I think (and hope) you are right, Brian. In response to this comment: "The TV cameras, few as there were, were literally outside, observing, clutching their pearls, while a thousands social media cameras were inside, doing, celebrating."
Worth noting that the rioters targeted the media during this event, and destroyed equipment: https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1346944475478814720?s=20 Inside, they left messages of violence against the media as well. https://twitter.com/AnthonyQuintano/status/1346963370205970432?s=20 On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 2:29 PM seb olma <sebo...@xs4all.nl> wrote: > Brian at his best, thank you so much for this! > > Best, > > Seb > > On 7 Jan 2021, at 19:25, Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 2:32 AM Felix Stalder <fe...@openflows.com> wrote: > >> I followed, like many others I presume, yesterday's events in Washington >> on TV (cnn) and on social media at the same time. And it seems pretty >> clear that this event was made on, through and for social media.... > > [...lots of other very cogent observations here...] > >> I'm far away, maybe miss-reading this entire thing. >> > > It's too early to tell. However there is an opposite interpretation. > > In my view, far from being a harbinger of possibly worse threats to come, > yesterday's events were the most positive thing that could have happened. I > had hoped - dreamed - that we would see something exactly like this. > > The reason why is that through these events, we as a country left the > world of "harbingers" and "possible threats" behind. Simultaneously, we > left behind the pretense that populist Republicans are "merely" engaged in > political theater. The day began with the usual push-the-limits posturing > from Senator Ted Cruz and his allies: yet another page from the rhetorical > playbook developed by Newt Gingrinch in the early 1990s. But then the > play-acting devolved into an ugly insurrection carried out by crude, stupid > and very obviously manipulated people. They were directly incited by the > highest powers, via social media for sure, and television, and radio, and > print journalism, and above all by the hottest channel of all: live > rallies. The theater had consequences. The possible became real. And so a > choice between conflicting realities could finally occur. > > Amazingly, no bomb exploded, no automatic weapons came out at dusk, there > was no massacre. The pretense of "political theater" that fomented the > uprising also took the place of, and disallowed, any serious planning for > collective violence. Instead the entire country got a close look at an > inchoate, yet very dangerous mob whose worldview is paranoid and > delusional. Sure, we had seen these folks already, many times. Yet this > time there was no equivocation as to who was leading. When Pence and > McConnell took their last-minute stand in favor of the Constitution, Trump > sent his thugs to oppose them. And with their actions, Trump's people - the > real, unequivocal "deplorables" - finally lanced the boil of Trumpism. > > When the Western forests burned and smoke hung for weeks over Seattle and > San Francisco, it became obvious to a majority of Americans that climate > change was real. Similarly, when the windows were shattered at the Capitol, > it became obvious that a politics based on staged and calculated > insurrectionary rhetoric leads to real violence and institutional breakdown. > > Rather than subjecting it to a media-theoretic analysis, I think it would > be realistic to see yesterday's electoral count event as a "total social > fact." The phrase by Marcel Mauss refers to moments of collective ritual in > which the pragmatic administration of functions coincides with the > charismatic or magical expression of values. For Mauss this is a dynamic > ritual with all the density, complexity and precarity of lived experience. > It is a real force because it tests out the validity of social fictions. It > is a total fact because it upholds, but to some extent also transforms, a > society's core affective and cognitive assumptions about what the world is > and how it works. > > The pragmatic function of yesterday's certification ritual was to confirm > the peaceful transferral of state power. Yet what it became, dynamically, > was a challenge to and subsequent re-affirmation of all the procedures, > values and aspirations attached to the society-wide practice of democracy. > This was not a monolithic, mythical, predetermined ceremony, even though > that was what everyone was fearfully hoping it would be. Instead it was > dynamic, open-ended, touch and go, extremely vulnerable. And look at what > it actually did. > > It reconfirmed, in the evening, the about-face of political power that had > occured in the morning, when the results from Georgia came through. In this > way, it opened up the possibility for a Democratic administration to > actually legislate: to move transformative laws through both the House and > the Senate. Not just Trump, but three decades of Republican mendacity and > opportunism were pushed aside. And that event did not merely happen over > social media, or on talk radio, or on the Hannity show. It was not just > another piece of calculated political theater. It was a society-wide event: > a total social fact. > > Not only that, but from the media-theoretic viewpoint, something extremely > interesting did occur: Twitter censored Trump and blocked his > communications for 12 hours. The anarcho-capitalist media took one giant > step towards accepting their integration in the overall political process. > > So we dodged a bullet yesterday, for sure. And something a lot more > important may potentially have happened. > > There comes a point where you have to be counter-factual, you have to > engage in what Mauss calls "magical thinking." You have to take a role in a > theater that really does have consequences. That tipping-point is now. I > will participate in the collective actions of a society that starts to > reverse the tremendous harms it has been committing for decades and > centuries. I will help to transform the pragmatic administration of social > functions. > > all the best, Brian > > > >> >> >> >> >> -- >> | |||||||||||||||||| http://felix.openflows.com | >> | Open PGP | http://felix.openflows.com/pgp.txt | >> >> # 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: nett...@kein.org >> # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: > > # 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: nett...@kein.org > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: > > > # 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: nett...@kein.org > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: -- Kim De Vries http://kdevries.net/blog/
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