[-empyre-] disrupting the right-right

Danny Butt <db@dannybutt.net> · Fri, 4 Jun 2004 14:57:55 -0600

We're here in Canada, of all places, for http://intranation.net at the 
moment and talking about activism (particularly anti-racism and the 
arts), strategies, problems, so this discussion seems very timely. I 
support Sam's comments below: although the large media channels do have 
possibilities for intervention, and I like the Yes Men as much as 
anyone, there's a certain level of self-satisfaction I feel after 
seeing their stuff that I'm suspicious of.
My research into global socio-economic reproduction has left me feeling 
that this mediated conception of the global is very difficult to work 
with effectively as a focus point for activism. I see this as an issue 
with North American instantiations of the "anti-globalisation movement" 
in particular. Of course local issues have structuring forces that 
operate multinationally, and it's important to understand those. But 
when you define targets as "the western militarist right wing" then I 
think it hides our stake in the specific questions we're working on. It 
becomes abstract and spectacular.
The most useful spaces to create for me are those sam notes below, 
where you get people from a wide range of perspectives working together 
on specific issues. It's that range that gives the best insight into 
what the important issues are and where the points of leverage might 
be. 'the' question sometimes turns out to be in different places than 
we expect. I think new media's ability to facilitate that meeting of 
different perspectives is under explored - too often groups tend to 
self-select and become insular. But it's important that sustainable, 
diverse communities are formed. Most of the political issues we face 
are not "quick-fix" problems so there's a need for a community of 
support when trying to keep sustained attention to this work.
x.d
--

http://www.dannybutt.net

#place: location, cultural politics, and social technologies: 
http://www.place.net.nz

Message: 8
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 11:39:50 +1000
From: sam-de-silva <sam@media.com.au>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] disrupting the right-right ...
To: "'soft_skinned_space'" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Message-ID: <200406041139.11891.sam@media.com.au>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="iso-8859-1"
hi,
The question seems to me today to
be "How do activists disrupt two lovers (the western militarist right
wing and the Islamist militarist right wing), who are so mutually
committed and supportive of one another?"

mmm - this is a question - but not the question. in fact, there's 
really no

'the' question in my opinion. what would be best for media-activists 
to do is

create images of a new ;coallition of the willing; - put the images of 
bush,

rumsy, howard, blair, sharon with saddam, bin ladan, and the masked

executioners... and maybe throw in the image of che in to the mix as 
well ;-)
'jumping on the bandwagon' is an interesting idea. there was a time 
when the

denial of service attacks were all the rage. i am sure many of us have

received those emails from ricardo dominguez and others (perhaps me 
even!).
the problem i have with much of art/net/activism is that these tactics 
are

often effective in getting 'media' attention but that's about all. 
rtmark do

this very well. stunts are their business. cnn reports them. so what? 
at the

end of the day, they are providers of entertainment or cheap content 
for the

big media channels.

some times, when space is created where 'anything is possible' and 
'everyone

is (genuinely) welcome' - that seems to be when interesting stuff 
happens.

when you reflect back - you can see there was an interesting 
connection going

on between people who come from different backgrounds and interests 
but have

a passion about a specific issue.