[Nettime-bold] Yahoo and utopian globalism

[florian schneider <fls@kein.org>]

Brian Holmes wrote:

> Generally in Europe it's preferable to have laws against everything
> fascist, because there are fascists behind every bush and the only 
> viable solution is to force them to stay there, otherwise they come 
> out into the public space and start ordering you around.

if you keep a close watch on the history of fascism in europe
you'll find out, that no law ever was able prevent fascists from 
"ordering you around". in opposite: fascists are quite clever
in using laws for their purposes. the specific problem of fascism 
is, that it has never been an invasion from outer space or 
behind the bush, and therefore fascism cannot be stopped or
struggled by some proper laws or lawsuits. the current debate 
(at least in germany) about nazi-links is a very simple 
prolongation of a well known process of psycological repression. 

a law only regulates it's transgression, a quite known french
philosopher wrote once upon the time. in my eyes it is much
more naive to dream, that a law or a few more rules might 
be able to relieve the pain of postmodern capitalism than to 
dream about a stateless world or a world without borders.

but: neither on the level of representation nor by transcendental 
thinking (including all kind of dreaming about free-somethings)
you won't get a clue of how to deal with current issues
like globalisation, de-nationalisation and it's counter-tendencies 
(including the hype of nazi-merchandising on the web), if you
delegate your power towards a sort of wwgovernment or claim 
the local authorities to be responsable for offering a nazi-free 
web service to the national taxpayer community.

i hope, it is not too dissapointing to realise, that it's better
to struggle, to make concrete and immanent interventions, to
fight for things and together with people which nazis are fighting 
against -- than to ask the authorities to start a lawsuit.

i see no fundamental problem in continuing our struggles and 
our debates knowing, that some fascist websites do exist on the 
net, since i've had to learn to live with the fact, that fascism 
and the shoah have really happened, and real existing neo-nazis 
continue to spread their thoughts and propagise murder.


geert lovink wrote:

> But would it be possible to overcome such a regional relativism 
> without buying into the sweet arrogance of Yahoo's US-American 
> libertarianism? Is there such a thing a utopian globalism which 
> is not based on US law and it's cultural specificities? Is
> there a way to design a new trans-national Internet on top of the 
> ruins of the vanished cyberdreams? Perhaps a Balkanization of the 
> Net will produce interesting monsters (such as the poverty zones 
> of WAP).

i think it is not really possible to name such a thing
right now. more important, the way, how it is possible to 
communicate the different and distinct struggles and
issues. this leads straight forward to exploration of 
subjectivities and the question: if there's really smth in 
common, what it might be? such kind of commonness will
probably differ very much from concepts of communities we 
already know. 

a bunch of nettimers (such as manse jacobi, heath bunting,
olia lialina and ivan grubanov) will discuss some of these 
issues tonight. the event will be in english, it will
be live streamed and stored in a database. additionally 
remote participants can join a live chat. 

stream, starting tonight, november 24th at 7 pm GMT
http://195.88.128.119:8080/ramgen/muffat/fc/fc7/fc7.smi

chat, starting at 8 pm GMT
http://www.web-for-vision.com/fc/chat.htm

see you

florian


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