Re: <nettime> Europe and the MAGA mind virus

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

Dear Louis,

Thanks for your post. For me, generations are basically political, it's a
mood, a set of challenges and a disposition to act. I've been through a few
of these and now I feel my old selves (and all those inevitable regrets)
getting ready to morph into something new.

"How do youth today know you are a person they can come to? How would they
know?"

We are trying to find this out at Watershed Art & Ecology. People know that
the space is open and uncensored, and something good will happen when you
come there. But now it is important to find out how we can resist together,
and how to create a better society, whether undercover if the fascism gets
really serious, or hopefully, in a massive public movement that defeats it.

People are emerging from their shock and seeing the Trump agenda in action.
But the world is totally different from that of Seattle in 1999, or Occupy
in 2011, or even the George Floyd movement of 2020. How to reach out? I
think your question is the most important, and curious what others have to
say.

best, Brian

On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 7:57 PM Louis Rawlins via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:

> Hey Brian and Christian. I'm responding without reading the full thread,
> given that I feel like I understand the contours of this ongoing dialogue.
> Feel free to correct my flow.
>
> Brian, you mentioned recently the idea of eldership and starting to feel
> into that role. This feels to me an important point. One way the concept of
> eldership has been presented to me has been, "How do youth today know you
> are a person they can come to? How would they know?"
>
> Instead of "Life Under Capitalism" maybe we could try something like
> "Poorly-Functioning Socialism" or play the game of "Notice Communistic
> Behaviors" which is the vibe I got from David Graeber in the early chapters
> of *Debt: The First 5,000 Years.*
>
> Somebody on nettime recently noted too, that generational divides are
> somewhat artificial and driven by the idea of demographics, itself a
> statistical / eugenics project. So it makes me wonder if what you're
> sensing as a generational regret is itself part of the problem. Put another
> way, "Life Under Capitalism" thrives on environments of fear,
> disappointment and jealousy. It's how you sell things. Robert
> Cialdini wrote *Influence* about just that. It's not normally a book I
> reference, but it's been nagging me that the more-privileged coworker at
> the last startup where I worked was reading it. Something about my
> coworker's "class advantage" and the fact that they still needing to do
> individual learning struck me as strange.
>
> All to say, there feels like there is some framing yet-to-come about world
> events. I'm less savvy about Europe, but I do know that a few of my
> community elders here in San Francisco were on my bus commute home from
> work. They were getting ready to protest in front of the Tesla dealership.
> I didn't catch one of the protest signs they were carrying, but I did
> notice the, "ELON MUSK IS A NAZI" written in red and blue marker on
> gatorboard. I can only imagine the impact for $TSLA tomorrow (up 6.45
> points today).
>
> Peace,  Louis
>
> On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 3:00 AM <nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org>
> wrote:
>
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> > Today's Topics:
> >
> >    1. Re: Europe and the MAGA mind virus (Christian Swertz)
> >    2. Re: Europe and the MAGA mind virus (Brian Holmes)
> >
> >
> [snip]
>
>
> > Thanks for asking Christian. I did not mean to impugn all anarchists nor
> > all of anarchism - I too am a fan of many authors and projects, not only
> > those whom you mention - but rather I was referring to the way that a lot
> > of people more or less affiliated with anarchism greeted the Internet
> with
> > such enthusiasm. We talked a lot about the rights and dreams of people in
> > the Lacondon jungle (the Zapatistas), and theirs remains a great cause,
> but
> > we failed to see (or make visible to others) the almost inevitable
> > consequences of accelerated commercial and cultural change, namely the
> > present fascist backlash. In that regard we were the useful fools of our
> > time.. We contributed to legitimating globalization under an "alter"
> guise.
> > I basically knew this as it was happening, but I couldn't do anything
> about
> > it.
> >
> > Of course this is not a very hopeful way to look back. It's a kind of
> > generational regret. I regret the way things have turned out. It's not
> > exactly my fault, but as I did participate at my individual scale, I
> still
> > feel that regret, also through empathy with future generations. Maybe
> life
> > under capitalism is like that?
> >
> > best, Brian
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 3:31?AM Christian Swertz <christian@swertz.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hi Brian,
> > >
> > > thank you for your substantial post. Really an interesting read. I just
> > > did not understand this one:
> > >
> > > owever, there was no audience for it and I soon ceased trying
> > > to make that point (shame on me). The reason why is that the
> > internet-happy
> > > anarchists, with all their open-border idealism, just didn't give a
> damn
> > > about lessons of history. T
> > >
> > >
> > > As far as I know, there is a difference between the freedom of capital
> > and
> > > the freedom of people, there is a difference between competition and
> > > solidarity, and there are some lessons about history that are taken
> into
> > > account in anarchist concepts, for example by Wengrow and Graeber, who
> > > actually argue for something that could be called open-border idealism.
> > But
> > > obviously I missed something. Can you give me a hint?
> > >
> > > I only ask because I fear that hopelessness as a result of the analysis
> > > might have the opposite effect to what is probably intended.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Liebe Gr??e,
> > >
> > > Christian Swertzhttp://www.swertz.at
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
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