Re: <nettime> the silence on the rising fascism

[Keith Sanborn via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]


In my for once humble opinion, silence has many meanings according to context. As has been pointed out, there is the silence of the powerful and the silencing of those who protest, who touch historical nerves. There is also a silence of the normally vocal to make a space for listening amidst the disinformation wars which vocalize simplistic conflicts in order to muddy the waters. There is also the silence of the fearful and the confused, the perplexed, and the thoughtful. Many Israelis and those outside are in the latter position: burdened by history and conscious of the moral evil of what goes on in Gaza in their name. They are all too aware of their own silent complicity in the slow genocide which has now reached an accelerated pace. And the massacres perpetrated by Hamas can only touch the nerves of inherited trauma. The three hostages gunned down—silenced—by the IDF can only amplify their realization that the reaction to Hamas has reached a murderous pitch, if they choose to ignore the murders of Palestinians. Ordinary Palestinians experience being silenced by the destruction of the means of communication with the outside world and by an abject struggle for daily survival. “It’s complicated,” can indeed be a simple fear of taking a moral stand. Silence = Death, as we know all too well, and yet obfuscation is as bad or worse than silence, as it is disinformation that serves murderers as much as silence. The inheritance of trauma serves as no justification for mass murder. 

Merry Christmas










> On Dec 22, 2023, at 8:00 AM, Geoffrey Goodell via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Dec 2023 at 10:47:49PM +1100, paul van der walt via nettime-l wrote:
>> The way i understand it, Ted is remarking that in our situation, (some number of) people are participating in a discussion on a mailing list, and some (many more, by definition almost, given the subscriber count) are lurking / listening / thinking their thoughts / sending everything to spam, but not replying in public to the postings.  He's saying that the gesture of labelling this phenomenon as an (my words) "active / deliberate silence" is firstly a specific framing (one of many, as he argues), and secondly a nostalgic one, in that it stands in comparison to collective manifestations out in the streets, with people shouting, as an example (among many).  I think the claim is that instead of choosing this one framing, of labelling this state of affairs as "silence", we are invited to reflect on how else to respond to our contemporary context.
>> 
>> Apologies Ted if i'm flat-footing your (eloquent, IMHO) framing and argument.
>> 
>> For what it's worth i can see where Ted is coming from, and to me it does make sense.  I'll remain neutral on the substance of it as well as the implications that has for our various (potentially deontological) roles in discourse.
> 
> I would say that the reason for the silence is much more quotidian than that.  The choice to be silent or not is really only a fair choice for those of us with the privilege to respond at close to zero marginal cost.
> 
> For the less privileged among us who have day jobs or similarly taxing responsibilities that require a time commitment, the time needed to formulate a thoughtful response constitutes a prohibitive cost.  For such persons, the choice is between responding with a superficial message and not responding at all.  From this perspective, the fact that there is not a flood of superficial messages is a sign of respect for the community and the value it places on thoughtful consideration.
> 
> However, although this might explain the silence in communities such as nettime, I am not sure that this explains the silence in the world at large.  Perhaps there really is a dearth of privileged people who are unwilling to speak out against a system that has benefited them, a frightening thought indeed.
> 
> Best wishes --
> 
> Geoff
> 
> --
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