Brian Holmes on Wed, 1 Feb 2017 14:56:17 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> 10 Preliminary Theses on Resistance


On 01/31/2017 09:38 AM, Ian Alan Paul wrote:

To not know
   precisely where we are headed is to remain open to the possibility of
   arriving where we couldn�t possibly have planned to, and in refusing
   the present we also invite what cannot presently exist within it.

The refusal to confront a complex society produces no results. The discourse above was repeated hundreds of times in 1999-2011 and then again in in 2011-2012. It demonstrated no grip on the real course of events. What can stop the coming fascism is not the romantic exaltation of revolution. Rather we have to create and propagate a new common sense that can traverse multiple classes, generations, religions, language groups, professional sectors, philosophical schools and religious faiths. The political-economic appeal to defend inherited privileges has to be replaced with a new and yet workable formula of societal development, which can be translated pragmatically into productive action. A little virtuoso rhetoric is not going to do the trick. Street protest has to overflow into counter-power, rather than withdrawing into some dreamed apotheosis of liberation. Because very rapidly it becomes evident that while you dream, the others are busy.

Well, Ian, I tried the same moves as you fifteen years ago and it rapidly led me on to much more real things. So I wish you good luck, best, Brian

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