Re: <nettime> The Meaning of Boris Johnson

Obviously I agree with David in this thread. Global metabolic disruptions like the pandemic (and the coming climate-driven storms, famines, etc) require a renewed focus on large-scale collective action - not just intellectually, but also existentially. This was obvious with the production and distributions of the mRNA vaccines (an incredible feat of science and technology btw). For the first time in my life I was glad to see the US Army in action, because they were putting a shot in my arm, for free, in an entirely desegregated collective facility that made me feel like the resident of a city rather than an individual sheltering in a private home. To this day, practically everyone in Chicago wears a mask in public places, which is a rare and tremendously positive recognition of the vulnerability of others.

I agree with Patrice too, except Patrice, I think you make a category error. The relevant category is neither corporations nor government, but instead the democratic capitalist state. From the get-go this is a corporate state that develops social functions for the needs of enterprise. But as a socially transformative force the state "comes back in" (as the poly sci people say) whenever there is a collective issue such as war, drought, systemic economic crisis that cannot be resolved through market relations. It's the only way the state can retain legitimacy, and we will not see that pattern ending anytime soon. The pandemic showed amply how this collective actions works, as well as its contradictions and failures. But so does much of 20th century history, as Joe Rabie pointed out.

I'm convinced that under the pressures of global inequality and climate change, we are going experience many excruciating versions of this return of collective agency. However, like Patrice and Joe too, I have serious doubts whether the corporate state can fulfill its democratic promises. It was amazing to see plans for transformative state investment come together along with the vaccines during the early phases of the pandemic, then reach the US legislative process in 2021. What next occurred was a breakdown of that legislative process in the face of identitarian right-wing political agitation, to the point where a US administration trying to fight inequality and climate change through a comprehensive economic program designed primarily by Bernie Sanders is now courting war with Russia as a desperate attempt to hang onto power. And so, instead of gradually taking apart and converting the oil and gas industry, the Biden government is now trying to reboot North American natural gas production for LNG sales to Europe. Nationalism then replaces social ecology as the (mistaken) focus of collective action.

Still the entropic mess of the present is no excuse for evading the overarching question of the 21st century. How to engage, both intellectually and existentially, with the really existing democratic capitalist state? How to generate collective agency at national, regional and planetary scales? That's also the meaning of the science wars, by the way. It's not just that you are "for or against science" - as though science itself were one and unified. Instead the question is whether you can engage with the most far-thinking scientists, indigenous leaders and environmental justice activists to turn the corporate state into an ecostate. What's missing, particularly in the cultural and intellectual fields, is a fully fledged and broadly sharable vision of exactly what that last word could mean in your own life - and in your own body.

best to all, Brian

On Sat, Feb 12, 2022 at 4:27 AM David Garcia <d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk> wrote:

Many thanks Brian and Patrice… When Johnson came on TV as head of state and did not advise but ‘instructed’ me, my family and the rest of the country to ‘lock down’ I experienced the actual fact and reality of state power as never before. Much as I despise Johnson and all his works I supported this use of state power as a uniquely powerful means of supporting the value of mutual dependency over the value of individual freedom, (this was very difficult for Johnson as a libertarian Tory as we now realise in the wake of partygate). A new and intense awareness of mutual dependency and the collective agency of which we are capable was the great revelation of the pandemic and our only hope of survival.

But the debate over state power and where we might seek to draw the line goes well beyond traji/comic Johnson sideshow. Anyone claiming, as Patrice, does that the state is merely an impotent “conveyer belt” steered by corporate forces has to explain the effectiveness of Xi Jinping’s Hobbesian Chinese state in reigning in their own corporate giants. The last 18 months has seen Xi cracking the whip and imprisoning (and doing anything else required) to re-assert state sovereignty over corporate hubris. This even extends to legislating time allowed to kids for gaming not to mention tinkering with the education policy as Xi has decided that the tech and finance sectors are sucking too many talented graduates away from more tangible forms of manufacturing.

Some European/western political actors are looking with envy at the perceived effectiveness of the Chinese (and other proactive Sth East Asian states) in their forthright nation-wide actions in containing Covid. The likelihood is that this is just a foretaste of an increasingly loud debate over the limits and role state power will play as the climate crunch really starts to bite. This is when we will return to the earlier postings on this thread that spoke about the science wars.

David Garcia

From: patrice riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>
Date: Saturday, 12 February 2022 at 08:51
To: <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>, David Garcia <d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk>
Cc: "nettime-l@kein.org" <nettime-l@kein.org>
Subject: Re: <nettime> The Meaning of Boris Johnson

Aloha,

Let me (allow me to) take Brian's rejoinder as an opportunity to address David's and his argument in face of the (dangerous) shenanigans in 10, Clowning Street (-Marina Hyde, TG) ... and beyond.

There is absolutely no doubt that Boris Johnson is a very 'special' character and political animal (Rory Stewart too, btw - but then in a positive sense), but as David says, his clowneries are froth while 'his administration is less of an outlier than it appears' - and this with deadly consequences.

I however do differ with David where he ascribe the current political-ideological imbroglio to the 'return of the state' as a consequence of the pandemic. According to me, to put it bluntly, nothing of the such has happened. The state has become more impotent than ever, and it are the corporate forces which have and are steering the decision-making process, with the state as mere conveyor belt. There is no confusion there, and even if it appears to happen more by default than by design, it is still entirely deliberate.We have truly and wholesomely entered the era of 'govcorp' where the administrative apparatus is merely, albeit indispensable, exo-squeleton of global corporate governance, with, in accordance with the spirit of the times, 'hyper' - and hyper rich - individuals at the helm. Welcome to neo-feudalism.

I am afraid that is such a dispensation, clowns like Boris Johnson, and his exceptionally 'gifted' motley crew ('Jakey' Rees-Mogg, 'Mad Nad' -ine Dorries, & the many such) are mere props (the extent to which they are conscious of it is unclear) in the tragedy which are embroiled in for quite a while: that of post-politics, that is a system where the powers are not what they look and are not located where they seem to be, and the ongoings take, for the people at large, every appearance of a puzzle palace. I think this is one of the reason for populism: desperately trying to make sense where it has vanished from the political scene (which has vanished too in the process) .

& With regard to Brian's derive of the unhappy pranksters towards a military expedient: he is completely right, while at the same time, to parakeet Jean Marie Le Pen's totally infame dismissal of the Shoah as a footnote, it is, 'ontologically speaking', a mere side-show. Even though, with a war in Europe at our doorstep, we might very well die in it for real.

Yeah, it's a fine mess indeed.

Cheers all the same , and happy week-end

On 02/11/2022 9:17 PM Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com> wrote:

David, your second paragraph sums up a really complex situation in a few words, thank you.

It's fairly easy to understand how right-wing populists raise the anger of the people. They do it with fear, born largely of their own mismanagement. Fear of the pandemic, of economic disruption, of war, of climate change - and maybe most of all, fear of the "return of the state" that's more-or-less required by all that. But you put your finger on something else, which is that these populist (and yet usually upper class) politicians have to go on *pretending* to believe in their old conservative lines about lowering taxes and shrinking government. Where will the pretence lead them? Right now BoJo is trying to save his political ass by exploiting the fear of war, and more, the nationalist pride of militarism - which would be the logical supplement to the old conservative lines. In fact he's pretty much openly claiming a military role for post-Brexit "Global Britain."

How do you see this latest development? Is it going to work? Could warmongering nationalism be the new rhetorical resource of the right, beyond Johnson? Or is this just his last desperate gambit on the way out?

From my viewpoint it is sickening to see this kind of political theater played in the face of genuinely dangerous situations.

best, Brian

Rory Stuart, one of the old-style Tories purged by Johnson and Cummings has created a fabulous taxonomy to illustrate Johnson’s gifts “as the most accomplished liar in British public life –perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister,”

“He has” according to Stuart ”mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true.”

But despite all of this it is just about possible to argue that Johnson has read the runes better than many other Tories and that much of the weirdness of UK politics is to some extent froth. His administration is perhaps less of an outlier than it appears. He is a man of few fixed ideological beliefs which is how (like Merkle) he has held together a coalition with contradictory ideologies.. The ‘greased piglet’ is hard to pin down.

Like many countries and regions, Johnson has had to respond to the biggest change brought about by the pandemic which has been to accelerate a shift in favour of a greater role for the state. Including the nation state in part because of the pandemic pressure to close boarders. Unlike other Tories Johnson is at ease with this along with other aspects of an interventionist state, despite frequently pretending otherwise.. The return of the nation state is part of what is becoming a more geo-politically charged world which includes a new awareness of the entanglement of supply chain pressures with questions of security and risk (e.g. Russian pipeline). The newly empowered state is also a consequence of the eye-watering amount of borrowing required to keep our economies from flat-lining. So even for Tories on the right of the party any return to the old fiscal narrative will be pretty much impossible. And Johnson has been quicker to recognise this than other Tories. Despite Thatcherite nostalgia there can be no going back to the Cameron Osbourne response to the 2008 crisis. Johnson’s conservatism recognises that there can be no return to small state with low taxes conservatism. His claims to NetZero ambitions means that world has gone..(But of course he often has to pretend otherwise) The post-covid mad Johnsonian UK has the appearance of a hyper-weird outlier. But wipe the froth of the Johnson Cappuccino and he maybe less of an outlier than it first appears.

David Garcia