Re: <nettime> The Left Needs a New Strategy

[Dmytri Kleiner <dk@telekommunisten.net>]

On 2021-01-18 21:09, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:

> i find it unbearable though to see untenable claims of "mccarthyism"
> made against somebody who just stays in an argument, when anybody in
> his right mind should know that we must reserve the "mccarthy"
> reference to cases where livelihoods are threatened, or destroyed, of
> people who speak their mind.

But you didn't have an issue with the allegations of "stalinism" these 
claims where made in response to.


> i find it equally unbearable that this thread should end without
> reference to the political prisoners that are being made and held and
> convicted in the PRC and the territories it controls. many of them are
> people like us. they require our solidarity.

You are worried about political prisoners in China.

Given we are not in China, and we have no direct agency to resolve this 
issue, the way we do have, for instance, a far greater degree of agency 
and class power to help political prisoners in the west, like Julian 
Assange as one example, so what sort of strategy might we pursue, given 
our lack of agency in China?

Our strategy must also include some concept of the map we're working on 
or Simon Wardley will come and make fun of us, a map which includes 
imperial powers engaging in aggression towards China, and in Hippocratic 
fashion, we must first do no harm, so our efforts to help political 
prisoners in China should not aid and abet imperialist aggression.

So what strategy could we pursue that would most likely help political 
prisoners in China while opposing imperialist aggression of our own 
countries?

If I advocate against China, denouncing and condemning them, what could 
this possibly lead to? Not only are my sources of information very 
difficult to trust, but it is very unlikely I will have any influence 
inside of China, where I have no agency and no reach. It is however very 
likely my joining the China Bad choir be very useful to our own 
countries to justify aggression. Aggression which has real causalities. 
Aggression which also raises insecurity within China. Insecurity which 
then creates the kind of atmosphere which is highly unlikely to be 
conducive to improving the situation of political prisoners.

However, as we all know, the government of China enjoys broad support 
from it's people. What if I believe in those people? What if I defer 
issues within their own country to them and trust them to fight to make 
things better? Just as I expect them to trust us here in the west to 
fight to make things better. There is no lack of condemnable injustice 
in our own countries.  After all, by every measure they are doing better 
than we are in terms if getting what they want from their government. 
What if I focus on opposing and confronting my own countries aggression 
abroad?

To me, by any strategic analysis, the later is the better strategy. 
Freire and McAlevey point out that any strategy in which you set 
yourself up as a third party advocating on behalf of other people on 
issues where you have no direct stake is always a bad strategy, and will 
always fail, or worse, will worsen their situation.

As mentioned here before, I think many of us here do not fully realize 
how offensive our self-entitlement to judge and condemn China and deny 
the accomplishments of the Chinese workers is to the people of China, 
and if you, like me, want to work with these people, want them included 
and involved in our networks, then we need to clear away this type of 
toxic chauvinism we all are so comfortable with here.

This is what strategic planning looks like.

White saviours saving everyone on earth by getting in their business, 
even when we have not managed to save the people directly around us, 
seems like an unlikely plan to work.

Workers everywhere trusting each other to confront the class enemy at 
home, as we only have the agency and insight to do so in our homes, 
while we protect each other from aggression from our own Hauptfiend is a 
strategy that could well work, and thus is a good strategy for the left.

Best,


--
Dmytri Kleiner
@dmytri
#  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: