise hollow allyship.

The entirety of that 53 percent of white women didn’t vote for Trump because of “economic anxiety;” some of them were voting to uphold an ancient, bloody order, and those sins cannot be forgiven. We need to educate ourselves, and perhaps even more importantly, to educate our children. Mothers of Massive Resistance shows how effective white women’s historical efforts to influence the school curriculum in favor of their own views have been; we’ve done it before, and now we must do it again to ensure that the next generations grow up learning about the uncomfortable, violent, imperialist history of this nation. There have always been moderate, liberal, and radical white women who push back against white supremacy, but as the current state of our nation makes clear, we’ve been far less successful than we could be, and that failure has resulted in decades of unfathomable suffering.

McRae’s book shines a harsh light on our status as collaborators and progenitors in the mainstream white-supremacist movement, and is essential reading for any white woman who seeks to understand our history—and our responsibility to those we’ve failed. White male faces dominate the discourse around the way violent white supremacy has spilled into the mainstream, but lest we forget, there were white women in Charlottesville, too—and while many of us marched alongside Heather Heyer, some of them were there to continue the work their foremothers began. We cannot dismantle what we refuse to confront. White women, we have work to do.

*Aaron is a pseudonym to protect the person’s identity.

_______________________________

The post The History of White Women’s Racism and White Supremacy- by Kim Kelly appeared first on Void Network.

“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” Rahm Emanuel

article written by Anwar A. Khan / Sri Lanka Guardian

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has wonderfully dropped a line, “Every person who comes is a human being and has the right to be treated as such”, but where is the dignity of a small portion of minority population in the Rakhine state of Rohingya people in the country of Nobel laureate public figure like septuagenarian Aung San Suu Kyi? Rather, ill-usage on this very poor community has been continuing in time or space without interruption since long by her government and the military blackguards. Attaint, disgrace, dishonor and shame on them!

The title is at first glance an echo of Gianfranco Rosi’s magnificent refugee documentary study Fire at Sea: a film whose subtlety, complexity and depth I have to say go way beyond this. Actually, it is a quotation from Shakespeare’s drama titled, “The Tempest”, when Prospero tells Miranda the history of their “sea sorrow”, and how they came to be exiles on a remote island, far from Milan, the former seat of his power and prosperity. Redgrave stages a brief, powerful dramatised reading of the scene, with Prospero played by Ralph Fiennes. They are refugees, in their way, Redgrave is implying: people like us, white Europeans to whom we are naturally invited to extend sympathy and esteem. Another contemporary reading of “The Tempest” might be to imagine Caliban, the island’s indigenous inhabitant, harassed and demonised as a monster, getting into an inflatable and finally turning up in Milan as a refugee, demanding succour.

Refugees face brutal miseries. When we talked to some of Rohingya refugees, they have revealed more painful truths about the refugee crisis and the atrocities encountered by them by their homeland rulers and their mango-twigs. Rakhine refugee crisis now, is the biggest shame of humanity, which the Myanmar Government and its army is responsible for. Displacement affected my family: One time there was heavy firing on Rakhine area, so they had to leave everything and come to Bangladesh. The experience was horrible and very ugly according to them. It’s them and the detainees of course! I always think; imagine that you are living in a tent or a hut inside Bangladesh and you have zero hope of going back home or even back to live in a small house, this is how they feel. Every human on the face of earth should try to sleep in their own homeland. The refugees represent the full picture of the Rakhine Muslim crisis in Myanmar and they are the ones who are paying.

Our dream is to live in our own homeland… a country…the same country that is everyone’s simple right… we have a bigger dream that shadowed the majority of our smaller dreams.But They are now registered as either a refugee or without identity. We are seeing the Rakhine mother and her kids travelling alone to the unknown future without her husband, he might be killed or he is detained or kidnapped. They are leaving their destroyed house and their scattered memories in this long road to take shelter in Bangladesh. One refugee has said, “I am trying to tell the people whom live their lives in peace and dignity, freedom and safety to feel our pain and to help us to stand again for life.” Too many drowning accidents are happening as Rakhine refugees tried to escape the misery to find a better life.

Actually, it’s the Myanmar government’s fault in the first place, that have led them to such unreasonable decisions of fleeing by death trap boats. People will keep trying to get to Bangladesh, even under the risk of drowning, because they have lost everything. This piece is about how the camp or the tent in the refugees’ camps has become an aim or a huge dream to catch for those displaced. It’s just a long marathon to reach them. The most important thing about refugees is that there is no place to go back to. This is what this piece embodies. If you go the refugee camps, you would find the shattered lives of refugees. While many of us have a home to return to every day seeking shelter and security, countless others have been displaced from where they once belonged and surrendered to the merciless borders where they are looked upon as refugees. Maybe the word has been familiarised and normalised in our minds due to its abundant usage by world media outlets. However, only those suffering the atrocities by the Myanmar authorities and the sorrows of displacement know well the meaning of being a refugee and the weight of this widespread burden. We experienced the similar indescribable agonies in 1971 war when our ten million took shelter in India as refugees.

The wars, natural disasters, and misfortunes are unfortunately happening on wider scale nowadays. Suffering and displacement are inevitable for those facing such calamities. However, the aim of this article is to share awareness and empathy with those courageous people around the world, and in Rakhine in particular. Being from a neighboring country to Myanmar, I have witnessed the unbearable circumstances of people fleeing excruciate and carnage, hoping to find a safer shelter for their children and families. I have seen mothers with their children and babies begging for food, and families carrying their modest belongings looking for shelters. A home is where we belong, where we save the joyful and sorrowful memories of moments we spend with the loved ones, where we seek shelter and warmth, where we have our families and friends, and where our hearts always dwell. However, when such home becomes a source of fear, war, merciless bloodshed, destruction, anger, and so on, what will happen to our memories, our future, our dreams, and our hopes? Rakhine refugees did not have the time to ponder on such questions, as fleeing for a safer shelter wherever it may be is their only concern with the outbreak of devastating and merciless tortures by the devilish Myanmar Government and their army. And the same applies to them, whose losses have become beyond the comprehension of any of us. Decade of cruel actions and destruction has rendered the Rakhine area in Myanmar a living hell and the people chained by despair.

Displacement inflicts lifetime damage upon a refugee, who is forced to leave behind all what defines him most importantly, their identity. And those who suffer most are the children and women, who are dragged from one border to another and from one country to another in search for a better future, or at least a safer present. Another inevitable misery in Rakhine area of Myanmar and other terror stricken countries are those children left with no one to drag them away to a safe premise. What would become of these children and women in years after years; in whose hands will they fall; will they ask about their parents; how will they be treated; and what do we expect of them? Those are vital questions to ask and also to answer. Someone responsible for such human disaster must answer; and we can’t leave them to go out of the hook of due punishment. For many of us terror is something that we hear about and read about on media outlets. Yet, for refugees, terror is something stripping them of their humanity, their rights, their future, their dreams, and their peace of mind. It is denying them a life they deserve to live like the rest of us. It is stealing their memories, their land, their identity, their past, and their whole existence. This is the difference between us and refugees; terror and destruction are not a piece of news they read about while enjoying the safety of their homes and the serenity of their living rooms, but it is the bullets falling over their heads devouring everything they ever knew, left with only the hope of surviving to make it to the category of refugees, which eventually is their best option.

Maybe we have become used to seeing or hearing about the heartbreaking stories of killing and tortures, whether in Rakhine area in Myanmar or elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean that we must adapt, or become immune to the sorrows they bring, or be in denial about the shattered lives of refugees around the world. Each and every one of us has enough on their plates, but be assured that the life of a refugee is light years away from the comforts we have, no matter how modest they are, and the everyday privileges we take for granted. Hence a refugee is not merely a political terminology or a generic description of masses seeking and begging for their basic rights, but also a term referring to countless individuals, not so different from us, who do have hopes and resilience to defy despair, build new homes and pursue new dreams.

Close your eyes and imagine being on a dinghy in the middle of the of river or ocean, sitting quietly for an hour in the hot or cold at night, only to suddenly find your boat capsized and your lungs filled with water and your eyes trying to find shore and your arms and legs struggling to keep you afloat and alive. Close your eyes and truly imagine what it feels like to not know whether loved ones are still alive. Or worse, close your eyes and imagine knowing for a fact that they are dead. Being a refugee is an alien concept for the Rakhine Muslim community. It is not as if they were trained to take on this label — their world used to be exactly like that one. They have dreamt of being engineers, listened to rap, ran for class president, read bedtime stories, fell in love, played foot-ball. They did not have to worry about bullets and kidnappings and rapes and murders and torture. Merciless tortures were as alien a concept for them as it is for them right now. The Rakhine refugees are saying, “We are not rabid dogs. We are truly desperate human beings who have been forced to choose between leaving and dying.” But today, they watch the world come crashing down around them every single day and all they crave is survival. They just want safety and security, food and clean water. They want their kids to go to school. When these fundamental human rights no longer became accessible in their country, they left and desperately sought them elsewhere.

And every one of them will tell you, more than almost anything in the world, they want to go home. Alas, they also want to live. It is very important for us to be a bridge between the refugees and the Bangladesh community. I also ask you to be strong advocates of the needs of the refugees. We have been with them; we have heard their plea, and it cannot remain unattended. They say, “Our understanding recognises the claim that all of us have to be welcomed, not because we are members of a specific family, race or faith community, but simply because we are human beings who deserve welcome and respect.” This call to welcome the refugees and to be active advocates of their needs echoes the vital role for us all. In times of this human tragedy, our voice can become a source of consolation to those who suffer and bring some international attention to conflicts otherwise forgotten. We must remain with their people through thick and thin, even asking them to go an extra mile and become true beacons of hospitality.

Over half a million Rakhine population have been uprooted and forced to flee to their safety to Bangladesh. Refugees bring pieces of their homeland with them: memories of the past, pains of the present and dreams for the future. Many local and foreign journalists along with photographers journeyed through the jungles and hills to Bangladesh-Myanmar border to explore the Rakhine narrative in Myanmar. “I was up all night,” one child’s mother has explained earlier that morning, as we sat with her and the girl child on the floor of their home, her eyes red from lack of sleep. Pulling down the girl’s trousers, she had pointed to a bulge protruding from the girl’s groin. “She won’t stop crying. It’s been like this for weeks. We’re isolated here and we can’t afford the transport costs of getting her to the city so a doctor can look at this lump.”The pain of having to watch loved ones suffer is the very torture from which the family had originally fled, leaving their home in the jungles of Bangladesh.

They flee their own wretched land so their hunger may be pacified in foreign lands, their tears wiped away in strange lands, the wounds of their despair bandaged in faraway lands, their blistered prayers muttered in the darkness of queer lands. The international media’s lens into the Rakhine refugee crisis in Myanmar limns with so many terror-scarred Rakhine are living in such a concentrated area, the scale of the crisis is painfully evident. Rakhine community continues to inspire those who are exiled beyond her borders and scenes. Stories from days gone past are treasured by refugees attempting to keep their beloved homeland alive — her fertile gardens with vine-covered trellises and tiled fountains, her ancient fortresses encircled by swooping swallows, her streets filled with men selling produce fresh that morning from the countryside and elderly gentlemen slowly shuffling home from Friday prayers. One Rakhine refugee family laments, “As we worked our fingers greasy and our stomachs yearning for the food to be ready, stories were shared of family feasts before the onslaught of the Myanmar army, the colours of their hometown, their grandmother’s resting place — their conversations moving from humorous to mournful. As the sun dropped and the muezzins began their call to prayer, the thin, white kitchen curtains billowed around us, seemingly sheltering us from the world as we retreated into a past that is now lost.”

We can’t sit back and watch them suffer. They are our guests. We must act like a decent host. These people have nothing while we have everything we need. They all fled their homes to avoid conscription. They are young and far from their families. If we can do something to help stop their pain, then we can go to bed happy. The more stories you hear, the more people you meet, the more you see Rakhine people’s tragedy. When you realise it is all happening in our midst, you become buried by the weight of it all. Sometimes it is the few stories that end happily that hit the hardest. They remind you of the thousands of others that don’t the thousands of others that remain unheard and submerged in the corners of their un-peaceful country. The Rakhine landscape in Bangladesh is both elusive and all-encompassing. Beyond the bustle of the travel guide, the struggle of thousands attempting to navigate life on new and unfamiliar soil is played out on a daily basis.

Myanmar general elections were held on 8 November 2015. These were the first openly contested elections held in Myanmar since 1990. The results gave the National League for Democracy an absolute majority of seats in both chambers of the national parliament, enough to ensure that its candidate would become president, while NLD leader Aung San SuuKyi is constitutionally barred from the presidency. The resounding victory of Aung San SuuKyi’s National League for Democracy in 2015 general elections raised hope for a successful political transition from a closely held military rule to a free democratic system. This transition was widely believed to be determining the future of Myanmar, but that has not happened as yet. Thein Sein has become Myanmar’s new President whereas SuuKyi as State Counsellor. Almost 50% of all Rohingya villages in Myanmar’s Rakhine State are now empty up until now. More than half a million Rohingya — many of them women and children — have fled to Bangladesh to escape violence since August 2017 according to the United Nations, an average of almost 20,000 a day. The refugees speak of indiscriminate clearance operations, huts set on fire and family members being taken away and never heard from again. The military retains considerable amount of power in the government and parliament and they dictate everything in the ruling government.

Under this grave hapless billet, we should give them a new heart and put a new spirit in them; we should remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Let us work in the ways of justice and truth. We should be doers of what is pleasing to these suffering people. Change our hearts and renew our minds by the power of true spirit that we may love those who are different from us in appearance and customs, but one with us in our common humanity. Help them bear fruit of mercy, love, hope, and faith in the lives of refugees. Help them serve refugees, the kind of people you served when you walked the earth. Give us the strength to serve refugees joyfully and faithfully. Help us do the good works that you have given us to do in and through them. For refugees, we ask, to help them putting our trust in them. We should remember mercy, compassion, and mighty acts on behalf of those who suffer. Help us, to rest in the knowledge of justice and triumph over evil. Help us remember that we are able to save us all from our sins, injustices, and ways of death and destruction that we perpetuate in the world.

Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the suffering people and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe forage. Take delight and it will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the trust in them. We will make our righteous reward shine like the dawn, our vindication like the noonday sun. Wait patiently for them; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Human beings must be the source of all goodness, generosity and love. We thank many people for opening the hearts of many to those who are fleeing for their lives. Help them now to open our arms in welcome, and reach out our hands in support. That the desperate may find new hope and lives torn apart be restored. We ask this in the name of our good spirit who fled persecution at their birth place.

In our compassion, we seek the protection for refugee children who are often alone and afraid. Provide comfort to those who have seen violence and destruction, who have lost parents, family, friends, home, and all they love because of persecution. Comfort them in their sorrow, and be their help in the time of need. Have compassion on unaccompanied migrant children, too. Reunite them with their families and loved ones. We cannot even imagine what it are like to be strangers in a foreign land as a child! Help those children reach safety. Help them to see how we might reach out to these precious and vulnerable children. Open our hearts to migrant and refugee children, so that we might see in them our own migrants. Help to defend them against those who would do them harm.

We pray for the refugee crisis that is sweeping across Bangladesh and the world at this moment. I pray for the hearts of those that you are calling to work with the refugees and to serve them. I pray that we would continue to put a passion in their heart that burns. I pray for the hearts of the refugees that they would seek us in their time of needs and trials. I pray that people would come along beside them and help them through the pain. Please bring communities to the refugees to show them love and grace that abounds. Bring them communities to help them feel that they are not alone. I pray that they would not feel ashamed. I pray that we would help restore dignity to the hearts and minds of the refugees. I pray that we would bring healing to the trauma they have been through. I pray our peace over them.

Help us remember those who have fled for their lives and are strangers in foreign lands. We pray for those who are escaping persecution and conflict. We also pray for those who are camped in Bangladesh and in different parts of the Middle- East, Africa, and Asia, carrying so many physical, emotional and spiritual wounds. Be their comfort for the sake of our great mercy. Please lead and help the fathers and mothers and children who find themselves having to leave their home in the face of danger as we did as a child. We also remember the many family members and friends of refugees who do not escape the threat of harm. We ask for comfort and protection and the progress of peace. Please give this land have a welcoming spirit and raise up with our land with open hands and open hearts. In ways beyond our imagining, go among and before those who flee persecution, harm, and hopelessness. Grant them safety, hope, and new life, even in difficult and exhausting days. Be their light and their salvation.

We pray that we will open our eyes to see the vision of God’s kingdom as a place where all can live without fear. Open our hearts and fill them with our love, so that we may share our love with those fleeing a life of enslavement and terror in their own country, and welcome them to live in safety among us. Guide our feet so that we may walk alongside them, learning about them, their needs, their desires; guide our hands that we may reach out and show them how to navigate the ways of our country. Strengthened with the showers of our blessings, may we build the bridges that will allow us to come together in a community of loving support for one another. May all our people know that we are with them. Look with compassion upon them. Grant us the grace to see the refugees as we see them. I want you to dwell in my heart and in my life, so change my heart, if the thoughts of my heart are not aligned with yours. I acknowledge that I am not all that you want me to be and I don’t see people as you do, but I am open to your pruning. Do not leave me to my own worldly thoughts and fears. Help me to be more like kind people and seek justice in the face of the stranger and the refugee. Let us make an instrument of Thy peace; where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. Let us grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

If the Myanmar authorities can’t be held back sooner, it would spark an influx of more and more Rohingya people to the land of Bangladesh. This humanitarian tragedy is no longer tenable. The Rohingyas have also sought refuge in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Kofi Annan, Former UN Secretary General has said, “Violence will not bring lasting solutions to the acute problems that afflict the Rakhine State.” Bangladesh’s foreign minister condemned the violence in Rakhine as “genocide,” and the UN’s top human rights official described the treatment of Rohingya as “ethnic cleansing.” Yet governments in Southeast Asia lack established legal frameworks to protect refugees’ rights, and the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have not coordinated a response to the deepening crisis. Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand—all ASEAN members—have yet to ratify the UN Refugee Convention or its protocol. ASEAN itself has been silent on the plight of the Rohingya and on the growing numbers of asylum seekers in member countries, largely because of its members’ commitment to the principle of noninterference in each other’s internal affairs. This policy is good-for-naught. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres has said, “While every refugee’s story is different and their anguish personal, they all share a common thread of uncommon courage – the courage not only to survive, but to persevere and rebuild their shattered lives.” These words only are not adequate enough. Human Rights Watch characterised the anti-Rohingya violence as “crimes against humanity.” It is high time for the international community to organise a realistic and workable solutions for this human tragedy sooner. Our foreign office and Foreign Minister should make a shuttle diplomacy, if need be, PM Hasina should make a hard-nosed plan to visit China, Thailand, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar… to meet their rulers in order to get a permanent solution of this human disaster. It is clearly understood that Suu Kyi alone can’t do anything tangible unless and until the military, the principal power-house of Myanmar, is convincingly pressurised to take back their own defenseless people to their country who have taken shelter to the land of Bangladesh. The UN and other international bodies including the key players of the world have to be involved in this process. Otherwise nothing will happen positively. These most vulnerable people will not be able to go back their homeland. Bruits have it that Pakistan’s ISI, Jamaat-e-Ismai gawks, the Bangla-speaking Pakistanis and some other devilish sub-humans may create subversive activities to make the country and our government unstable. Hence, our government should involve the whole world in the handling of this refugee crisis.

The Rohingya refugees must go back their homes in Myanmar singing songs sooner. And that should be our terminus choice. But if it gets delayed, the hope will be getting too far away; we shall not be able see the light at the end of the tunnel. These pale faced people with frustration writ large on their faces are etched with guilt, as if torture, death, the misery of millions, is sorrows that they must not bear alone. We shall also have to suffer a lot. So often the world sits idly by, watching ethnic conflicts flare up, as if these were mere entertainment rather than human beings whose lives are being destroyed. Shouldn’t the existence of even one single refugee be a cause for alarm throughout the world? Dante Alighieri competently said, “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”

It is a humanitarian crisis and the world leaders should come forward to exert their influence on the Myanmar army to find out a lasting solution, the possibility to begin a new life, is the only dignified solution for the Rohingya refugees. Echoing the language of Widad Akreyi, “We call on the international community to share equitably the responsibility for protecting, assisting and hosting refugees in accordance with principles of international solidarity and human rights.” Remember when a home becomes a distant memory to the Rohingya refugees.

Anwar A. Khan

source: Sri Lanka Guardian

The post Sea Sorrow, the Rohingya refugee crisis: From Myanmar to Bangladesh appeared first on Void Network.

“Just remember, you are not a participant here,” the Fox News anchor reminded us. “At the end of the debate, you can applaud all you want, but in the meantime, silence, please—blessed silence.”

A cursory reading of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle is enough to decipher this scene. Trump is the harbinger of the apocalypse, yes, but the apocalypse is not on the horizon. It’s here.

“Armageddon has been in effect,” as Public Enemy put it in 1988. “Go get a late pass.”

The Trump threat serves to distract us from what is already happening. “I don’t want to rip families apart,” Clinton insists, in reference to immigration policy, when the administration she serves under Obama has deported over 2.5 million people—as many as all the US presidents of the 20th century put together. Mothers of the Movement promote Clinton as the candidate to curb racist policing—when police murders of black and brown people have only escalated since she got into office, and the most liberal politicians and prosecutors have failed to challenge the impunity of the police. Trump is dubbed the first demagogue of the Anthropocene—but does any candidate in the election have a realistic proposal to halt catastrophic climate change?

The same good cop/bad cop routine is playing out all around the globe. Explicitly leftist parties like Syriza and Brazil’s Workers Party have implemented the same policies they accused their right-wing counterparts of pursuing. Today, the only remaining justification for continuing to support Syriza, the Workers Party, or Clinton goes something like this: “If the left doesn’t screw us, the right will!” If the left doesn’t privatize water—if the left doesn’t militarize the police—if the left doesn’t expand the prison-industrial complex—if the left doesn’t silence dissent…

This strategy has served to cover a steady bipartisan drift to the right for at least half a century. If Clinton now has a shot of winning even Texas, that just shows how Republican her platform is.

There’s a flip side to this, too: if the left doesn’t rise in revolt, the right will. Outraged at the prevailing political class, Donald Trump’s constituency seems primed to reject the legitimacy of the electoral process. Mind you, they’re not calling for a black bloc at the inauguration or marching around with a banner reading “WHOEVER THEY VOTE FOR, WE ARE UNGOVERNABLE” yet, but if things continue in this direction, renegade Republicans will be understood as the chief adversaries of the ruling order.

The Price of Defeat

When revolutionary movements fail, reactionaries adapt their tactical and rhetorical innovations. This should come as no surprise: practically every aspect of our lives, from the buildings we live in to the music we listen to, represents the appropriation of ordinary people’s efforts and innovations.

The social movements of 2011—the Arab Spring, the movement of the squares in Spain and Greece, Occupy, and subsequent uprisings from the Balkans to Hong Kong—ran aground as a consequence of violent state repression and their own built-in limits before they could pose a significant threat to globalized capitalism and the governments that oversee it. Since the end of 2013, we’ve seen right-wing efforts seizing the initiative where these movements failed, reframing the causes of popular suffering and the objectives of revolt in their own terms.

First, nationalists and fascists used the Occupy model to topple the Ukrainian government. Then, in Brazil, some of the momentum of an autonomist movement against a neoliberal leftist government carried over into reactionary unrest that brought millions to the streets. Rather than a left social movement like Occupy, Germany produced Pegida. Meanwhile, racists around Europe attempted to appropriate feminist themes to smear migrants and Muslims. Others are doing the same thing with gay rights, while atheist discourse has become a breeding ground for Islamophobia. Nationalists are hailing the Brexit vote as a triumph of direct democracy, with the German and Dutch far-right parties Alternative für Deutschland and Partij voor de Vrijheid promising regular referendums as a plank in their platforms.

This trend reached the United States with the runaway candidacy of Donald Trump. Trump’s campaign appropriated the language of the anti-globalization movement, right down to the rhetoric of “fair trade” rather than “free trade” and the allegation that a global financial elite is benefitting at the expense of working people.

It is instructive that the narratives of a movement founded by radicals and anarchists could serve a nationalist billionaire in his Presidential bid: at the least, it reveals the ways that those narratives were vulnerable to cooptation all along. Indeed, there has long been a far-right opposition to globalized capitalism, which Trump embraced more and more openly as his campaign proceeded. Fascism was originally modeled on left-wing movements: it was a way to channel rightful indignation about class inequalities into violence directed down the social hierarchy, rather than revolt that could threaten it. As in the 1920s, so today: the price of revolutionary failure is reactionary momentum.

photo: The neoliberal state versus populist nationalism at a Pegida rally.

The Reaction to Come

Clinton protests too much when she claims that Trump is besmirching the legacy of democracy in the United States by threatening to reject the results of the upcoming election. Didn’t the US actively orchestrate coups to overthrow democratically elected governments in Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Iran, and the Congo, to name a few? The interplay between elections and states of exception in which ordinary political processes are suspended has always been central to democratic governance. It’s the exception that proves the rule.

In any case, Trump is not going to lead an insurrection. He’s more of a weathervane than a whirlwind; his genius, such as it is, consists of giving all the other bigoted narcissists in Middle America someone to identify with. He doesn’t have what it takes to seize power.

So Clinton will be President. And then what?

This is not a good time to stand at the helm of the state. It didn’t work out for Morsi or most of the other politicians who came to power in the revolutions of 2011. Syriza was exalted throughout Europe when they won the elections of 2015, but they burned up all their credibility as soon as they took the reins. Only apathy, despair, and the threat of even worse rulers—like Trump—currently shore up the positions of unpopular leaders like Clinton.

In a nutshell, the double bind facing governments in globalized capitalism is that open markets and austerity measures accelerate the processes by which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but closed markets and state spending drive away investors and drain resources. Consequently, people tend to blame individual governments for economic woes that state structures can do precious little to solve. In this context, the election cycle will likely produce alternating waves of hope and disillusionment as long as the anarchist proposal to abolish government and property remains unthinkable.

But if this is a bad time to hold power, it is a great time to be in the opposition. For a burgeoning far right nationalist movement, a Clinton presidency is good fortune: that’s four more years of the liberal left taking the heat for whatever happens, four more years during which the far right can claim to have a political program that would work if only they could implement it. After the initial post-election disappointment dissipates, this will be an ideal context for far-right recruiting.

Clinton looks unstoppable now, but that will change once Trump is out of the picture. Who knows what other scandalshave yet to break? The next wave of right-wing momentum is bound to look rational and well mannered by comparison with Donald Trump; while he has brought opprobrium on himself, his strong personality has offered cover for others who share his agenda. The next demagogues will have no trouble proclaiming all manner of reactionary ideas, because Trump has shifted the window of legitimate political discourse so far. Right-wing strategists are doubtless discussing how to cast a slightly wider net; if they have any sense, they will shift from old-fashioned white supremacist narratives towards a nationalist discourse of law and order that could mobilize a large number of people even in a demographically diverse US. And although Trump isn’t prepared to orchestrate an uprising, he certainly has helped set the stage for autonomous nationalist movements to come.

If all these pieces fall into place, then when Clinton inevitably fails to solve the problems that originally drove people to support Trump and Sanders, the far right will be in a much stronger position to build street-level power and perhaps even make a grab for the state.

Don’t believe it? Consider what happened to Dilma Rousseff and the Workers Party in Brazil.

Rousseff rode to office in 2011 on the coattails of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, one of the most popular politicians in Brazilian history—a left icon who spent his time in office advancing a neoliberal agenda, taking advantage of an influx of investment dollars to dampen the immediate consequences on poor Brazilians. Powerful autonomous protest movements erupted against Rousseff and the Workers Party in 2013, drawing mass participation and achieving some temporary victories. At the peak of these movements, many people with no previous protest experience or radical politics poured into them; when the Brazilian government outmaneuvered the autonomists by the usual combination of state repression and cooptation, many of these new participants moved on to right-wing mobilizations.

Like countless politicians, Rousseff was vulnerable to charges of corruption. At first, the right-wing populist movement calling for her impeachment—and in some cases the return of the military dictatorship—seemed laughable enough, as reactionaries from the middle class clumsily attempted to appropriate the organizational methods and tactics of the autonomous movements. Then the movement gained momentum in the streets, plunging Brazil into massive right-on-left violence. In the end, Rousseff was impeached. Today, Brazil’s government is controlled by the right wing.

For those who consider horizontal grassroots efforts the best hope for social change, the most dismaying part of this story is that the autonomous movements that seemed so strong in Brazil in 2013 have been completely marginalized. The participants have been forced to choose between sitting on the sidelines or mobilizing behind the Workers Party they opposed three years ago.

photo: The reactionary popular movement that toppled Dilma in Brazil.

To recap: a controversial female candidate inherits the Presidency from a popular left leader amid charges of corruption, as reactionary momentum gains steam in the wake of defeated autonomous movements. Sound familiar?

In the context of a Clinton victory, the most significant danger is that the entire political spectrum will be divided up between a statist neoliberal left and an opportunistically antigovernment nationalist right. Each of these adversaries needs the other; each will seek to absorb those who fall outside this dichotomy or else push them into the opposing camp.

If we don’t want to be marginalized the way our comrades in Brazil have been, we have to debunk the idea that either nationalism or the state could solve any of our problems, and organize to take on both the authorities and their reactionary opposition. This means breaking with the narratives of the left as well as the right. Otherwise, as the Clinton administration inevitably fails to resolve the economic crises of everyday life, more and more ordinary people will run into the arms of the reactionaries—and as these reactionary movements gain steam, the people who should be our comrades will respond in ways that shore up neoliberal democracy. There has to be another way.

If it becomes impossible to talk about how the system is rigged or how the corporate media is implicated without advancing the discourse of the far-right—if NSA surveillance, drones, international finance, corporate profiteering, and the subtle control exercised by social media algorithms become understood as right-wing issues—then all prospects of real liberation will be off the table for another generation or more. Today, even Wikileaks is bolstering right-wing narratives; grassroots outrage is assuming the form of reactionary populism. Anarchists and other partisans of liberation will be sidelined by the popular appropriation of our own tactics and slogans unless we get our bearings quickly.

We have our work cut out for us.

Further Reading

Trump and the Legacy of the Anti-Globalization Movement

The post After the Election, the Reaction- Analysis about USA Presidential elections 2016 by American anarchists Crimethinc appeared first on Void Network.

Anarchists and confrontational antifascists back in the streets of London in 9/10/2016 in memory of 80th anniversary of heroic Cable Street battle, the great day of Londoners struggle against English fascists, the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, which saw over 100,000 working-class residents in London’s East End oppose a march by Oswald Mosely’s British Union of Fascists, forcing them to abandon it entirely.

Void Network expresses solidarity to all the anarchist groups and comrades that continue confronting fascists in the streets of United Kingdom.

Aναρχικοί και αντιφασίστες ξανά στους δρόμους του Λονδίνου την Κυριακή 9/10 σε μια δυναμική διαδήλωση μνήμης στην ηρωική μάχη της  Cable Street, το 1936, εκεί όπου οι Λονδρέζοι κάτοικοι της εργατικής περιοχής του East End αντστάθηκαν στην διοργάνωση διαδήλωσης του κόμματος Ένωση των Βρεττανών Φασιστών, συμμετέχοντας μαζικά με πάνω από 100.000 άτομα που επιτέθηκαν και διέλυσαν την διαδήλωση δικόπτοντας την επιρροή των φασιστών στην βρεττανική εργατική τάξη.

Το Κενό Δίκτυο  εκφράζει την βαθιά του αλληλεγγύη σε όλες τις ομάδες, όλους τους αναρχικούς, τους συντρόφους και τις συντρόφισσες που συνεχίζουν να πολεμούν τον φασισμό σε όλες τις μορφές του στους δρόμους της Mεγάλης Βρεττανίας.

The post Αnti-fascist march in London Cable Street, celebrating 80 years of anti-fascist resistance / Μεγάλη Αντιφασιστική πορεία στο Λονδίνο appeared first on Void Network.

ΟΛΑ ΤΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΚΟΣΜΟΥ 

ΑΝΤΙΡΑΤΣΙΣΤΙΚΟ ΠΑΙΔΙΚΟ ΦΕΣΤΙΒΑΛ

ΠΑΡΚΟ ΠΕΔΙΟΝ ΑΡΕΩΣ

ΣΑΒΒ. 08 ΟΚΤ. 2016
ΠΑΙΔΙΚΗ ΧΑΡΑ μέσα στο Πάρκο
είσοδος από το άγαλμα της Αθηνάς
-οδός Αλεξάνδρας – ακολουθήστε τις σημάνσεις
ΑΠΟ ΤΙΣ 12 ΤΟ ΠΡΩΙ ΕΩΣ ΤΙΣ 9 ΤΟ ΒΡΑΔΥ

12.00
ΗIP HOP EΡΓΑΣΤΗΡΙΟ:
Ο ΜC YINCA ΜΑΘΑΙΝΕΙ ΣΤΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ ΝΑ ΓΡΑΦΟΥΝ ΚΑΙ ΝΑ ΤΡΑΓΟΥΔΟΥΝ RAP

13.00
ΖΩΓΡΑΦΙΚΗ «ΤΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ ΖΩΓΡΑΦΙΖΟΥΝ ΤΟ ΣΥΜΠΑΝ»

14.00
ΘΕΑΤΡΙΚΟ ΠΑΙΧΝΙΔΙ
«ΤΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ ΤΑΞΙΔΕΥΟΥΝ ΣΤΟΝ ΚΟΣΜΟ»

15.00
ΑΦΗΓΗΣΗ ΠΡΑΜΥΘΙΟΥ:
«ΦΙΛΕΝΑΔΑ ΜΟΥ ΦΟΥΝΤΟΥΚΙΑ ΜΟΥ» ΑΓΓ.ΒΑΡΕΛΛΑ
+ ΟΜΑΔΙΚΗ ΔΡΑΣΗ: «ΤΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ ΦΥΤΕΥΟΥΝ ΕΝΑ ΜΕΓΑΛΟ ΔΕΝΤΡΟ»

15.30
ΟΙΚΟΛΟΓΙΚΟ ΕΡΓΑΣΤΗΡΙΟ
«ΤΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ ΜΙΜΟΥΝΤΑΙ ΤΙΣ ΦΩΝΕΣ ΤΩΝ ΠΟΥΛΙΩΝ»
ΚΑΙ ΜΑΘΑΙΝΟΥΝ ΝΑ ΤΑ ΑΓΑΠΟΥΝ

16.00
ΜΟΥΣΙΚΟΚΙΝΗΤΙΚΟ ΕΚΠΑΙΔΕΥΤΙΚΟ ΒΙΩΜΑΤΙΚΟ ΕΡΓΑΣΤΗΡΙ
για παιδιά 4-7 ετών – ΜΕΛΙΝΑ ΣΠΑΝΟΥ

16.30
LIVE
MUCHA TRELLA

17.30

+ΜΕΓΑΛΟ ΠΑΙΔΙΚΟ ΠΑΡΤΥ ΜΕ ΚΛΟΟΥΝ,
ΞΥΛΟΠΟΔΑΡΟΥΣ, ΜΠΑΛΟΝΙΑ & djs παιδιά!

ΝΑ ΣΠΑΣΟΥΜΕ ΟΛΑ ΤΑ ΣΥΝΟΡΑ ΠΟΥ ΥΨΩΘΗΚΑΝ ΑΝΑΜΕΣΑ ΜΑΣ

Tώρα ήρθε επιτέλους ο καιρός να καλέσουμε όλους τους φίλους μας που πέρασαν αυτά τα 26 χρόνια από τις εκδηλώσεις μας να φέρουν τα δικά τους παιδία στο πάρκο για μια μεγάλη παιδική γιορτή. Ο λόγος που επιλέγουμε την παιδική χαρά του Πεδίον Άρεως είναι ο πολυεθνικός χαρακτήρας της ευρύτερης περιοχής. Μια μεγάλη παιδική γιορτή δεν θα μπορούσε παρά να είναι πολυεθνική. Ονειρευόμαστε έναν κόσμο χωρίς σύνορα, χωρίς κοινωνικές και φυλετικές διακρίσεις, χωρίς ρατσισμό. Αγωνιζόμαστε για έναν κόσμο που θα χωράει μέσα του όλους τους διαφορετικούς κόσμους, έναν τόπο που θα ζουν μαζί ευτυχισμένοι άνθρωποι από όλους τους τόπους. Στην εκδήλωση θα είναι καλεσμένα όλα τα προσφυγόπουλα και οι γονείς τους που ζούν μαζί μας στις δομές κοινωνικής αλληλεγγύης της περιοχής Βικτώριας- Εξαρχείων(City Plaza, Νοταρά 26, 5o Σχολείο, Όνειρο, Κάνιγγος 22, Νοsotros). Ο αντιφασιστικός αγώνας απλώνει το κάλεσμα του σε εσάς, τα παιδιά και τους γονείς που θέλουν να δουν τα χαμόγελα όλων των παιδιών να στέλνουν ένα μήνυμα ελευθερίας και αξιοπρέπειας σε αυτή την κοινωνία.
Σε αυτή την γιορτή είναι καλεσμένα
ΟΛΑ ΤΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΚΟΣΜΟΥ!

Μεγάλο μέρος των μελών της ομάδας μας από την δεκαετία του ’80 έως σήμερα, υπήρξαν και συνεχίζουν να είναι κάτοικοι της ευρύτερης περιοχής της Πλ. Βικτωρίας και του Αγ. Παντελεήμονα, περιοχές που αποτέλεσαν και την βάση δημιουργίας της συλλογικότητας Κενό Δίκτυο, παιδιά που μεγάλωσαν και αποφοίτησαν στα τοπικά σχολεία της περιοχής, έζησαν το πάρκο του Πεδίου Άρεως από πολύ μικρή ηλικία στις αρχές της δεκαετίας του’80 και συνεχίζουν μέχρι σήμερα να δραστηριοποιούνται, εκτός των άλλων, στους τοπικούς αγώνες κατοίκων της περιοχής ενάντια στον ρατσισμό και τους κοινωνικούς αποκλεισμούς, ενάντια στα εμπορικά και μαφιόζικα συμφέροντα που λυμαίνονται την περιοχή, για ένα Πεδίο του Άρεως προσβάσιμο σε όλες τις ηλικίες και όλες τις διαφορετικές κουλτούρες, ανοιχτό 24 ώρες, όμορφο και λειτουργικό όπως το ονειρευόμαστε όλοι οι Αθηναίοι και πολύ περισσότερο οι ευαισθητοποιημένοι κάτοικοι της περιοχής.

Το Κενό Δίκτυο είναι μια πολιτισμική, θεωρητική και πολιτική συλλογικότητα μη-αμοιβομένων πολιτισμικών ακτιβιστών που εμφανίστηκε στην Αθήνα το 1990 με την επονομασία “Η Ομάδα Στον Τρόμο Του Κενού” και με σκοπό την ριζοσπαστικοποίηση της καθημερινής ζωής, την κοινωνική αμφισβήτηση, την ανάδειξη της κριτικής σκέψης, την εκστατική συλλογική συμβίωση και την δημιουργική έκφραση της διαφορετικότητας.

Η δράση της συλλογικότητας οργανώνεται μέσα από την πολύμορφη συμμετοχή στους ευρύτερους χειραφετητικούς πολιτικούς και κοινωνικούς αγώνες, την δημιουργία Προσωρινής Αυτόνομης Ζώνης (Τ.Α.Ζ.), τη συμμετοχή σε κοινωνικά κέντρα, καταλήψεις και αυτοδιαχειριζόμενους χώρους, την κατασκευή καταστάσεων στον δημόσιο χώρο και την εφήμερη τέχνη.

Από το 1990 έως σήμερα το Κενό Δίκτυο προσφέρει αδιάκοπα στον Δημόσιο Χώρο το έργο του για την πνευματική καλλιέργεια, την καλλιτεχνική έκφραση και την κοινωνική ευαισθητοποίηση διοργανώνοντας μουσικά φεστιβάλ, διαλέξεις ακτιβιστών και επιστημόνων από όλο τον κόσμο, multi media βραδιές ποίησης, εικαστικές εκθέσεις, διεθνή συνέδρια, θεατρικές παραστάσεις, εκδόσεις βιβλίων, ενημερωτικές καμπάνιες, διαδηλώσεις, δράσεις και πολύμορφες παρεμβάσεις.

Όπως όλοι οι ακτιβιστές της ομάδας Κενό Δίκτυο, έτσι και όλοι οι καλλιτέχνες συμμετέχουν στην διοργάνωση όλων των εκδηλώσεων μας αφιλοκερδώς.

Τα έξοδα των εκδηλώσεων καλύπτονται από το bar το οποίο θα περιλαμβάνει χυμούς, αναψυκτικά, γλυκά και κολατσιό για τα παιδιά, μπύρες και κρασί για τους μεγάλους. Δεν υπάρχουν αμοιβές για κανέναν από όσους συμμετέχουν στην διοργάνωση, παρά μόνο για την εταιρία που αναλαμβάνει την επαγγελματική ηχητική και φωτιστική κάλυψη και τις εξέδρες (stage).
To Κενό Δίκτυο, μέσα από την ευρύτερη εμπειρία που αποκτήθηκε τα τελευταία τρία χρόνια, από την συμμετοχή του στην πολύ επιτυχημένη διοργάνωση του Αντιφασιστικού Φεστιβάλ Παραστατικών Τεχνών αποφάσισε να οργανώσει φέτος το φθινόπωρο το φεστιβάλ “ΟΛΑ ΤΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΚΟΣΜΟΥ” το πρώτο μεγάλο παιδικό αντιρατσιστικό φεστιβάλ για παιδιά από όλο τον κόσμο.
To Πεδίο του Άρεως αποτέλεσε έμπνευση για πολλούς και πολλές από εμάς να διοργανώσουμε αυτό το φεστιβάλ μιας και όντας κάτοικοι της ευρύτερης περιοχής έχουμε παιδικές αναμνήσεις από το Πάρκο στις σχολικές εκδρομές και τους περιπάτους την δεκαετία του ’80 αλλά και έντονα βιώματα από την συνεχή ετήσια διοργάνωση του μεγάλου φεστιβάλ της ανεξάρτητης σκηνής Indie Free Festival.
Το Φεστιβάλ θα περιλαμβάνει παραστάσεις Παιδικού Θεάτρου, Διήγηση Παραμυθιών, Χορο-Κίνηση, Κουκλοθέατρο, Ταχυδακτυλουργούς, Ζογκλέρς, την δράση «Τα Παιδιά Ζωγραφίζουν το Σύμπαν» με την συνδρομή ζωγράφων, την δράση «Τα Παιδιά φυτεύουν ένα Μεγάλο Δέντρο» με την συνδρομή Γεωπόνων, και θα καταλήγει με ένα μεγάλο παιδικό πάρτυ με Κλόουν και παιδικά τραγούδια από όλο τον κόσμο που θα κάνει όλα τα παιδιά μια μεγάλη, ευτυχισμένη και αγαπημένη παρέα.
Οι συντελεστές, οργανωτές του προγράμματος, οι καλλιτέχνες και επιστήμονες που θα πλαισιώσουν τις παραστάσεις και τις εκδηλώσεις θα προσφέρουν το έργο τους εθελοντικά και αφιλοκερδώς και είναι επιλεγμένοι ανάμεσα στους καλύτερους από τον αντιρατσιστικό χώρο του παιδικού θεάτρου και της εκπαίδευσης.

Τοποθεσία:

Επιλέχθηκε η ΠΑΙΔΙΚΗ ΧΑΡΑ

στο Πεδίο του Άρεως
είσοδος από οδό Αλεξάνδρας – άγαλμα της Αθηνάς – ακολουθήστε τις σημάνσεις
Ημερομηνία:

ΣΑΒΒΑΤΟ 8/10/2016 από τις 12 το πρωί έως τις 9 το βράδυ

Το ακριβές ωρολόγιο πρόγραμμα των εκδηλώσεων και των εργαστηρίων θα ανακοινωθεί στην ιστοσελίδα

Κενό Δίκτυο [Θεωρία, Ουτοπία, Συναίσθηση, Εφήμερες Τέχνες]: https://voidnetwork.gr

Κενό Δίκτυο

The post ΟΛΑ ΤΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΚΟΣΜΟΥ Αντιρατσιστικό Παιδικό Φεστιβάλ ΣΑΒΒ. 08/10/2016 ΠΑΙΔΙΚΗ ΧΑΡΑ Πάρκο ΠΕΔΙΟΝ ΑΡΕΩΣ / ΑLL THE CHILDREN OF THE WORLD Antiracist Festival for Children – Pedion Areos Park Athens Sat. 8/10/2016 appeared first on Void Network.

# BREXIT 10 point guide for post Brexit resistance as racist right wins EU referendum // text by Workers Solidarity Movement UK

1. The Brexit vote for the UK to leave the European Union demonstrates that even weak parliamentary democracy is incompatible with escalating neoliberal inequality.  In the UK as elsewhere a tiny segment of the population have taken a larger and larger share of total wealth in the last decades.  Particularly under austerity almost everyone else has seen their share of the wealth they produce decline massively.

2. The Remain campaign was headed up by the political class of the neoliberal establishment and backed by model neo liberal corporations like Ryanair.  But because the anger against rising inequality was successfully diverted through scapegoating already marginalized people, in particular migrants, the Leave campaign was also lead by wealthy elitist bigots whose variant of neoliberalism looks to the former colonies and the US rather than Europe.

3. The markets are now punishing the electorate with capital flight. But the racist colonialist nature of the Leave campaign means that rather than capitalism being blamed migrants will again be scapegoated.  The impact of continued inequality – on white citizen workers – will be blamed on attacks on migrants not being as cruel and ruthless as ‘required’.

4. The alternative to fight for isn’t yet another referendum but the abolition of a global order built on inequality & market dictatorship.

5. In the immediate future, the defense of migrants, including those yet to come, is fundamental to opposing the swing to the right post-Brexit.

6. If the left swings towards a simple economist stance post-Brexit then the racist colonialist nature of that vote will be solidified  We must argue on the more apparently difficult grounds of global class solidarity and not on the treacherous path of the narrow self interest of white citizen workers which can only serve a reactionary English nationalism steeped in racism and colonialism.

7. The fallout from the Leave vote will not just be limited within the borders of the UK will see a  but huge boost for racist colonialist movements across EU.  The leaders of those movements, like Marine Le Pen have already greeted the Leave vote with joy.

8. It’s vital to understand this cannot be combatted with liberal platitudes because it is a consequence of the rising inequality economic liberalism has created.  We are facing either a transformation to radical direct democracy that will create economic equality or a turn to the authoritarian politics of control needed to enforce sharp divisions in wealth.

9. Things look grim but then they were already grim as we face into climate change and automation under capitalism.  The rise of the far right and colonialist racism is not a natural phenomenon but a consequence of a system in a crisis that is a fundamental product of  its own functioning.

10. We need to take our world back from the patriarchal white supremacist capitalist elite that dominates the planet and dominated both sides of the EU referendum.  The transformation we need if we are not to face escalating poverty, war and climate destruction is a total one that eliminates the state and capitalism to create libertarian communism.

—-
A note on southern Ireland
The text above is written primarily with the UK in mind, including the north of Ireland which continues to be ruled from London and the large population of Irish migrants living in Britain.  However there are also enormous implications for people in southern Ireland, in particular those who do not have Irish or UK passports. In the light of the almost complete ban on abortion access people without Irish/UK passports with unwanted or unviable pregnancies may soon find it very much more difficult – if not impossible – to travel to Britain to access abortion services.

It’s an open secret that the border with the north being often unpoliced meant that it was a route that those without papers could sometimes risk to travel to and from Ireland and the UK, maintaining some physical contact with friends and family.  Finally although the virulent anti-Irish racism that was common in Britain up to the 90s had receded as anti-migrant rhetoric increases it may strengthen once more.  Indeed some Irish people living in Britain already felt they are in a more hostile environment from the experience of the Leave campaign.

source: http://www.wsm.ie/c/10-point-guide-post-brexit-resistance

The post #BREXIT: What the UK Anarchists think about it? appeared first on Void Network.

It feels increasingly difficult to tell the difference between—on one hand—being old, sick, and defeated, and—on the other hand—living in a time-&-place that is itself senile, tired, and defeated. Sometimes I think it’s just me—but then I find that some younger, healthier people seem to be undergoing similar sensations of ennui, despair, and impotent anger. Maybe it’s not just me.

A friend of mine attributed the turn to disillusion with “everything”, including old-fashioned radical/activist positions, to disappointment over the present political regime in the US, which was somehow expected to usher in a turn away from the reactionary decades since the 1980s, or even a “progress” toward some sort of democratic socialism. Although I myself didn’t share this optimism (I always assume that anyone who even wants to be President of the US must be a psychopathic murderer) I can see that “youth” suffered a powerful disillusionment at the utter failure of Liberalism to turn the tide against Capitalism Triumphalism. The disillusion gave rise to OCCUPY and the failure of OCCUPY led to a move toward sheer negation.

However I think this merely political analysis of the “new nothing” may be too two-dimensional to do justice to the extent to which all hope of “change” has died under Kognitive Kapital and the technopathocracy. Despite my remnant hippy flower- power sentiments I too feel this “terminal” condition (as Nietzsche called it), which I express by saying, only half- jokingly, that we have at last reached the Future, and that the truly horrible truth of the End of the World is that it doesn’t end.

One big J.G. Ballard/Philip K. Dick shopping mall from now till eternity, basically.

This IS the future—how do you like it so far? Life in the Ruins: not so bad for the bourgeoisie, the loyal servants of the One Percent. Air-conditioned ruins! No Ragnarok, no Rapture, no dramatic closure: just an endless re-run of reality TV cop shows. 2012 has come and gone, and we’re still in debt to some faceless bank, still chained to our screens.

Most people—in order to live at all—seem to need around themselves a penumbra of “illusion” (to quote Nietzsche again):— that the world is just rolling along as usual, some good days some bad, but in essence no different now than in 10000 BC or 1492 AD or next year. Some even need to believe in Progress, that the Future will solve all our problems, and even that life is much better for us now than for (say) people in the 5th century AD. We live longer thanx to Modern Science—of course our extra years are largely spent as “medical objects”—sick and worn out but kept ticking by Machines & Pills that spin huge profits for a few megacorporations & insurance companies. Nation of Struldbugs.

True, we’re suffocating in the mire generated by our rule of sick machines under the Numisphere of Money. At least ten times as much money now exists than it would take to buy the whole world—and yet species are vanishing space itself is vanishing, icecaps melting, air and water grown toxic, culture grown toxic, landscape sacrificed to fracking and megamalls, noise-fascism, etc, etc. But Science will cure all that ills that Science has created—in the Future (in the “long run”, when we’re all dead, as Lord Keynes put it); so meanwhile we’ll carry on consuming the world and shitting it out as waste—because it’s convenient & efficient & profitable to do so, and because we like it.

Well, this is all a bunch of whiney left-liberal cliches, no? Heard it before a million times. Yawn. How boring, how infantile, how useless. Even if it were all true… what can we do about it? If our Anointed Leaders can’t or won’t stop it, who will? God? Satan? The “People”?”

All the fashionable “solutions” to the “crisis”, from electronic democracy to revolutionary violence, from locavorism to solar- powered dingbats, from financial market regulation to the General Strike—all of them, however ridiculous or sublime, depend on one preliminary radical change—a seismic shift in human consciousness. Without such a change all the hope of reform is futile. And if such a change were somehow to occur, no “reform” would be necessary. The world would simply change. The whales would be saved. War no more. And so on.

What force could (even in theory) bring about such a shift? Religion? In 6,000 years of organized religion matters have only gotten worse. Psychedelic drugs in the reservoirs? The Mayan calendar? Nostalgia? Terror?

If catastrophic disaster is now inevitable, perhaps the “Survival- ist” scenario will ensue, and a few brave millions will create a green utopia in the smoking waste. But won’t Capitalism find a way to profit even from the End of the World? Some would claim that it’s doing so already. The true catastrophe may be the final apotheosis of commodity fetishism.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this paradise of power tools and back-up alarms is all we’ve got & all we’re going to get. Capitalism can deal with global warming—it can sell water- wings and disaster insurance. So it’s all over, let’s say—but we’ve still got television & Twitter. Childhood’s End—i.e. the child as ultimate consumer, eager for the brand. Terrorism or home shopping network—take yr pick (democracy means choice).

Since the death of the Historical Movement of the Social in 1989 (last gasp of the hideous “short” XXth century that started in 1914) the only “alternative” to Capitalist Neo-Liberal totalitarianism that seems to have emerged is religious neo-fascism. I understand why someone would want to be a violent fundamentalist bigot—I even sympathize—but just because I feel sorry for lepers doesn’t mean I want to be one.

When I attempt to retain some shreds of my former antipessimism I fantasize that History may not be over, that some sort ofPopulist Green Social Democracy might yet emerge to challenge the obscene smugness of“Money Interests”—something along the lines of 1970s Scandinavian monarcho-socialism—which in retrospect now looks the most humane form of the State ever to have emerged from the putrid suck-hole of Civilization. (Think of Amsterdam in its hey-day.) Of course as an anarchist I’d still have to oppose it—but at least I’d have the luxury of believing that, in such a situation, anarchy might actually stand some chance of success. Even if such a movement were to emerge, however, we can rest damn-well assured it won’t happen in the USA. Or anywhere in the ghost-realm of dead Marxism, either. Maybe Scotland!

It would seem quite pointless to wait around for such a rebirth of the Social. Years ago many radicals gave up all hope of The Revolution, and the few who still adhere to it remind me of religious fanatics. It might be soothing to lapse into such doctrinaire revolutionism, just as it might be soothing to sink into mystical religion—but for me at least both options have lost their savor. Again, I sympathize with those true believers (although not so much when they lapse into authoritarian leftism or fascism)— nevertheless, frankly, I’m too depressed to embrace their Illusions.

If the End-Time scenario sketched above be considered actually true, what alternatives might exist besides suicidal despair? After much thought I’ve come up with three basic strategies.

1) Passive Escapism. Keep your head down, don’t make waves. Capitalism permits all sorts of “life-styles” (I hate that word)—just pick one & try to enjoy it. You’re even allowed to live as a dirt farmer without electricity & infernal combustion, like a sort of secular Amish refusnik. Well, maybe not. But at least you could flirt with such a life. “Smoke Pot, Eat Chicken, Drink Tea,” as we used to say in the 60s in the Moorish Church of America, our psychedelic cult. Hope they don’t catch you. Fit yourself into some Permitted Category such as Neo-Hippy or even Anabaptist.

2) Active Escapism. In this scenario you attempt to create the optimal conditions for the emergence of Autonomous Zones, whether temprorary, periodic or even (semi)permanent. In 1984 when I first coined the term Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ)

I envisioned it as a complent to The Revolution—although I was already, to be truthful, tired of waiting for a moment that seemed to have failed in 1968. The TAZ would give a taste or premonition of real liberties: in effect you would attempt to live as if the Revolution had already occurred, so as not to die without ever having experienced “free freedom” (as Rimbaud called it, liberte libre). Create your own pirate utopia.

Of course the TAZ can be as brief & simple as a really good dinner party, but the true autonomist will want to maximize the potential for longer & deeper experiences of authentic lived life. Almost inevitably this will involve crime, so it’s necessary to think like a criminal, not a victim. A “Johnson” as Burroughs used to say—not a “mark”. How else can one live (and live well) without Work. Work, the curse of the thinking class. Wage slavery. If you’re lucky enough to be a successful artist, you can perhaps achieve relative autonomy without breaking any obvious laws (except the laws of good taste, perhaps). Or you could inherit a million. (More than a million would be a curse.) Forget revolutionary morality—the question is, can you afford your taste of freedom? For most of us, crime will be not only a pleasure but a necessity. The old anarcho-Illegalists showed the way: individual expropriation. Getting caught of course spoils the whole thing—but risk is an aspect of self-authenticity.

One scenario I’ve imagined for active Escapism would be to move to a remote rural area along with several hundred other libertarian social- ists—enough to take over the local government (municipal or even county) and elect or control the sheriffs & judges, the parent/teacher association, volunteer fire department and even the water authority. Fund the venture with cultivation of illegal phantastice and carry on a discreet trade. Organize as a “Union of Egoists” for mutual benefit & ecstatic plea- sures—perhaps under the guise of “communes” or even monasteries, who cares. Enjoy it as long as it lasts.

I know for a fact that this plan is being worked on in several places in America—but of course I’m not going to say where.

Another possible model for individual escapists might be the nomadic adventurer. Given that the whole world seems to be turning into a giant parking lot or social network, I don’t know if this option remains open, but I suspect that it might. The trick would be to travel in places where tourists don’t—if such places still exist—and to involve oneself in fascinating and dangerous situations. For example if I were young and healthy I’d’ve gone to France to take part in the TAZ that grew around resistance to the new airport—or to Greece—or Mexico—wherever the perverse spirit of rebellion crops up. The problem here is of course funding. (Sending back statues stuffed with hash is no longer a good idea.) How to pay for yr life of adventure? Love will find a way. It doesn’t matter so much if one agrees with the ideals of Tahrir Square or Zucotti Park—the point is just to be there.

3. Revenge. I call it Zarathustra’s Revenge because as Nietzsche said, revenge may be second rate but it’s not nothing. One might enjoy the satisfaction of terrifying the bastards for at least a few moments. Formerly I advocated “Poetic Terrorism” rather than actual violence, the idea being that art could be wielded as a weapon. Now I’ve rather come to doubt it. But perhaps weapons might be wielded as art. From the sledgehammer of the Luddites to the black bomb of the attentat, destruction could serve as a form of creativity, for its own sake, or for purely aesthetic reasons, without any illusions about revolution. Oscar Wilde meets the acte gratuit: a dandyism of despair.

What troubles me about this idea is that it seems impossible to distinguish here between the action of post-leftist anarcho-nihil- ists and the action of post-rightist neo-traditionalist reactionaries. For that matter, a bomb may as well be detonated by fundamentalist fanatics—what difference would it make to the victims or the “innocent bystanders”? Blowing up a nanotechnology lab—why shouldn’t this be the act of a desperate monarchist as easily as that of a Nietzschean anarchist?

In a recent book by Tiqqun (Theory of Bloom), it was fascinating to come suddenly across the constellation of Nietzsche, Rene Guenon, Julius Evola, et al. as examples of a sharp and just critique of the Bloom syndrome—i.e., of progress-as-illusion. Of course the “beyond left and right” position has two sides—one approaching from the left, the other from the right. The European New Right (Alain de Benoist & his gang) are big admirers of Guy Debord, for a similar reason (his critique, not his proposals).

The post-left can now appreciate Traditionalism as a reaction against modernity just as the neo-traditionalists can appreciate Situationism. But this doesn’t mean that post-anarchist anarchists are identical with post-fascism fascists!

I’m reminded of the situation in fin-de-siecle France that gave rise to the strange alliance between anarchists and monarchists; for example the Cerce Proudhon. This surreal conjunction came about for two reasons: a) both factions hated liberal democracy, and b) the monarchists had money. The marriage gave birth to weird progeny, such as Georges Sorel. And Mussolini famously began his career as an Individualist anarchist!

Another link between left & right could be analyzed as a kind of existentialism; once again Nietzsche is the founding parent here, I think. On the left there were thinkers like Gide or Camus. On the right, that illuminated villain Baron Julius Evola used to tell his little ultra-right groupus- cules in Rome to attack the Modern World—even though the restoraton of tradition was a hopeless dream—if only as an act of magical self-creation. Being trumps essence. One must cherish no attachment to mere results. Surely Tiqqun’s advocacy of the “perfect Surrealist act” (firing a revolver at random into a crowd of “innocent by-standers”) partakes of this form of action- as-despair. (Incidentally I have to confess that this is the sort of thing that has always—to my regret—prevented my embraing Surrealism: it’s just too cruel. I don’t admire de Sade, either.)

Of course, as we know, the problem with the Traditionalists is that they were never traditional enough. They looked back at a lost civilization as their “goal” (religion, mysticism, monarchism, arts-&-crafts, etc.) whereas they should have realized that the real tradition is the “primordial anarchy” of the Stone Age, tribalism, hunting/gathering, animism—what I call the Neanderthal Liberation Front. Paul Goodman used the term “Neolithic Conservatism” to describe his brand of anarchism—but “Paleolithic Reaction” might be more appropriate!

The other major problem with the Traditionalist Right is that the entire emotional tone of the movement is rooted in self-repression. Here a rough Reichean analysis suffices to demonstrate that the authoritarian body reflects a damaged soul, and that only anarchy is compatible with real self-realization.

The European New Right that arose in the 90s still carries on its propaganda—and these chaps are not just vulgar nationalist chauvenist anti-semitic homophobic thugs—they’re intellectuals & artists. I think they’re evil, but that doesn’t mean I find them boring. Or even wrong on certain points. They also hate the nanotechnologists!

Although I attempted to set off a few bombs back in the 1960s (against the war in Vietnam) I’m glad, on the whole, that they failed to detonate (technology was never my metier). It saves me from wondering if I would’ve experienced “moral qualms”. Instead I chose the path of the propagandist and remained an activist in anarchist media from 1984 to about 2004. I collaborated with the Autonomedia publishing collective, the IWW, the John Henry Mack- ay Society (Left Stirnerites) and the old NYC Libertarian Book Club (founded by comrades of Emma Goldman, some of whom I knew, & who are now all dead). I had a radio show on WBAI (Pacifica) for 18 years. I lectured all over Europe and East Europe in the 90s. I had a very nice time, thank you. But anarchism seems even farther off now than it looked in 1984, or indeed in 1958, when I first became an anarchist by reading George Harriman’s Krazy Kat. Well, being an existentialist means you never have to say you’re sorry.

In the last few years in anarchist circles there’s appeared a trend “back” to Stirner/Nietzsche Individualism—because after all, who can take revolutionary anarcho- communism or syndicalism seriously anymore? Since I’ve adhered to this Individualist position for decades (although tempered by admiration for Charles Fourier and certain “spiritual anarchists” like Gustave Landauer) I naturally find this trend agreeable.

“Green anarchists” & AntiCivilization Neo-primitivists seem (some of them) to be moving toward a new pole of attraction, nihilism. Perhaps neo-nihilism would serve as a better label, since this tendency is not simply replicating the nihilism of the Russian narodniks or the French attentatists of circa 1890 to 1912, however much the new nihilists look to the old ones as precursors. I share their critique—in fact I think I’ve been mirroring it to a large extent in this essay: creative despair, let’s call it. What I do not understand however is their proposal—if any. “What is to be done?” was originally a nihilist slogan, after all, before Lenin appropriated it. I presume that my option #1, passive escape, would not suit the agenda. As for Active Escapism, to use the suffix “ism” implies some form not only of ideology but also some action. What is the logical outcome of this train of thought?

As an animist I experience the world (outside Civilization) as essentially sentient. The death of God means the rebirth of the gods, as Nietzsche implied in his last “mad” letters from Turin— the resurrection of the great god PAN—chaos, Eros, Gaia, & Old Night, as Hesiod put it—Ontological anarchy, Desire, Life itself, & the Darkness of revolt & negation—all seem to me as real as they need to be.

I still adhere to a certain kind of spiritual anarchism—but only as heresy and paganism, not as orthodoxy and monotheism. I have great respect for Dorothy Day—her writing influenced me in the 60s—and Ivan Illich, whom I knew personally—but in the end I cannot deal with the cognitive dissonance between anarchism and the Pope! Nevertheless I can believe in the re-paganaziation of monotheism. I hold to this pagan tradition because I sense the universe as alive, not as “dead matter.” As a life-long psychedelicist I have always thought that matter & spirit are identical, and that this fact alone legitimizes what Theory calls “desire”.

From this p.o.v. the phrase “revolution of everyday life” still seems to have some validity—if only in terms of the second proposal, Active Escapism or the TAZ. As for the third possibility— Zarathustra’s Revenge—this seems like a possible path for the new nihilism, at least from a philosophical perspective. But since I am unable personally to advocate it, I leave the question open.

But here—I think—is the point at which I both meet with & diverge from the new nihilism. I too seem to believe that Predatory Capitalism has won and that no revolution is possible in the classical sense of that term. But somehow I can’t bring myself to be “against everything.” Within the Temporary Autonomous Zone there still seems to persist the possiblity of “authentic life,” if only for a moment— and if this position amounts to mere Escapism, then let us become Houdini. The new surge of interest in Individualism is obviously a response to the Death of the Social. But does the new nihilism imply the death even of the individual and the “union of egoists” or Nietzschean free spirits? On my good days, I like to think not.

No matter which of the three paths one takes (or others I can’t yet imagine) it seems to me that the essential thing is not to collapse into mere apathy. Depression we may have to accept, impotent rage we may have to accept, revolutionary pessimism we may have to accept. But as e.e. cummings (anarchist poet) said, there is some shit we will not take, lest we simply become the enemy by default. Can’t go on, must go on. Cultivate rosebuds, even selfish pleasures, as long as a few birds & flowers still remain. Even love may not be impossible…


SOURCE: The Anvil Review http://theanvilreview.org/
for further inquiry follow the comments here: http://anarchistnews.org/content/new-nihilism and here: http://www.anarchistnews.org/content/new-nihilism-forum-topic-comment-section

a comment at the essay by Emile:

THE FOURTH OPTION NOT MENTIONED BY WILSON

i kind of like this author’s [peter lamborn wilson’s] writing style with its nuance of coolness and humour, and have the feeling that it’s been on anarchistnews.org before (it was evidently written in july, 2014).

meanwhile, my gut reaction is rejection of this boring and repeated insistence that change in the world is something we are going to see. ‘here it comes, folks, … things are starting to move in the right direction, … we’re on our way now, … put your shoulder behind it and we’ll take it the full hundred yards down to touchdown.

surely this impression that we have to see change happening is our ego talking. how about “life is what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans” [john lennon]. what about that sort of change? … where we’re blind-sided by it?

are we not too much the puppet of our own intention? “i want this to happen and it is not happening,… here’ comes my childhood-tantrum”.

there are quite a few references to nietzsche here, but none to ‘amor fati’, love of fate;

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it…but love it. — Nietzsche, ‘Ecce Homo’

it is only a cheap form of anti-authorianism that rejects all imposition of authority except one’s own. “this revolution or transition has to start happening now, damn it, or i am going to have to give up on this world”.

in true anarchist style, nietzsche sees the world in terms of a ceaseless, goal-less Becoming, as in the ‘transforming relational activity continuum of modern physics’;

“And do you know what “the world” is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income …” –Nietzsche, ‘The Will to Power’, 1067

Such a world is not in the state of ‘becoming’ in the sense of working its way towards a goal outside of it, in which case, it’s current state would be deficient relative to that goal, kind of like a sinful world that is in the process of being redeemed.

no doubt, most of us are not keen on even ‘trying on’ this amor fati because we don’t want to ‘get comfortable’ with ‘not caring’ whether anything changes in the way we want to see it change. we don’t want to lose our Atman individuality and dissolve into pure Brahman holeness.

But, maybe its possible to be ‘both at the same time’ so it could be interesting to follow along with Nietzsche and see what he’s up to with the Amor fati thing, per this guided tour by ulfers and cohen;

“Amor fati is the embrace of the world that is as it is—eternally Becoming—not as it “should” be, for there is no “should,” no imperative that it be, or be transformed into, something other than it is. Put differently, Amor fati is the embrace of a world that is an implicate order of freedom and necessity: of freedom in that it is free from any “should” that would judge it to be deficient, and from any goal that “should” be attained, and of necessity because the lack of a goal to be achieved allows the world its “must,” its having to be what it is, not what it is made by an authority beyond the perimeters of the world.
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… In other words, fate, as Nietzsche interprets it, is the emblem of his insight that there is nothing—nihil—outside the transitoriness of the world of eternal Becoming. Fate, then, is the name for a totally immanent, perpetually transitory world that is not subject to the finality of a goal outside of it, the achievement of which would redeem the “guiltiness” of Becoming. Amor fati is the embrace of the world that is as it is—eternally Becoming—not as it “should” be, for there is no “should,” no imperative that it be, or be transformed into, something other than it is. Put differently, Amor fati is the embrace of a world that is an implicate order of freedom and necessity: of freedom in that it is free from any “should” that would judge it to be deficient, and from any goal that “should” be attained, and of necessity because the lack of a goal to be achieved allows the world its “must,” its having to be what it is, not what it is made by an authority beyond the perimeters of the world.
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In particular, it can be said that Nietzsche’s appeal to love of fate is the consequence of his thesis of the “death of God,” love of a supreme center of the value of Being that guaranteed meaning to a meaningless world of Becoming—the authority beyond the limits of the world. The fate of Amor fati “frees” us, then, to a world of radical immanence, a world beyond the dualism of immanence and transcendence. Nietzsche characterizes this world as whole in the sense of an interconnectedness or web-like structure Nietzsche describes as Verhängnis (literally a “hanging together”), a word that also means “fate.” Given that the world of interconnectedness (Verhängnis) is its own fate (Verhängnis), it is beyond any outside determinism because there is no outside to the whole. Given a radically holistic world, there is no outside to its Verhängnis, and thus we must be what we are: Verhängnis. As Nietzsche puts it succinctly: “One is necessary, one is a piece of fatefulness [Verhängnis], one belongs to the whole, one is the whole.” — Friedrich Ulfers and Mark Daniel Cohen. Nietzsche’s Amor Fati – The Embracing of an Undecided Fate. Poiesis – A Journal of the Arts and Communication. 2002. (English)

whether or not we can ‘get into it’, there is this suggestion here that everything finds its meaning and value in everything else in a relational web-structure. this is a shift from where we are when we are impatient for change to start rolling out in the direction we want it to. because that has to be coming from our ego, and our confidence that we know what’s good for the world and we want to help ‘bring it on’. but in a ‘web-of-life’ situation, we are the pushing and pulling we are situationally included in. we are the evolving world. we are the agents of transformation.

meanwhile, we tend to think of ourselves as little ants who can’t make a mark on world change unless we can band together and have a whole lot of ants pulling or pushing together in the same direction. and if that’s no happening then we feel like giving up on changing the world, and when that happens, its like the world is drifting along without us and is impervious to our attempts to change it.
this is the nihilism that nietzsche warns about. it comes from ‘the death of God’ in a simple sense of leaving the world and life ‘meaningless’ since there is nothing above it all to give it meaning. however, the death of a source of meaning that lies beyond the world of becoming could mean that the ‘meaning’ or ‘value’ is inside the world in the evolutionary web-of-life itself. in this case, whatever is unfolding is unfolding the way it must.

so, … we go [in our understanding of ourselves] from being an ant amongst ants who need to band together to construct a future state of the world that we know is a ‘good’ state, … to abandoning the notion that the world needs to go to some state that is improved over where it is and understanding ourselves as being co-evolver of the world, … then we are never ‘out of the game’ and never rendered ‘useless’. instead of seeing ourselves as ‘doers of deeds’ that must somehow make a mark on the world, we see ourselves ‘as the world’, as agent of transformation flow features in the fluid world.

nietzsche was on the same wavelength as emerson on this;

“Whilst a necessity so great caused the man to exist, his health and erectness consist in the fidelity with which he transmits influences from the vast and universal to the point on which his genius can act. The ends are momentary: they are vents for the current of inward life which increases as it is spent. A man’s wisdom is to know that all ends are momentary, that the best end must be superseded by a better. But there is a mischievous tendency in him to transfer his thought from the life to the ends, to quit his agency and rest in his acts: the tools run away with the workman, the human with the divine.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘The Method of Nature’

dealing with the frustration of our ego in this way, is not amongst the options given by wilson, but it clearly seems to be one that was actually exercised by nietzsche, who felt that the sort of change he was looking for; i.e. the tranvaluation of all values, … was a couple of centuries away which would be punctuated by a bad bout of nihilism before we had cultivated the amor fati antidote.

it’s not that this transition isn’t possible. indigenous anarchist infants are brought up with this web-of-life worldview foundation. but the challenge in getting back into it after being raised a Western civilized kid, is enormous. while it is more difficult than the three options that wilson mentioned, it is not impossible and it is therefore worth mentioning it as a fourth (and preferred) option.

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