Florian Cramer on Wed, 11 Jan 2006 21:15:42 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> Frank Rieger: We lost the War--Welcome to the World of Tomorrow


Am Montag, 09. Januar 2006 um 18:00:39 Uhr (+0100) schrieb Geert Lovink:

> On 9 Jan 2006, at 6:37 AM, Florian Cramer wrote:
>
> > I admire the perfect Carl Schmitt-ian (and by implication, Leo
> > Straussian) rhetoric of this manifesto: The rhetoric of the
> > emergency state, political friend-vs.-enemy antagonism, and its view
> > of the status quo of democracy.
>
> You mean admire like in Oscar Wilde's:
>
> "I admire Japanese chairs because they have not been made to sit
> upon."

Geert,

I just wanted to make a simple point: That Frank and Rop recycle,
unintentionally I think, and fall victim to the neo-conservative
ideology they want to attack, by buying into its (deliberately
fabricated, Straussian) myth of the "war". 

My commentary was a bit acidic because I considered their keynote in the
context of the overall politics of the Chaos Computer Club of the past
few years.  Parts of the CCC have been caught in a Discordian paranoia
loop since quite some time, taking conspiracy theories more seriously
than R. A. Wilson himself ever would. In fact, there have been
"de-conspiracy" workshops at CCC conventions in this and in previous
years, organized by CCC members who feel uneasy with the paranoia
rhetoric and politics.  All the while, CCC spokesman Andy Müller-Maguhn
is currently involved in a legal effort of issuing an injunction issued
against Wikipedia for publishing the full real name of the former CCC
hacker Tron. Tron's death in 1998 has been turned into a murder
conspiracy mythopoeisis by parts of the CCC, a bogus conspiracy theory
according to critical sources like journalist Burkhard Schröder.

I see too many themes in Frank's and Rop's paper that continue to play
the apocalyptic tunes and conspiracy worldview. As others already stated
here, they grossly overstate the real impact of 9/11, turning it into
a mythical date just like Homeland Security did. They also literally speak
of "political conspiracies". Their single observations might be on
target, but I would prefer a more differentiated overall analysis,
especially in the context of the CCC with its angst-ridden teenage
members.


-F

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