<nettime> Yahoo and utopian globalism

[florian schneider <fls@kein.org>]

Brian Holmes wrote:

> Generally in Europe it's preferable to have laws against everything
> fascist, because there are fascists behind every bush and the only 
> viable solution is to force them to stay there, otherwise they come 
> out into the public space and start ordering you around.

if you keep a close watch on the history of fascism in europe you'll find
out, that no law ever was able prevent fascists from "ordering you
around". in opposite: fascists are quite clever in using laws for their
purposes. the specific problem of fascism is, that it has never been an
invasion from outer space or behind the bush, and therefore fascism cannot
be stopped or struggled by some proper laws or lawsuits. the current
debate (at least in germany) about nazi-links is a very simple
prolongation of a well known process of psycological repression.

a law only regulates it's transgression, a quite known french philosopher
wrote once upon the time. in my eyes it is much more naive to dream, that
a law or a few more rules might be able to relieve the pain of postmodern
capitalism than to dream about a stateless world or a world without
borders.

but: neither on the level of representation nor by transcendental thinking
(including all kind of dreaming about free-somethings) you won't get a
clue of how to deal with current issues like globalisation,
de-nationalisation and it's counter-tendencies (including the hype of
nazi-merchandising on the web), if you delegate your power towards a sort
of wwgovernment or claim the local authorities to be responsable for
offering a nazi-free web service to the national taxpayer community.

i hope, it is not too dissapointing to realise, that it's better to
struggle, to make concrete and immanent interventions, to fight for things
and together with people which nazis are fighting against -- than to ask
the authorities to start a lawsuit.

i see no fundamental problem in continuing our struggles and our debates
knowing, that some fascist websites do exist on the net, since i've had to
learn to live with the fact, that fascism and the shoah have really
happened, and real existing neo-nazis continue to spread their thoughts
and propagise murder.


geert lovink wrote:

> But would it be possible to overcome such a regional relativism 
> without buying into the sweet arrogance of Yahoo's US-American 
> libertarianism? Is there such a thing a utopian globalism which 
> is not based on US law and it's cultural specificities? Is
> there a way to design a new trans-national Internet on top of the 
> ruins of the vanished cyberdreams? Perhaps a Balkanization of the 
> Net will produce interesting monsters (such as the poverty zones 
> of WAP).

i think it is not really possible to name such a thing right now. more
important, the way, how it is possible to communicate the different and
distinct struggles and issues. this leads straight forward to exploration
of subjectivities and the question: if there's really smth in common, what
it might be? such kind of commonness will probably differ very much from
concepts of communities we already know.

a bunch of nettimers (such as manse jacobi, heath bunting, olia lialina
and ivan grubanov) will discuss some of these issues tonight. the event
will be in english, it will be live streamed and stored in a database.
additionally remote participants can join a live chat.

stream, starting tonight, november 24th at 7 pm GMT
http://195.88.128.119:8080/ramgen/muffat/fc/fc7/fc7.smi

chat, starting at 8 pm GMT
http://www.web-for-vision.com/fc/chat.htm

see you

florian





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