Cancellations

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version

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It's different with Boris, Trump and Cummings too because they have their hands on the levers of power in a way someone like Weinstein didn't. Obviously having a lot of money and being a private citizen has its advantages, but it doesn't have as many advantages as running a country.
 
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version

Well-known member
Also nobody's going to stick up for Harvey Weinstein. He's just some guy whose name pops up before some of the films they like.
 
sufi

sufi

lala
INTERVIEW: How can America work to ensure more equality and justice on a day-to-day level?

KUNZRU: I think there’s a lot of meaningless signaling. I don’t give a damn if a brand blacks out its IG. The real work is conducted through simple and rather concrete things. Who gets paid? Who gets credit? Who gets heard? Who is in the room? We can all look around in our work and social lives and ask if there are people missing. And if there are, we can take steps to find out where they are and bring them in.

INTERVIEW: Do you think protests are effective tools for changing the system? How does it make a difference in the long term?

KUNZRU: There are limits to protest, of course. I remember in 2004, after so many of us had gone on to the street to protest the invasion of Iraq, feeling so disheartened that it happened anyway, and that it was exactly as bad as we’d warned, in exactly the way we’d predicted. We’re still living with the consequences of the failure of our leaders to acknowledge that protest. But the protests following the murder of George Floyd are producing change. Look at the bans on chokeholds and the critical look at police budgets. The protests have also exposed the raw edges of the power structure. For now, at least, those who govern us do so by our consent. By coming out on to the street and being disruptive, we remind our representatives that they serve at our pleasure, not the other way round. These communal experiences—which are, of course, also a massive release from the tension of Covid, and sadly probably a vector for its future spread—remind us that we are powerful. They are a “time of chance,” in the ancient Greek sense of kairos, a moment in which we can remake the future, seizing the opportunity to change.
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Ask a Sane Person: Hari Kunzru On the Difference Between Signaling and Seizing Change
 
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version

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INTERVIEW: What is the worst-case scenario for the future?

KUNZRU: The U.S. becomes an autocracy, and devolves into a weak and fractious patchwork of jurisdictions run by more or less rapacious oligarchs who conduct a losing war with China, first cold then hot. Human rights become a quaint idea. The environment collapses, and the resulting massive migrations of people lead to vicious authoritarian regimes taking control in richer countries. Genocidal wars are fought over water. The Tibetan plateau is a global flashpoint. New pathogens emerge out of the melting permafrost, killing millions. Life becomes hellish for all but the very wealthy. For the masses, the future looks like an insect world of starvation or highly-surveilled shock work; for the few, a melancholy decadence conducted behind high walls. I always thought the shit would go down when I was young and strong. These days I’m just hoping I won’t spend my old age picking through the ruins of my city looking for expired canned food.
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That's basically what I'm expecting to happen and have been for years tbh.
 
sufi

sufi

lala
version said:
It's different with Boris, Trump and Cummings too because they have their hands on the levers of power in a way someone like Weinstein didn't. Obviously having a lot of money and being a private citizen has its advantages, but it doesn't have as many advantages as running a country.
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i'm not sure it's so different - there's a swing moment when it all suddenly changes
 
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version

Well-known member
sufi said:
i'm not sure it's so different - there's a swing moment when it all suddenly changes
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A Harvey Weinstein can't fire the people investigating him. A Harvey Weinstein can't threaten entire cities and nations. A Harvey Weinstein can't threaten media companies with executive orders. A Harvey Weinstein can't load the courts with sympathetic judges.
 
sufi

sufi

lala
This is an amazing climbdown, after they have protected colstons reputation literally for centuries, they are the bristol elite
even the fact that smv have been forced into this statement is a step that seemed impossible 2 weeks ago,
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
sufi said:
France Gilets Jaunes are an interesting manifestation of this protest mob action - scarily off the script of regular partisan politics
they created some change though, and havent been hijacked by bullies i don't think?
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That's a weird one, and in a way an illustration of how the protest phenomenon is more cultural, psychological and sociological than it is political in the traditional sense, because by all accounts the movement includes everyone from socialists and communists to conservative nationalists and fascists. And probably a majority of them are people who are just "fed up with being ignored and pushed around" without identifying strongly with either the left or the right - people who in the USA might have got excited about Sanders in 2016 and then switched to Trump when Sanders didn't get the Democratic nomination, or who could have been drawn either to Corbyn or Farage in this country.
 
V

version

Well-known member
HlEHRya.gif
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
padraig comparing hashtag metoo to something that happened i2000 years ago in ancient Rome is very funny too obviously
 
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version

Well-known member
luka said:
i go away for a couple of weeks and standards slip to the point where no one even sniggers?
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I did a little from behind my screen, but I couldn't really stick a laughing emoji under it or something as the rest of the post isn't really something to laugh at.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
sufi - I would agree wholeheartedly that disengagement is wrong, both morally and strategically

and trying to figure out how to productively harness the vast energy abounding right now is a good idea

we probably got sidetracked talking about mobs, but there was no way I was going to let "the mob is a good thing" pass unchallenged

I don't want to give the impression that potential danger of mob rule is in comparable rn to actual danger of state repression (or extrajudicial violence)

the mob concern - at this point - is almost entirely digital, so rarely concerns physical violence

it's more that you can't ignore why and how you're doing things in order to get things done

(fairly) recent revolutionary history is littered with examples of successful revolutions failing in the post-revolutionary moment. Iran 1979. Russia 1917.

for a counter-example, look at the Zapatistas, who were canny enough - and had witnessed the repeated shambles of both failed and successful leftist revolutions - not to seek power beyond self-rule, and vastly more successful for it
 
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