Phil Graham on Thu, 22 Jun 2000 13:12:03 +0200 (CEST) |
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[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> The role of model citizenz or the role of theNetizen |
At 02:40 PM 21/06/00 -0400, Ronda Hauben wrote: >integer@www.god-emil.dk in >That is a strange and serious distortion of both the history >of fascism and of the emergence and the nature of the netizen Perhaps; perhaps not. I think not. Please read on. >The netizen is a concept that grew up and spread around the >world in opposition to the commercialization and privatization >of the Internet. Is that true? I think that the concept of the 'netizen' existed prior to the full-scale commercialisation push. In fact the netizen is a "key concept" in the commercialisation process, a romanticised nomadic being who has no "roots", filling the framework of technology with meaningful content, the spirit of freedom, flexible working conditions, and so on. The "netizen" is the abstract embodiment of some idealised ethic with no actual content which represents the free spirit of the net. Yay. In any case, fascism also positioned itself in revolutionary opposition to bourgeois liberal attitudes, free trade, crass commercialisation, "globalisation" (a term that dates back to the 1930s), privatisation of public assets, etc etc - in favour of the arts, "culture", international expression thereof, etc. So, being qualitatively the same in rhetorical terms, why should we believe that "the netizen" is a necessarily good and pure being, morally superior to the fascist, just because you say so (more on that abstraction below)? >The fascists were in support of commercial entities and supported >by them. So? They positioned themselves in opposition to them as far as propaganda was concerned. Perhaps you think "the net" emerged from nowehere funded by nobody, built upon entirely outside corporate and corporatist structures or outside Capital proper. You are of course mistaken if you do. Enthusiasm for and use of the internet is support for (and by) a network of commercial entities (who pays and gets payed for your connection?), and which is firstly the initiative of the military industrial complex. Techno-fetishism was a key factor of 30s fascism, as was an enthusiasm for appearing "revolutionary" and fashionably up-to-date, despite being intrinsically enamoured of the most exploitative "actually existing" realities: "We live in an age that is both romantic and steel-like. While bourgeois reaction was alien and hostile to technology and modern sceptics believed the deepest roots of the collapse of European culture lay in it, National Socialism has understood how to take the soul-less framework of technology and fill it with the rhythm and hot impulses of our time." (Goebbels, 1939, in Bullock, 1991, p. 440) The fascist line also positioned itself against the strictures of bureaucracy and too much organisation, while producing precisely the opposite: "Excessive organization can only get in the way of productivity. The more bureaucrats there, the more obscure the internal structures, the easier it is for someone to hide his inability or incompetence behind some committee or board. And not only that. Excessive organization is always the beginning of corruption. It confuses responsibility and thus enables those of weak character to enrich themselves at public expense" (Goebbels, 1933). They were also avid defenders of art and culture, taking it upon themselves to define art and the qualities thereof from a morally superior position ... "We want a radio that reaches the people, a radio that works for the people, a radio that is an intermediary between the government and the nation, a radio that also reaches across our borders to give the world a picture of our life and our work. … The purpose of radio is to teach, entertain and support people, not to gradually harm the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. (Goebbels, 1933) These are all current and familiar discourses. Now, if all this is true - and it is - then your claim must be that, since netizen propaganda is qualitatively no different from fascist propaganda, at least in rhetorical and surface terms, "the netizen" must be somehow superior to all the "old ways" of fascism ... Are you morally superior to all the "old ways"? Are we to believe that "the netizen" is morally superior to all other beings, that they are the defenders of freedom, the unmitigated opponents of crass commercialism, the inheritors of the revolutionary garb? Excuse me if I remain skeptical. >The citizen of the french revolution was a force challenging the >old. Which French Revolution? Which citizen? Louis Napoleon is often recognised as being the first "post-enlightenment" fascist, or at least an incipient version thereof. In that context, corporatism (fascism) was being theorised at the same time it was being played out in high farce (cf 18th Brumaire). The 1789 revolution was beaten back in double time by the very forces it still romantically claims to have overcome, leaving behind it the seeds and trellises of the later corporatist movements (including 20-30s fascism), in particular, the counter-revolutionary forces of 1848 that backed the second Napoleon. The "ideologists", (eg Destutt DeTracy) were intensely conservative corporatists, representatives of the same class again. You can see their remnants even in Durkheim. "The citizen" of revolutionary France is an abstraction of the same order as "the netizen" of late fascism. You are construing a whole "netizen" movement in ideal terms that are incommensurable with any sort of reality, just like "the citizen" of the revolution. Horseshit. In the first revolution, "the citizen" was busy sentencing the other citizens to death by beheading. In the second, "great revolutionaries" like de Tocqueville were acting as the Stasi of the status quo, they were "the citizen", a conservative and privileged organism dedicated to conserving Order. It might help de-clarify the neat and streamlined version of hitory you are relying on to read a few words from someone who was there at the time, and who was in fact arrested and processed by Tocqueville (it gives me the shits when people point him out as an exemplary liberal, but perhaps it is a correct characterisation after all): "On the evening of the 24th of June [1848] coming back from the place Maubert, I went into a café on the Quai D’Orsay. A few minutes later I heard discordant shouting, which came nearer and nearer. I went to the window: a grotesque comic banlieue was coming in from the surrounding districts to the support of order; clumsy, rascally fellows, half peasants, half shopkeepers, somewhat drunk, in wretched uniforms and old fashioned shakos, they moved rapidly but in disorder, with shouts of ‘Vive Louis-Napoleon!’ . […] [One or two days later] The streets were empty, but the National Guards stood on either side of them. On the Place de Concorde there was a detachment of the Garde Mobile; near them were standing several poor women with brooms and some ragpickers and concierges from the houses near by. All their faces were gloomy and shocked. A lad of seventeen was leaning on a rifle and telling them something; we went up to them. He and all his comrades, boys like himself, were half drunk, their faces blackened with gunpowder and their eyes bloodshot from sleepless nights and drink … [the boy tells proudly of bayoneting their fellow "citizens" and fighting the good fight against "the socialist scum"] … but this savage comment evoked not the slightest response. They were all of too ignorant a class to sympathise with the massacre and with the unfortunate boy who had been made into a murderer . Alexander Herzen - Memoirs So much for "the citizen". But what of "the netizen"? Fascism no longer needs direct aggression as it previously has. The "unfortunate classes" these days are whole nations, and nations within nations. They need merely be armed and set against each other, or drugged and sold into prostitution or domestic slavery. They merely need to be "switched off". There are more slaves now than ever in the history of US industrialised slavery. More people have been murdered in the last 35 years than in the two world wars. And all you seem to be pinning your hopes on is a non-commercialised medium and the people promoting that "cause". Excuse me if I think it a triviality, citizen. >The netizen of the Internet revolution is a force challenging >the old. It's the same old force split in two, apparently facing itself in a challenge to its own standards. It's middle class, elitist farce. NN and M Stahlman are, I believe, correct, and you are merely falling prey to a scholastic "sic et non", all the while having decided the answers in advance. I also think you are depending on a selective and idealised version of history. The enlightenment was an institutional shakeup, not a qualitative transcendence of any sort at all. Here the French Revolutions are special exemplars. The present is the same in many respects. In my view, you are expressing an extreme conservatism. >The fascists have been trying to maintain the old. Wrong. Fascists are traditionally "revolutionaries". That has not changed (no, I am not charging you with fascism). Perhaps you think the whole of Germany, Italy, and so on suddenly became fascists. Wrong again. It was syncretic "revolution". The current crop of fascists don't even know they are fascists, it's just a mindset that accompanies particular social relations, namely corporatism, which has been on the march (this time) most obviously since 1961 by my reckoning, that's if it ever stopped at all (which it hasn't). >There were citizens even during fascism in Germany, they >were those who were part of the resistance, who hid those >who were trying to stay out of concentration camps, and who >did many other brave activities. Of course, but were they fascists? Or are you saying that all fascists were not "citizens", and that fascism is not revolutionary (at least in appearance) or resistant (to what)? Fascism is a set of social and political relationships, and not conditional upon party membership. You are as much a part of the current order as I am, as we all are. >Basically their role is ignored by the media and their story >isn't told in general. No, of course not - history is written by the victors. But as the lens slides wider on the first half of the last century, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the systems which seemed so clearly delineated just a few decades ago thanks to the effects of mass-mediated propaganda and social amnesia. Our own corporatist past has been politically "cleansed". >There are citizens during the corporate attack on the Internet. > >These citizens are netizens because they are fighting for something >not limited by geography as a city is, and often against corporate >entities and their effort to convert the Internet into their >private commercenet. There are citizens launching attacks on personal freedoms, any semblance of equality, freedom, public good, etc. These citizens position themselves as experts of all types, morally superior and above the fray an muck of human weakness. They are fighting for a better world, a "globalised" world, not limited by geography or the "arbitrary powers" of government, a more moral world governed by an abstraction called "the rule of law" (whose?). They are the rulers of multinational corporations, the modern heroic fascist manager, the modern corporatist party politician, the international and national technocrat, innumerable academics, etc. They are fighting for the same things as you are apparently, at least that's what they say. They want a borderless world. They want less government. They want everyone to have access to the internet (why?). They want free information (why?). They want a cleaner environment. They want to feed the world. This is all the hyperbole that the OECD, WTO, IMF, Monsanto's PR company, etc etc put about. Why and how is your borderless utopia better than theirs? >To equate netizens with their opposite is again not to argue >a point, but to call names. Not at all. The fundamental element in the fascist society is the group. As NN and Mark Stahlman rightly point out, fascism is a relationship between groups. The individual does not and cannot exist in corporate society. In such, you are merely a function of your own interest. If "the netizen" is a person, then who is that? You? If it is a group, who are they? Or is the netizen an idealised abstraction without defined content? If they are an interest group, engaged in the fascist process of "interest group mediation", then they are an active part of late fascism. You are making an argument based on the interests of a group which is defined precisely by that interest. I think you are also making a fundamental mistake, which is almost universal in fascism (no, I'm not calling you a fascist): attributing particular ethical, moral, and social attributes to an abstract group, "the netizen", "the citizen", and so on. You are saying that one group is better than another. You are positioning your netizen group as a morally superior being amongst these groups, as "Ubermenschen". Sound familiar? Syncretism is dangerous because we don't even know how far such a movement internally colonises us, how quickly it erodes rights and sensibilities. It's an invisible social cancer. Regards, Phil ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Opinions expressed in this email are my own unless otherwise stated. Phil Graham Lecturer (Communication) Graduate School of Management University of Queensland 617 3381 1083 www.geocities/pw.graham/ www.uq.edu.au/~uqpgraha http://www.angelfire.com/ga3/philgraham/index.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold