Gary Hall via nettime-l on Fri, 24 Jan 2025 10:09:13 +0100 (CET)


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: <nettime> So what's the use of art, theory, activism? 

Brian,

Trump's re-election has certainly been framed in both the US and UK as
signaling the end of the 'Big Woke' social justice era—one marked by
movements such as #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and calls to defund the
police. But you're right, it's also probably an indication that the US
Democrats—and the left more broadly, including artists, theorists and
activists—need to change.

At the same time, it’s worth remembering that while Trumpism's brand of
nationalistic libertarian neoliberalism has just regained power in the
US, other countries have moved in different directions. Poland voted to
turn away from the illiberal authoritarian populism of Law and Justice
(PiS) in 2023, while the post-2016 libertarian populism of Conservatives
such as Boris Johnson and Liz Truss has also been left behind in the UK.
Rishi Sunak’s variant may have been more complicated, including as it
did a shift towards small-state Thatcherite neoliberalism, but it too
failed to hold on in the face of the 2024 elections, which also saw
Nigel Farage and the populist Reform party defeated (even if it did get
14% of the vote) .

That said, there’s a growing sense that today’s central political divide
is no longer between left and right, but between those within and
outside the liberal-democratic establishment. Many in the latter group
increasingly see all politicians as essentially the same: self-serving,
corrupt and acting against the interests of ordinary people. This
disillusionment has led not only to the return of Trump. At its most
extreme it has fueled the belief that meaningful change can only be
achieved undemocratically, through acts of violence, such as the
December 2024 shooting of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, on a
New York street. Or the far-right riots in the UK during the summer of
2024 that were sparked by the murder of three young girls in Southport.
(Their killer was sentenced only yesterday.)

Best, Gary


On 23/01/2025 18:21, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:

Joe, Fred,

It's a good question. Political theorists are speaking of "authoritarian
liberalism" - where liberalism means it's still oriented to the global
market, and authoritarianism is just what it says.

It's worth adding that many thinkers (Wendy Brown, but not only) attribute
the popular embrace of authoritarian liberalism to declining faith in the
capacity of democracy to represent constituents and solve problems.

I don't think we yet know what Trump 2 is made of. His talk is violent like
1930s fascists. In a month or two that issue will become more clear. For
now it's wiser to expect the worst.

courage, Brian

On Thu, Jan 23, 2025 at 5:21 PM Frédéric Neyrat via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:



--
Gary Hall
Professor of Media
Director of the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University:
https://postdigitalcultures.org/about/

Director of Open Humanities Press:http://www.openhumanitiespress.org
Websitehttp://www.garyhall.info


Latest:

Book: Masked Media: What It Means to Be Human in the Age of Artificial Creative Intelligence (in press):https://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/masked-media/

Blog posts: 'The Afterlife of the AI Author':http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2025/1/22/the-afterlife-of-the-ai-author.html

'On Not Writing Accessibly - with David Graeber and Rebecca Solnit':http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2024/11/8/on-not-writing-accessibly-with-david-graeber-and-rebecca-sol.html

Recommended: Feeding the Machine by James Muldoon, Mark Graham and Callum Cant, in the AI 'magazine' Robot Review of Books (now also featuring This Podcast Does Not Exist):https://www.robotreviewofbooks.org/





















--
# 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: https://www.nettime.org
# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org