Re: <nettime> GameStop Never Stops

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>]

For me, what binds these three movements -- BLM, #StopTheSteal, and
#Gamestop -- together is not that they are populist (though, depending
on your definition, they might be), but that they advance radical
institutional critiques of the main pillars of contemporary society: the
police, democracy, and the (financialized) economy. Somewhat eclipsed by
these (partly because of covid), but obviously also in that mix are the
climate justice protests, from XR to Fridays for Future (in the US,
there are also indigenous earth defenders, but I think they operate on a
different plane, but I don't know enough about them).

And they do so not as an exercise in polite, learned theory, but mass
participation, at considerable personal risk. So, a lot of this critique
is dirty, mixed with lies and delusions, but, overall, it is a very
forceful and very far-ranging critique. I mean, statues were torn down
that stood in their place for more than a hundred years. That is a
pretty fundamental critique in action. Quite a few people have taken the
red pill (i know, this image has been appropriated by the far-right...)

Another thing that I think binds these four movements together is they
grievances run so deep that they cannot be solved by addressing the
immediate aims of each movement. As necessary as it is to shift budgets
from policing to social services, this alone will not address the issue
of systemic racism. In the same way as hemming in short-selling will not
address the problems of a financialized economy or switching to electric
cars addresses the climate crises.

In many ways, these are problems that cannot be fixed under the current
set of rules. But the scale of the critique that is now out in the open,
dispersed among millions of people, coming from very different angles,
also is an incredible opening. The question is, opening for what? It
could be for major internal violence, authoritarism, but also for
something more hopeful.

In Denmark, today, a new wind energy project was green-lighted. An
artificial island, 80 KM out in the sea. Producing energy, if fully
deployed, for 10 million homes. It should also contain storage
facilities where excess capacity can be turned into fuel (I presume
hydrogen).

https://www.offshorewind.biz/2021/02/04/breaking-denmark-greenlights-north-sea-energy-island-hub/

It is in part financed by pension funds. So, billions of € will move out
of the financial market and into actual production. With that, already
two issues are addressed at once. If new energy co-ops were added into
the mix, that produce energy locally and de-centrally, then issues of
democracy came into play, and, possibly, a reduction of environmental
pollution that affects most severely the most disadvantaged communities.

Maybe someone from Denmark, or otherwise closer to projects like this,
can add more detail, because it's certainly not a simple fix for everything.




On 04.02.21 22:12, Florian Cramer wrote:
>     Finally, why not call BLM populist? 
> 
> 
> BLM probably fits Laclau/Mouffe's definition and notion of populism as
> agonistic. But since the movement is reclaiming minority rights, I don't
> think it fits Müller's and Mudde's definition of populism as positioning
> a majority of "the good people" against a small corrupt elite. Occupy's
> slogan of the 99% would be populist according to that definition, the
> East German 1989 protest movement with its slogan "We are the people",
> too, and QAnon would fit the definition as well, but (in my opinion) not
> BLM and other minority activism.
> 
> -F
> 
> 
> 
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