Re: <nettime> The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Geoffrey Goodell <goodell@oxonia.net>]

Dear Iain,

I'm not sure whether it adds anything to the discussion, but I've experienced
this before.

I am on a mailing list for alumni of a particular house at my undergraduate
university.  One particular contributor to this list has unleashed (and
continues to do so) an unending stream of email nonsense, mostly in support of
right-wing propaganda.  The nonsense is not completely incoherent, and it is
also not stateless, as one might expect to find if it were the output of a
comment-generating algorithm like this one:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/ai-powered-text-from-this-program-could-fool-the-government/

It carries arguments over long threads, days and even weeks at a time.  So it
seems to have been created by a real human.  But nobody really knows anything
about this person, or who he claims to be.  We cannot find any records of his
name in our alumni register, nor do any of us recognise his email address.
Yet, there he is still, subscribed as he must have managed somehow to do, with
all traces of linkages to any university-run system having vanished years ago.

The propaganda itself is toxic.  It is not entirely clear whether our mailing
list subscriber is trying to convince us of its truth or simply trying to warn
us of the existence of such arguments.  Either way, he continues to defend its
messages with sophistry, and he seems to have more than a bit of extra time on
his hands to argue with other subscribers to the list.  Every now and then,
people talk of forcing his removal, but for various logistical reasons this
seems not to be possible, and moreover the other people on the list want to
profess openness to debate.  Frankly it reminds me of what had happened at the
University of Cambridge last year:

https://www.bbc.com/news/education-55246793

What is striking about the pseudonymous contributor on that mailing list is
that he keeps contributing, despite the discordance with the mood of the group,
with voluminous messages that would surely take an ordinary human many hours
per week to compose.

So, I must ask: Is it possible that our pseudonymous contributor is
deliberately seeking to exploit our respect for anonymous speech as a way to
undermine our forum?

>From a technical perspective, it is a form of 'poisoning', not unlike this
attack on keyservers:

https://gist.github.com/rjhansen/67ab921ffb4084c865b3618d6955275f

If we think this is what is going on, then I suggest that we ignore it.  I
shall certainly do so going forward.  Some of the more adventurous contributors
to my other mailing list have chosen to respond to our relentless agitator with
funny images.  I'm not sure that is a good idea, mostly because higher list
traffic will invariably discourage some list members to unsubscribe.  At some
level, I suspect that this might be our relentless agitator's objective.

A closing thought exercise: Who might pay to poison a forum like this, and how
much would it cost?

Best wishes --

Geoff

On Mon, 18 Jan 2021 at 09:13:12AM -0800, Iain Boal wrote:
> Nettimers,
> 
> I???ve no idea of the identity of the sinomane telecommunist (???Kleiner') defiling this conversation, or their whereabouts, or their condition (though the aggressive logorrhoea is suggestive). However, to call Brian???s profound - and profoundly open, generous, and dialogical - contributions to the discussion ???mccarthyist gatekeeping??? is either wild self-satire or grounds for a strategic ???intervention' from our moderators. Ted?
> 
> IB  
> 
> 
> On 18 Jan 2021, at 08:28, Dmytri Kleiner <dk@telekommunisten.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 2021-01-18 13:42, Felix Stalder wrote:
> 
> > So, what exactly is the lesson that China holds for "us", that is,
> > cultural/knowledge workers
> 
> While these questions hold promise, it feels to me like the precondition is that cultural/knowledge workers in the west stop carrying water for US intelligence and work on developing a respectful relationship with the global left.
> 
> I'm not sure that many who are here in the core realize how badly we are viewed by our comrades abroad due in no small part to the cartoonish cold war pejoratives we see here on this list all the time.
> 
> I understand not knowing, it's hard to know what is said about us at MST schools or among comrades in Kerala or in shop-floor meetings among Numsa members, as we are most often not there.
> 
> What I do not understand is not caring, and when this is mentioned, reacting with white rage and mccarthyist gatekeeping and doubling down on chauvinist denouncements, as we've seen from some contributors here.
> 
> While asking "what lessons" can we learn from China is interesting, in my view there are far more pressing questions. What role should we play as tensions heighten with China? How do we deal with the fact that in many cases progress of our comrades abroad are directly sabotaged by way of aggression from our own countries? How do we deal with the fact that in many cases workers here benefit from exploitation abroad, and so we have differences in material interests that create obstacles to solidarity?
> 
> What strategy can we pursue that addresses the challenges of worsening social conditions at home, heightening international tensions and aggression and the existential threat of climate change?
> 
> Many of these questions are not new and where key areas of discussion in the "old fashioned" position of proletarian internationalism elaborated on in Stuttgart, Basel and Zimmerwald from 1907 to 1915, before the Russian revolution led to the 3rd international era, with it's spy-vs-spy intrigue in the bosom of which the western embedded left was distilled and synthesized as a liberal strain, separate from and hostile to the global left, branded "authoritarian" by the spin-doctors of Der St??rmer or der Wochenspruch der NSDAP, who's greatest hits continue to be spun on the Mighty Wurlitzer to irresistible effect among the meandering pundits in our midst, who gladly dance to this beat.
> 
> In my view, we mustn't dragonboat all the way to China to find the lessons we need, we just need to stop feeling entitled to judge and denounce the Chinese workers and deny their accomplishments. We must understand that the struggle continues everywhere, there and here, and trust them in their struggle, while we focus on our own. We only really need mention China at all when confronting the propaganda used to justify aggression against it by our own countries. We must turn our weapons on the class enemy at home.
> 
> In terms of lessons to take, we can find the lessons we need in the legacy of the US Progressive Era right here in the imperial core, in the work of Freire, and building upon the practices of Jane McAlevey, "deep organizing."
> 
> We don't need a "new left strategy" we need to stop the ever changing iterations of the bullshit new left and its various derailments into thirdwayism from sheepdogging our movements away from the tried and true dialectical materialism that has been proven to work everywhere, among the revolutionary workers of the global left, and has blossomed in art, pedagogy, labour organizing, and even business management and design practices.
> 
> As has been advocated in this thread now many times, in my comments, in Frank's comments, in William's comments, in Vincent's comments, etc. We need a practice resident among and rooted in the efforts of the people themselves facing concrete proglems, led by their own organic leaders, not third party pundits, where we organize, try stuff, learn the results and iterate forward, always building class power.
> 
> This is the strategy we need, and as Jane McAlevey would note, there are no shortcuts.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dmytri Kleiner
> @dmytri
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