Re: <nettime> The Meaning of Boris Johnson

hello thread,

I have had a moment to reflect upon these recent comments on 'boris' thread...(he seems to ape a kind of 'american model' of the 'family man' and that's all i have to say)

thank you, sean cubitt, for your hope and lighter note and sense that art might turn recuperative and bring on fantastic responses, even if not able to solve all the global problems, at least maybe artists are capable of taking off in some fantastic directions while we wait to see what's going to happen...

(sean writes)

and to Brian's thoughts, along with those with whom he shares them...

(Brian writes)

civil society unfortunately eroded as it is...didn't jurgen habermas predict this problem in some analysis about corporations becoming larger than the state? platforms being what they are and FB losing 29 million in a day...maybe there is some kind of collective action of disgust

(Brian writes)

<under the pressures of global inequality and climate

change, we are going experience many excruciating versions of this return

of collective agency.>

sequels smile

(and more from Brian)

<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....>

infrastructure bills to build back better bridges and roads which are in terrible condition...crumbling...which would bring in jobs are not even impressing those who seem to want democratic state...along with the voter suppression...its corporate controlled right wing lawmakers who are behind this - read ALEC - making "model laws" which can be easily copied state-to-state and passed by willing members in state legislatures...they are bent on eroding federal government. federal government in the US is the only democratic state we have.

i think there is just not enough action-filled action to Biden's style - for the likes of the social media-brained population weaned on linear immediacy (my term for how we get our kix on social media, liking) - Biden is quiet, semi-diligent, a bit elderly, and wants to be liked for federalizing legal marijuana...not a bleach blonde or tanning bed flamboyant...admin made up of quiet non-media seeking people like Deb Hallend...it is our fad-seeking population that may not know what democracy (in terms of legislation and action looks-like any more and unfortunately, young people are too pissed about policing to consider even the most rudimentary democrat worthwhile...even if the media pics of the state become more multicultural...democratic civil society has eroded! answer: return to "civics" in public schools. in california, we have a big problem of start up companies breaking state laws to operate business as a fad and gaining tons of profit...then some public peon or child gets hurt and suddenly...the disrupting 'no rules' philosophy becomes complete amnesia and ...whatever happened to that state law...when in fact they are doing "green" work for the benefit of "society"...

<is now courting war with Russia as a

desperate attempt to hang onto power.>

yes, its concerning that the only model Joe Biden and his admin seem to be able to conjure up for a democratic state trying to deal with the climate crisis is the Cold War and potential environmental devastation (Ukraine, what's that?) from a battle...

Brian writes:

< 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.>

it is the only way to go one vegetable at a time. I think we should collectively move the Organic Consumers Association (which is run by indigenous leaders and organic farmers and consumers) into the white house and let them tell us what to do with mother earth

<What's missing, particularly in the cultural and intellectual

fields, is...>

maybe no longer missing....

< a fully fledged and broadly sharable vision of exactly what that

last word could mean in your own life - and in your own body.>

mollyxx

On Sat, Feb 12, 2022 at 8:42 PM Sean Cubitt <sean.cubitt@unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

two short reflections on Brian's point on the corporate state:

the alt.right's libertarian situationism (which Brits recognise as Dominic Cummings' cash from chaos doctrine) is an extension of Mount Pelerin's belief that the state should a) shrink and b) be subject to 'law' - but clearly not laws that governments write: the law is today referred to as the International Rules based Order and is fundamentally the law as promulgated by the WTO (and GATT before it). The loony fringe think the Law is some imagined Magna Carta (or possibly the 10 commandments rewritten to preclude gun control and trans rights). The Ottawa truckies probably don't believe the state should stop shovelling snow, filing potoles, clearing wrecks or sending ambulances to crash sites. If and when they set up mutual benefit associations to build roads, police and maintain them, and their own hospitals with funds to provide for the victims of their pollution, I'll believe they are into something good. That these services to the road haulage industry are provided free of charge and supported with fossil fuel subsidies suggests current neoliberal governments are good for ensuring the well being of capital and the destruction of the planet. Otherwise where would be the point of state capture of the kind envisaged by the GoP's segregationist voting policies?

It is striking that Modi evokes Partition, Zi the Revolution and Putin the moment when the USSR's territorial spread was at its greatest, while Boris is part of a movement that gained traction with Reagan and Thatcher in the late 1970s to rescind the gains made by the Welfare State at the same period. Brian can fill us in non the parallel histories of the US and Canada but it seems the 1940s postwar generation that gave us the mathematical theory of communication and cybernetics also set the foundations for 2020s revanchism

so it is heartening to remember that the equivalent period after WW1 and the Spanish influenza a hundred years ago gave us the Duino Elegies and Ulysses. Audiovisual media have been maturing for about the same time as the novel had been in 1922: perhaps this pandemic year we'll see similar aesthetico-political breakthrough.

seán

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2022 16:06:14 -0600
From: Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>
To: 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
Message-ID:
<CANuiTgwKdvsK6NDuvRmgMjnyBpQjMdypAVH=dUVerrDVGzJi5A@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

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
>
>
>
>

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