This is a core statement:
"I’ve spent the better part of my youth thinking up creative insults for
these men, trying to form and reform the contempt and disgust that
almost everyone who came of age in the UK after the financial crash
feels for the way these people have pissed all over our futures and told
us to enjoy the gentle British rain. But now, when it comes to it, I
find I can’t summon the bile. I can’t access the heat of rage that kept
me writing all those late nights in filthy flatshares in between jobs,
as my friends descended into pits of depression and anxiety and gave up
on their potential, as more and more young people came out to protest
and met only the business ends of police batons. I haven’t the energy to
be angry, not right now. I don’t even feel contempt for these bloated
little hypocrities that fucked up my country and cauterized the futures
of almost everyone I care about. I feel nothing at all about them, still
less for the millions of people they conned and called it democracy.
It’s all catastrophically sad, and it’s going to be sad for a very long
time."
Brexit is truly the end-of-the-road for Europe. Theresa May, meaning
what she represents, is far worse than Donald Trump and everything that
is behind him. Trumps is not a show, but the show elements in him/it
feeds its opposition big time, even if unintentionally. May's politics,
are like a cold, almost robotic, steel instrument cutting through the
social fabric - meeting no effective opposition, because effective
political opposition is impossible within the current socio-economic
dispensation prevailing in England specifically, but in large tracks of
Europe generally.
So if we want to keep our heart working (Laurie Penny again), it might
be good, before acting, to have a (yet another ;-) look at our current
(meta-?)political predicament: the collapse of 'the Left'.
I'll start with a proposition: the Right is subjectively divided, but
objectively united, whereas it is the reverse with the Left: thinking
it's one when it is so irremediably (for the moment) divided. And the
simple reason for thar is: class.
Undoubtedly, the elephant in the room is the '1%' - actually it's a
herd. And the biggest problem is that the herd getting larger by the
day. Such a momentum makes it irresistibly atractive to the still rather
large demography just under it (aka 'middle classes'). Happily
forgetting that for every new millionaire born, nine, or nineteen, or
twenty-nine, or whatever number of people from that very same demography
gets demoted to the level they most fear: the wrong half of the '99%'.
No, they all think they are going 'to make it' thanks to their hard work
and talent, and if not, that they will have failed, like the rest, the
nine, nineteen, twenty-nine, etcetera.
'Losers! Such Losers' the Donald would blurt ...
It is a replica of sorts, at the level of society as a whole, of what
has been observed in agriculture over the past 50 years or more: a
constant, remorseless consolidation where the 'winners' went to look at
their former collegues and equals as legitimate roadkills - not victims
of the hazard of circumstances, but people who simply 'didn't have it'.
This 'false consciousness' cements the unity of the Right, drawing to it
an electoral majority of supporters for the perfectly wrong reasons. And
their day of reckoning is nowhere in sight.
But on the Left, the split is even more profound. Mostly a question of
class, the Left has its rich (in 'power, knowledge, and income') and its
poor (idem) too, but also of way of thinking - or maybe of thinking tout
court. Remember: the Right does not think - that is where all conspiracy
theories flounder - it simply does, or maybe better: it simply _is_. The
eternal mistake of the Left, especially its more 'moderate' parts, is to
believe that coming up with perfectly reasonable proposals which are
bound to benefit everybody will convince a majority to vote for it.
Well, it won't.
But even before that, the established ('rich') part of the Left has
been, and remain eternally unable to phrase a coherent programme that
would benefit the majority of common people (the 'poor') - let alone to
implement it when it is in power - look at France, where the socialist
party has the presidency, the majority in both houses, presides over the
largest number of provinces, and 'mayors' most large towns. Outcome:
near-total stagnation + foreign military adventures ...
Why? Because most 'reasonable' (or 'rich') Left people do not
understand, and have nothing to say, to the still vast majority of 'the
poor'. Not at the level of 'gut feelings', which the Right is so apt at
raising in the first place (out of nowhere? well, mostly), and then at
exploiting to the tilt, but at the level of ordinary, everyday life,
with all it brings in terms of challenges, issues, despair (amidst the
ruins left by austerity for instance), but also of simple pleasures and
community life.
Reasonableness and advances (in material and immaterial 'capital') has
slowly morphed into personal or 'clanic' individualism, embraced with
glee by the upper layers, and imposed by brute force upon the lower
ones. In both cases the feeling of and for the commons has been
near-irremediably lost.
It is now being slowly regained, here and there, albeit still by a very
tiny minority, at least in 'Western' Europe. In other parts, it has
never vanished entirely, that is, to the same extent. Reason why Greece
is actually more resilient that England, and under the duress it is in -
greater by far than Great Britain's, for now - it might collapse as a
country, but not as a culture or a society. It will thus not sink as
deep at the England will, and neither will the 'garlic' countries when
times will be up for them (and I just hope, and expect, that Scotland
and N.Ireland will have jumped out before the English Tory-ish nightmare
comes true).
This will be the real outcome of Brexit: ultimately proving Baroness
Thatcher true after her time: (there was, but) there _will be_ no such
thing as society . Let's just pray Brexit will not extent beyond the
shores of 'the blesed isle' - for my own country for instance, the
Netherlands, I am none too optimistic. And there may be other takers,
especially in the former Ostblock.
So if the Left is lost (for the moment, and 'the future will last a long
time'), what remaisn 'us' to do. Maybe Laurie Penny's snip at the 'Keep
Calm and Carry On' jugs is not that much off the marks after all. My
idea would be let's keep calm and start building up our own communities
and try to make a better world by making our little worlds better
places. Keeping a very close look at the many small mistakes and large
failures we commit in doing so while trying to address them, not
burrying them. Keeping also an eye, and be open to, other same-minded
endeavours, and supporting them. It may not be a guarantee for success,
but at least a way to cope in a less despair-loaded way with a world
that is so fast accelerating towards its teotwawki moment.
Cheers from Firenze, p+4D!
(7 when in Fiesole! ;-)
# 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]
# @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
