On 8 Nov 2018, at 14:25, jan hendrik brueggemeier wrote:
just to reiterate: AB was an alt-right hack of nettime? times
certainly
are changing ... (apologies for the slow response).
I'd rather spend time on just about anything but Bard, but on this
point:
As far as I know, Bard's been on the list for many years, going back at
least to the Tulipomania conference in 2000, when he was programmed in a
debate with (my, how times have changed!) Richard Barbrook and Michael
Gurstein. Personally, I think that Bard is "alt.right" and a hack, and
it's a fact that he was on nettime, but to suggest he "*was* an
alt-right hack of nettime" — no. That invites a level of
conspiratorial thinking that's unjustified and unnecessary. I think the
last time anyone suggested someone else on the list was part of some
hidden plot to target nettime was 20 years ago, probably almost to the
day. Let's make the next time it happens in November 2038. If this list
should be about anything at all, it should be about advancing some kind
of freedom in understanding how individual, collective, and mass beliefs
and actions coincide. Conspiratorial implications that cast others as
instruments of hidden agendas do the opposite.
That said, in a few private mails after being modded Bard made a few
remarks that, in my view, confirm hat his ideas have aligned with the
extreme elements of the alt.right — for example, something that
sounded a lot like the "white genocide" bombast common in supremacist
circles. That put an end to whatever reservations I had about modding
him — not because those views are proscribed on this list, but because
there was no reason to think he'd be able to engage in constructive
debate. He also asked to unsubscribed, which he was. So: he's gone off
to the happy hunting ground of, as he put it, "the Intellectual Deep
Web." But I don't want to say anything more, because it isn't fair to
discuss someone in a public context where they can't reply.
More generally, a few people have pointed out on- and off-list that open
forums where people from across the political spectrum can exchange and
debate ideas are desperately needed — as an ideal in their own right
and for pragmatic reasons, because the alternative is a world of
intellectual inbreeding, feedback loops, and closed systems.
If this list needs anything (and it desperately does), it's to expand
the range of voices and ideas, not to narrow them and turn inward. So
I'll repeat this:
You know what would be great? If we — by which I mean all of you,
acting individually — could take a few concrete steps to nudge this
list in better directions. Rather than make a few banal suggestions of
things you can do *right now*, as if this were a political
fund-raiser, it's better to leave this as a standing invitation.
Cheers,
Ted
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