I echo David's enthusiasm for this subject. It may also be worth
considering the question of the nature of belief.
Many apparent extremists (I'm aware of both Brexit super-fans and
Q-adjacent Trump enthusiasts, who say, "Well, we know that such-and-such
isn't literally true, but we sympathise with the spirit of it."
This sort of fluid, post-rational quasi-belief is extraordinarily
difficult to challenge - it's not about the facts, it's about the
"vibe". The difference between actual insurrection and playing the part
of a fantasy insurrectionist as live action role-play is, from the
outside, imperceptible, and it may not be a distinction made by the
activists themselves.
Best Regards,
James
=====
On 11/03/2021 13:13, [email protected] wrote:
Very much looking forward to this discussion...
The approach of Q's followers (along with myriad other conspiracy
theorists) reflects
the Ninth lesson from historian Timothy Snyder’s text ‘On Tyranny:
Twenty Lessons for the 20th Century’
which begins with the sentence: ‘Investigate. Figure things out for
yourself.’ Worryingly that is precisely
what Q's followers feel they are doing.
The epistemology of these movements could be characterised as a
hermeneutics of un-quenchable suspicion in
which “every official narrative and mainstream institution is suspect
[…] and in which real knowledge is
produced by like-minded strangers working together on the internet “to
do their own research”.”
These are potent grass roots research orientated sub-cultures who
experience the sheer excitement of feeling that they are unmasking a
world of lies and revealing through their own research efforts a
network of hidden causes. This fact that makes it particularly hard
terrain those on the left to contest.
Although not exactly an activist I find it useful to recall Roland
Barthes's evolution thinker from the early days as an unmasker of
'mythologies' to a later understanding that you can’t get rid of a
mythology by telling or demonstrating that it’s a 'myth'. It can only
ever be replaced it with a better myth. Faith in evidence and exposure
is not enough.
# 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:
# 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:
