Patrice Riemens on Tue, 22 Jul 2014 05:31:38 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two, |
With this installment, we reach the end of the second part of Ippolita Collective's In the Facebook Aquarium. The third part ('The freedoms of the Net') is the last one, and is only very marginally shorter than the first and second parts. I propose to make the next installments longer (and hence less frequent) to reduce the stress to nettimers, who, I am told, tend to get a bit lost and forget the gist of the argument due to its segmentation. The rapid fire of the preceding installments had also a bit to do with my desire to 'make some good progress' in moving this translation forward, so I ask for your forbearance. Cheers from p+2D!, hoping you enjoy! ---------------------------------------------- Ippolita Collective, In the Facebook Aquarium Part Two Anonymous, or out-of-the-box activism (section 8, conluded) Sociality and politics work in the same way: on-line practice is narrowly connected with real life practice, and cross-fertilization occurs all the time. Anonymous' initiatives made a big splash in the media, which in its turn focused the attention of the police on the group, something they would have gladly done without. During the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, which were inspired by the 'Indignados' movement in Spain occupying central squares all over the country, Anonymous brought in its technical expertise. Twitter and Facebook apps were created on the spot to improve communications between protesters. On many occasion, transparency, so disparaged, became an effective weapon against the police, e.g. to identify those law-and-order personel manhandling protesters. Yet the same face identification technology was repeatedly used against the demonstrators themselves [77]. As we already wrote speaking of Wikileaks, denouncement works only within a democratic context and where a certain amount of liberties and citizen rights still obtain, where civil disobedience is deemed acceptable as a value, and where state-sponsored repression rarely goes at the cost of people's lives. In all those cases, appeals, claims, and criticism have much more bite when the actions show creativity, like Anonymous' ones. However, it is in the build-up phase that the inherent weakness of mass movements shows up, yet Anonymous unambiguously claims to be a mass movement by profiling itself as a 'legion' that nothing can stop. To shout out /"Que se vajan todos!"/ (let them all f^%$#& of!) as the Argentinian did in 2001, is a good equivalence of digital sabotage methods, but it is still a petition of sorts to the authorities. It amounts to a demand to the powers that they go a bit easy, a demand to the banks that they stop behaving like . . . banks, to governments that should stop making war and to soldiers, that they stop killing. All this is legitimate, it is even fair and right, but it is also a bit inadequate also, when it comes to the concrete reality of (these) propositions. It is even counter-productive, since the request for change is addressed to the very people who are responsible for repression, and in fact, it (only) bolsters the legitimacy of their authority in the process. So it is precisely in the build-up phase that one should be acutely aware and bring about a radical shift in perspective. The macroscopic lens [approach] of the opposition movement against a corrupt and oppressive power, coming up with alternatives in the name of all is doomed from the start, because it espouses the confrontational logic, which is the hallmark of hegemonic discourses. Those Anonymous organizers who do not share Wikileaks' /nerd suprematist/ style, once they had all their fun at lampooning banks, churches, corporates, and governments, should really start concentrating on the constructive aspects of their technological prowess [78]. If not, they will end up co-opted to-morrow by the very powers they so much enjoy ridiculing to-day. Anonymous' anomaly resides precisely in the fact that its activists hold a great power: the power of technology. They know the sinuosities of the digital networks and they know how to make their existence work to their advantage. They can choose to use this knowledge-power to reinforce the network of already existing organizations. Governments are organizations desirous to expand the possibilities to exercise control, sometime with the benevolent purpose to help the weaker members of society: in which case they surely need such competences. Big companies (on the other hand), and especially the major companies providing on-line sociality services (i.e. the big social networks), are in desperate need of strengthening their organizations' networks, that is to make them more secure, which means to close them of to undesirable elements. But other modalities (of action) are also possible, for instance investing in capacity-building among budding networks which do not have a stake to defend, or interests to protect, or copyrighted material, or patents and trademarks, in one word, stuff to safeguard - but which aim to build-up shared systems, for exchange and interaction. Seen from that angle, maybe the most interesting common trait between Anonymous and Occupy-type movements is the way they profile themselves as 'ontologically' leader(ship)less and self-organized. It is in this swarming dimension of small organized networks, or networks in the process of organizing, that the innovative character of Anonymous and Occupy must be seen to reside. The lack of a leader figure or pre-established program makes it near-impossible for hierarchical, institutional organizations to 'engage' with such movements. End of section 8, end also of Part II. Next time, start of Part III, 'The Freedoms of the Net' (to be continued, thus ;-) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [77] In Rome, after the heavy riots of 15 October [2011?], the mass media named and shamed all alleged 'Black Bloc' members, many of whom could be identified thanks to the help of 'honest citizens'. In another context, and at a different scale, the same procedure was put to work in Iran, after the June 2009 protests: authorities convinced citizens to contribute to the identification of the dissenters, whose picture was marked with a red circle on a government-owned site: http://www.gerdab.ir/fa/pages/?cid=407 [yes, if u master Farsi, u can still play that game! -transl] ;-( [78] Lulz's latest exploits (attacks against the security firms Stratfor and SpecialForces.com) were highly politicized. Here's what the online press release, LulzXmas, said, December 27, 2011: "Continuing the week long celebration of wreaking utter havoc on global financial systems, militaries, and governments, we are announcing our next target: the online piggie supply store SpecialForces.com. Their customer base is comprised primarily of military and law enforcement affiliated individuals, who have for too long enjoyed purchasing tactical combat equipment from their slick and ?professional? looking website. What?s that, officer? You get a kick out of pepper-spraying peaceful protesters in public parks? You like to recreationally taser kids? You have a fetish for putting people in plastic zip ties?" http://anoncentral.org/tag/lulzxmas/ [The above site ('Everything about Anonymous and Occupy') is a compendium of all possible Anon material, documents, press releases etc., all neatly 'tagged'. Finding the (English language) original of the excerpt quoted above was no sinecure: anoname-game.com, referred to in the book, is down (and probably out), apparently replaced by a same-named '.net' one - which does not carry this communique any longer. I first stumbled on a Castilian language blog post, which did not turn out to cary it in the end, but did contain the complete English translation of 'The coming insurrection' (click into 'Comunicado Anonymous') http://www.esmandau.com/55821/regalo-navideno-de-anonymous-para-firma-de-securities-stratfor/ -transl] ----------------------------- Translated by Patrice Riemens This translation project is supported and facilitated by: The Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/) The Antenna Foundation, Nijmegen (http://www.antenna.nl - Dutch site) (http://www.antenna.nl/indexeng.html - english site under construction) Casa Nostra, Vogogna-Ossola, Italy # 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: nettime@kein.org