The understanding and manipulation of masses has become a
technology-based activity. Like transportation or food production.
Reflexes and intuition in activism from the last few centuries are
becoming irrelevant in this regard - this is what 'activists' generally
refuse to understand, despite repeated and consistent failures.
'Knowledge' how to stir political movements based on Marx, '68, etc, is
as relevant as knowing how to hunt lunch with bow and arrows: when you
enter supermarket with those, you will be tased, hamstringed, and beaten
for a good measure. What puzzles me is that these people, after they
recover, go back to practice bow and arrow to 'do better next time.'
The myth that, unlike everything else, political technology is at the
18th century level, and that all it takes is to gospel the truth (via
Internet this time), which will set everyone free, is the main reason
that they will continue to fail.
much I know of Italy the country also Alex comes from. In Italy we are
literally engulfed by (critical or not, same) intellectualoids swimming
into academy/politics and unable to get anything done, or even
understood by the masses, completely detached from the actual legwork it
takes to carry on a political campaign or initiative.
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
