Re: <nettime> Leaders of the Capitol insurrection

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 10:52 AM mp <mp@aktivix.org> wrote:

FBI had an agent provocateur embedded, leading the line. Sounds familiar.

The state has long done exactly that (although Tarrio was not "leading the line", he had been arrested the day before and limited himself to a few encouraging tweets from afar on the day of the riot - NOT pushing people to violence).

It's certain that the damage done by FBI provocateurs is considerable. Above all it damages people's capacity to seek out the truth and recognize it when they find it. People then become cynical, and they are unable to contribute anything except their skepticism. The capitalist system provides them plenty of leisure to express that skepticism, and they do. Listen to the QAnon people, they are very expressive concerning their doubts. But not the greatest company to keep.

I think sitting back and being cynical when a country is in danger of being taken over by fascists is a mistake. This is going to happen to many countries. At some point, when the leisure collapses, you actually have to take a side - compromising as that may be.

Brian

#  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: