Re: [-empyre-] disrupting the right-right

["Boat People" <io@boat-people.org>]

kipper, 
thanks for answering. 
on that thread of thought, I read a complicated argument about 
CAE & their supposed dismissal of analog organising, which was 
possibly forwarded from nettime. CAE did seem to be barracking 
for something more about spectacle than any other form of 
participation in discourse, but they were very clear that if other 
people disagreed, then they supported them, too. (I could be 
completely mangling this in my dodgy memory, actually, and 
perhaps other empyricists would be better informed & could weigh 
in? please? anyone there?) 
I think they were being interrogated about having once said 
something like, 'the streets are dead capital', which of course 
provoked a lot of teeth gnashing. 
(my teeth gnashed a bit, too, i admit. I think that virtual-only 
organising is mainly a bit silly- those denial of service attacks, as 
mentioned by sam, seem to require so many bodies & so much 
computing power... for so little. And the e-toy event, not especially 
important except as potential, in my view, has never been 
replicated. ) (if I'm wrong, which would be ace, please correct me)

But maybe that contentious CAE position isn't so far away, for the 
sake of discussion, from the kind of embittered exhaustion 
circulating in the wake of last february's unprecedented global 
mass protests against the invasion of iraq. I nearly wrote 'uprising' 
instead of 'protest' there, but clearly we rose nowhere,  overthrew 
no-one, averted no war. 

I think this leads us to the kind of horrified sadness (sometimes 
manifesting as cynicism) permeating many discussions since 
then about WHAT IS TO BE DONE.  






> > I don't know what happened after that, so I can't pretend to have 
a
> > long view of the outcomes. just in that moment, on that day, it
> > seemed honestly moving.
> > --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----------
> sounds fantastic to me!
> 
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > & i also want to ask kipper what she objects to about CAE's
> > practice?
> 
> I don't know much about their practice, I just disagree with stuff 
they've
> written about their political analysis that informs it.
> 
> In general, I get the impression that some media activists 
choose to solely
> engage in 'media activism' (eg as opposed to street activism, 
mass public
> actions etc.)  because they believe that the media itself is now 
the primary
> theatre of anti-capitalist struggle
> 
> Specifically, the CAE champions this point of view, according to 
what I've
> read. One of their major premises is a belief that creating media 
spectacle
> was always the primary objective of activism (an interpretation 
which defies
> the most basic principles of social movement building!). So now 
that in
> recent decades huge budgets of government and capital have 
been employed to
> ensure the forces supporting the status quo absolute monopoly 
over the means
> of media manipulation, according to the CAE, 
public/mass/real-world actions
> can no longer have any effect. And so they conclude that activists 
must
> shift their action into the realm of the media itself.
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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> 
> 

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