Christian Swertz via nettime-l on Thu, 21 Dec 2023 09:58:28 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> the silence on the rising fascism 

Dear Felix,

Am 21.12.23 um 00:25 schrieb Felix Stalder via nettime-l:
That model does not work anymore.
As far as I remember Habermas excluded the proletarian public from his analysis. Thus it might be the case that the theory is still usesful and the examples that were used to illustrate the theory still exist (at least in my neighbourhood there is something like a middle class) - but the proletarian public became louder. Thus it might necessary to extend Habermas theory to include the proletarian public. I have to admit that I'm not aware of convincing attempts in this direction.
We can speak "truth to power" all day long. Millions are marching against the war in Gaza. But, simply, arguments don't count.
To me, that sounds a bit surprising. You mean the number of people marching is an argument? Probably not. But yes: We observe the reporting of a war (that is: a media reality) - but in the reality of wars, spoken arguments don't count. For a deliberate democracy, peace is a condition. To me, attempts to understand wars is as useless as understanding religion. In this respect, I consider the theory of value spheres as useful: Truth in a war is not identified by the best argument, but by the biggest weapon, in religion by conduct in accordance with God, in economy by profit and so on. If you locate yourself in a scientific sphere or an arts sphere, you simply can not understand wars. You can claim that wars are not theoretically justified or not beautiful - but these claims are not relevant in wars. Obviously, this also holds true the other way round: You can not justify scientific truth with a gun. Thus power is not power.  There are different types of power. This might explain your observation:
But it's more than that, power doesn't speak anymore, it doesn’t need argumentative justification, not even dishonest one. Has Trump ever made a single argument? No.
He did - he won an election. That's truth in politics. In politics, you need to win elections in order to be right (well - at least in some political spheres). It is not relevant how you win elections - you just need to win them. If you can exploit scientific results or weapons for that: good. But scientific results of weapons are not relevant in politics as they are in sciences and wars. The meaning of relevance is just different. You have to turn scientific results or a weapon into a fetish or a symbol (at least from these scientific perspectives - not from a political perspective) to be successful, which might explain this one:
Logical coherence doesn't matter
Absolutely. And it never did in politics (unless you can convince voters with logical coherence). So - nothing new in this respect. Still the same old story. 

--
Liebe Grüße,

Christian Swertz
http://www.swertz.at

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