Anne Roth on Sat, 13 Feb 2016 14:44:00 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> notes from the DIEM25 launch |
A few unstructured thoughts from one who just went to see (and pay for) the evening event: There was a LOT of interest by German media, unsurprisingly, since Varoufakis draws a lot of attention. No other left event intending to start an initiative for whatever would have that effect. No complaints. If it takes stars to shine some light on the fact that there is an alternative - fine. The same goes for the format of the event which under all other circumstances I would have found nothing but painful. Speeches about the general state of things, slogans, politicians' general view of the world, for hours one after the other. In the name of founding a movement - seriously? Eastern Europe mostly left out, far less women on stage than men, hrm. But, in the face of this dominant shift to the right which has finally also hit Germany as a backlash to Merkel's handling of the refugee situation I'm actually grateful for any initiative that draws attention to the fact that there is life on the left side of politics. It's good to get politicians, activists, intellectuals this different together to show there is a need and the possibility for change. In some areas of the German left there was criticism that all people on stage support boycotting Israel or something of the kind (I don't know if that's actually true) and therefore are all antisemites. That's a given in German politics and to be expected. No need to agree with that position necessarily but I wanted to add this observation as it was part of the public mumbling during and after the event. I left around midnight (next day was Wednesday, regular school/working day: who was this event for, actually?) with some questions after 3,5 hours of speeches. I had stayed just long enough to hear the first questions from the audience and, like them, would like to know: how? What are the steps towards a movement, any activity, what will those activities actually be? There will be events, and there will be something digital, they said, but how? I admit I arrived already with the strong belief that you can't 'found' a movement but since, I'm sure, the people on stage understand that, I was very curious to hear what they had in mind instead. Unfortunately that wasn't talked about really and maybe the leaders of parties etc. simply aren't the right people to come up with ideas for new movements. At least some basic information about where, how, when, who, what next would have been good to have and at this stage I don't even know how I'm going to find out but I hope there will be more concrete steps and information soon. Another question concerns the non-public parts during the day: how did that come to be actually? How did people get chosen, who chose them, what was the aim, what were the outcomes? Again: what next? My younger self would have totally rejected the whole thing simply for its form but today, like I said, I'm all for almost any kind of initiative that is just that: an initiative and not just words, against the neoliberal-conservative-fascist monster we face. Anne -- http://about.me/annalist https://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x7689407F942951E2 Jabber: _anne_@jabber.ccc.de # 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 # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: