Lee Siegel's article "Participatory Culture and the Assault on Democracy" was published in the contributed volume "New Threats to Freedom", ed. Adam Bellow (Templeton Press, May 2010: pp. 259-67):
www.templetonpress.org/book.asp?book_id=144
Excerpt: "No spaces for the cultivation of our individuality exist between us and the media monopolies or the sham elected representatives. The essential liberal position is based on an idea – the idea of ever-expanding individual rights. It just so happens that the fantasy of a majestically sovereign and autonomous self is the heart and soul of American popular culture, a culture that is quintessentially liberal. The result is that the most serious threat to freedom in America today is the threat posed to democracy by the excesses of that culture. As our ever-expanding selves participate more in every cultural activity, the disinterestedness of play and of aesthetic pleasure gives way to crude self-assertion. And as everyone asserts their entitlement to participation, popularity replaces originality as a standard of excellence – you end up with what you might call an egalitarian antidemocracy, in which interactive crowds scorn and marginalize the democratic equalizer of true talent. That old bugbear of postwar sociology – the mob-self – is now a reality. In a participatory/popularity culture, the freedom to think and act for ourselves becomes harder and harder to achieve. The tyrannical majority so feared by Adorno, Foucault, Talmon, and others is all around us, and within us."
Lee Siegel, a book author and cultural critic for numerous US publications, is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University.
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
27 September 2010
20 September 2010
Article: Democracy Still Matters
Roger Cohen, a London-based "International Herald Tribune" columnist, in an op-ed piece the "New York Times" today published on its website, eloquently paints a picture of the global "anti-democratic tide" that seems at once gradual and unavoidable. The title of the article, "Democracy Still Matters", subsequently cannot but ring untrue.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/opinion/21iht-edcohen.html
Excerpts: "One mystery of the first decade of the 21st century is the decline of democracy. It's not that nations with democratic systems have dwindled in number but that democracy has lost its luster. It's an idea without a glow. [...] Those who saw something of the blood expended through the 20th century to secure liberal societies must inevitably find democracy's diminished appeal puzzling. But there are reasons. The lingering wars waged partly in democracy's name in Iraq and Afghanistan hurt its reputation [...]. Given the bloody mayhem, it was easy to portray 'democracy' as a fig leaf for the West's bellicose designs and casual hypocrisies. While the democratic West fought, a nondemocratic China grew. It emerged onto the world stage prizing stability, avoiding military adventure and delivering 10 percent annual growth of which Western democracies could only dream. China's 'surge' was domestic. It was unencumbered by the paralyzing debate of democratic process.
"When the West's financial system imploded in 2008, the Chinese response was vigorous. A 'Beijing consensus' gained traction. The borderline between democracy and authoritarianism grew more opaque. The dichotomy between freedom and tyranny suddenly seemed oh-so 20th century. The new authoritarianism of China or Russia was harder to define and therefore harder to confront. 'Regimes like the one in Russia are stabilized by the fact that they have no ideology,' said Ivan Krastev, a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. 'There is really no ideological means to attack them.' They also derive resilience from the fact that their borders are open. 'The middle class is not interested in changing the system because if they don't like it they can fly to London,' Krastev noted. Having grown up in Communist Bulgaria, he believes democracy was oversold in the 1990's. All good things, at the Cold War's end, were shoveled into the democratic basket: prosperity, growth, peace. When democracy stopped delivering in these areas, it suffered. [...]
"Meanwhile technology kicked in with what the author Jonathan Franzen has called its 'trillion little bits of distracting noise.' People, synched with themselves, retreated into private networks and away from the public space – the commons – where democratic politics had been played out. Democracies seemed blocked, as in Belgium, or corrupted, as in Israel, or parodies, as in Italy, or paralyzed, as in the Netherlands. [...] Obama soon found himself caught in the gridlock of the very partisan shrieking he had vowed to overcome. [...] So what? So what if money trumped democracy and stability trumped open societies for hundreds of millions of people? So what if the rule of law or individual freedom was compromised, the press muzzled, and media-controlling presidents thought they could use 'democracy' to rule for life with occasional four-year breaks. So what if people no longer thought their vote would change anything because politics was for sale? Perhaps liberal democracy, along with its Western cradle, had passed its zenith."
As of now, the article seems not to have appeared in print in the "New York Times", though it may be included in a print edition of the "Times"-owned "International Herald Tribune".
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/opinion/21iht-edcohen.html
Excerpts: "One mystery of the first decade of the 21st century is the decline of democracy. It's not that nations with democratic systems have dwindled in number but that democracy has lost its luster. It's an idea without a glow. [...] Those who saw something of the blood expended through the 20th century to secure liberal societies must inevitably find democracy's diminished appeal puzzling. But there are reasons. The lingering wars waged partly in democracy's name in Iraq and Afghanistan hurt its reputation [...]. Given the bloody mayhem, it was easy to portray 'democracy' as a fig leaf for the West's bellicose designs and casual hypocrisies. While the democratic West fought, a nondemocratic China grew. It emerged onto the world stage prizing stability, avoiding military adventure and delivering 10 percent annual growth of which Western democracies could only dream. China's 'surge' was domestic. It was unencumbered by the paralyzing debate of democratic process.
"When the West's financial system imploded in 2008, the Chinese response was vigorous. A 'Beijing consensus' gained traction. The borderline between democracy and authoritarianism grew more opaque. The dichotomy between freedom and tyranny suddenly seemed oh-so 20th century. The new authoritarianism of China or Russia was harder to define and therefore harder to confront. 'Regimes like the one in Russia are stabilized by the fact that they have no ideology,' said Ivan Krastev, a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. 'There is really no ideological means to attack them.' They also derive resilience from the fact that their borders are open. 'The middle class is not interested in changing the system because if they don't like it they can fly to London,' Krastev noted. Having grown up in Communist Bulgaria, he believes democracy was oversold in the 1990's. All good things, at the Cold War's end, were shoveled into the democratic basket: prosperity, growth, peace. When democracy stopped delivering in these areas, it suffered. [...]
"Meanwhile technology kicked in with what the author Jonathan Franzen has called its 'trillion little bits of distracting noise.' People, synched with themselves, retreated into private networks and away from the public space – the commons – where democratic politics had been played out. Democracies seemed blocked, as in Belgium, or corrupted, as in Israel, or parodies, as in Italy, or paralyzed, as in the Netherlands. [...] Obama soon found himself caught in the gridlock of the very partisan shrieking he had vowed to overcome. [...] So what? So what if money trumped democracy and stability trumped open societies for hundreds of millions of people? So what if the rule of law or individual freedom was compromised, the press muzzled, and media-controlling presidents thought they could use 'democracy' to rule for life with occasional four-year breaks. So what if people no longer thought their vote would change anything because politics was for sale? Perhaps liberal democracy, along with its Western cradle, had passed its zenith."
As of now, the article seems not to have appeared in print in the "New York Times", though it may be included in a print edition of the "Times"-owned "International Herald Tribune".
15 July 2010
Trend: Democracy in trouble
The "Washington Post" last week published two articles on the backlash against democracy (promotion). First, on 5 July, an opinion piece titled "Around the world, freedom is in peril" by Fred Hiatt, the paper's Editorial Page Editor.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/04/AR2010070403849.html
Excerpts: "As America this weekend celebrates the birth of its liberty, in much of the rest of the world freedom and democracy are in retreat. Over the past decade, authoritarian rulers have refined their techniques to stay in power, learning from each other and thinking two steps ahead of democratic forces. [...] They recognized the threat and mobilized, with old-fashioned methods and new. From China to Egypt to Cuba, political challengers were neutralized, as they always had been, by confiscation of property, imprisonment and torture, with the examples of a few chastening the many. The foolish mistakes of one regime – allowing elections before seizing total control of the election machinery, as in Burma in 1990 – were duly noted and not repeated.
"Dictators have learned from each other to stamp out any buds of independent civil society by means of tax laws and supposedly neutral regulation. With China in the lead, they learned not only to neutralize the World Wide Web but to turn it into an effective weapon for propaganda, tracking and repression of their own citizens, and attacks against democratic rivals. Taking advantage of their control of television, they mobilized ideologies of nationalism and anti-terrorism to undermine the rhetoric of freedom. So at decade's end, the correlation of forces, as the Communists used to say, looks bleak. Three assertive powers – China, Russia and Iran – not only resist democratization but actively seek to disseminate their model of authoritarian rule in their spheres of influence."
On 6 July, the paper published an op-ed titled "Democracy in trouble" by columnist Anne Applebaum.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/07/05/ST2010070503026.html?sid=ST2010070503026
Excerpt: "[D]emocracy is in trouble. By every measure, the world's autocrats have become more entrenched over the past decade. Countries as disparate as Russia, Venezuela and Iran have become adept at using the rhetoric of 'democracy' – along with faked elections, phony political parties, even state-controlled 'civil society' organizations – to deflect pressure for change. But democracy promotion has also been unfairly discredited by the invasion of Iraq, a decision too often remembered as nothing more than a foolish 'war for democracy' that went predictably wrong. [...] Since becoming president, Barack Obama has shied away from the word democracy in foreign contexts – he prefers 'our common security and prosperity' – as if it might be some dangerous Bushism."
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/04/AR2010070403849.html
Excerpts: "As America this weekend celebrates the birth of its liberty, in much of the rest of the world freedom and democracy are in retreat. Over the past decade, authoritarian rulers have refined their techniques to stay in power, learning from each other and thinking two steps ahead of democratic forces. [...] They recognized the threat and mobilized, with old-fashioned methods and new. From China to Egypt to Cuba, political challengers were neutralized, as they always had been, by confiscation of property, imprisonment and torture, with the examples of a few chastening the many. The foolish mistakes of one regime – allowing elections before seizing total control of the election machinery, as in Burma in 1990 – were duly noted and not repeated.
"Dictators have learned from each other to stamp out any buds of independent civil society by means of tax laws and supposedly neutral regulation. With China in the lead, they learned not only to neutralize the World Wide Web but to turn it into an effective weapon for propaganda, tracking and repression of their own citizens, and attacks against democratic rivals. Taking advantage of their control of television, they mobilized ideologies of nationalism and anti-terrorism to undermine the rhetoric of freedom. So at decade's end, the correlation of forces, as the Communists used to say, looks bleak. Three assertive powers – China, Russia and Iran – not only resist democratization but actively seek to disseminate their model of authoritarian rule in their spheres of influence."
On 6 July, the paper published an op-ed titled "Democracy in trouble" by columnist Anne Applebaum.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/07/05/ST2010070503026.html?sid=ST2010070503026
Excerpt: "[D]emocracy is in trouble. By every measure, the world's autocrats have become more entrenched over the past decade. Countries as disparate as Russia, Venezuela and Iran have become adept at using the rhetoric of 'democracy' – along with faked elections, phony political parties, even state-controlled 'civil society' organizations – to deflect pressure for change. But democracy promotion has also been unfairly discredited by the invasion of Iraq, a decision too often remembered as nothing more than a foolish 'war for democracy' that went predictably wrong. [...] Since becoming president, Barack Obama has shied away from the word democracy in foreign contexts – he prefers 'our common security and prosperity' – as if it might be some dangerous Bushism."
27 June 2010
Article: China: Our Internet is Free Enough
On 16 June 2010, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's "Technology Review" published on its website an article titled "China: Our Internet is Free Enough", written by Chief Correspondent David Talbot.
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.technologyreview.com/web/25592/?a=f
Excerpts: "China, with the most Internet users of any country in the world, has issued its first government whitepaper declaring an overall Internet strategy – one that advocates Internet growth while implicitly defending censorship policies amid global concern over online repression and China-based cyber espionage. 'I think this whitepaper is a statement that the Chinese Communist Party intends to stay in power, and also intends to expand Internet access, and be on the cutting edge of Internet innovation, and that there isn't any contradiction in any of those things,' says Rebecca MacKinnon, a China Internet expert who is a visiting fellow at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. [...]
"[T]he Beijing whitepaper makes a bold assertion: 'Chinese citizens fully enjoy freedom of speech on the Internet.' Left unstated is that Chinese Internet companies are under government pressure to self-censor, and do so very effectively on a slate of banned topics, including advocacy of democracy [...]. 'Frankly, I think China is Exhibit A for how authoritarianism will survive the Internet age,' MacKinnon says. 'I think Americans have this assumption that nondemocratic regimes can't survive the Internet, and I think that's naïve. The Chinese Communist Party fully intends to survive in the Internet age and has a strategy for doing so. So far, it's working.'"
The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:
www.technologyreview.com/web/25592/?a=f
Excerpts: "China, with the most Internet users of any country in the world, has issued its first government whitepaper declaring an overall Internet strategy – one that advocates Internet growth while implicitly defending censorship policies amid global concern over online repression and China-based cyber espionage. 'I think this whitepaper is a statement that the Chinese Communist Party intends to stay in power, and also intends to expand Internet access, and be on the cutting edge of Internet innovation, and that there isn't any contradiction in any of those things,' says Rebecca MacKinnon, a China Internet expert who is a visiting fellow at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. [...]
"[T]he Beijing whitepaper makes a bold assertion: 'Chinese citizens fully enjoy freedom of speech on the Internet.' Left unstated is that Chinese Internet companies are under government pressure to self-censor, and do so very effectively on a slate of banned topics, including advocacy of democracy [...]. 'Frankly, I think China is Exhibit A for how authoritarianism will survive the Internet age,' MacKinnon says. 'I think Americans have this assumption that nondemocratic regimes can't survive the Internet, and I think that's naïve. The Chinese Communist Party fully intends to survive in the Internet age and has a strategy for doing so. So far, it's working.'"
26 June 2010
Book: Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China
Anne-Marie Brady, "Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007):
www.rowmanlittlefield.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=^DB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0742540588
Publisher's description: "China's government is no longer a Stalinist-Maoist dictatorship, yet it does not seem to be moving significantly closer to democracy as it is understood in Western terms. After a period of self-imposed exclusion, Chinese society is in the process of a massive transformation in the name of economic progress and integration into the world economy. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is seeking to maintain its rule over China indefinitely, creating yet another 'new' China. Propaganda and thought work play a key role in this strategy. In this important book, noted China scholar Anne-Marie Brady answers some intriguing questions about China's contemporary propaganda system. Why have propaganda and thought work strengthened their hold in China in recent years? How has the CCP government strengthened its power since 1989 when so many analysts predicted otherwise? How does the CCP maintain its monopoly on political power while dismantling the socialist system? How can the government maintain popular support in China when the uniting force of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology is spent and discredited? What has taken the place of communist ideology? Examining propaganda and thought work in the current period offers readers a unique understanding of how the CCP will address real and perceived threats to stability and its continued hold on power. This innovative book is a must-read for everyone interested in China's growing role in the world community."
Reviews: "Anne-Marie Brady has written a timely book about the Chinese media. She has done much to demystify an understudied topic. [...] Brady's work deserves much admiration." (Ashley Esarey, "The China Journal")
"[T]he surface diversity of the Chinese media hides the guiding hand of a high-level Party office in Beijing called the Central Propaganda Department, which works its will across the whole spectrum of activities in media, education, entertainment – [...] what Brady calls a campaign of mass distraction." ("New Republic")
The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):
http://books.google.com/books?id=uj-1sxeO99kC&printsec=frontcover
Anne-Marie Brady is Associate Professor in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Canterbury.
www.rowmanlittlefield.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=^DB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0742540588
Publisher's description: "China's government is no longer a Stalinist-Maoist dictatorship, yet it does not seem to be moving significantly closer to democracy as it is understood in Western terms. After a period of self-imposed exclusion, Chinese society is in the process of a massive transformation in the name of economic progress and integration into the world economy. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is seeking to maintain its rule over China indefinitely, creating yet another 'new' China. Propaganda and thought work play a key role in this strategy. In this important book, noted China scholar Anne-Marie Brady answers some intriguing questions about China's contemporary propaganda system. Why have propaganda and thought work strengthened their hold in China in recent years? How has the CCP government strengthened its power since 1989 when so many analysts predicted otherwise? How does the CCP maintain its monopoly on political power while dismantling the socialist system? How can the government maintain popular support in China when the uniting force of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology is spent and discredited? What has taken the place of communist ideology? Examining propaganda and thought work in the current period offers readers a unique understanding of how the CCP will address real and perceived threats to stability and its continued hold on power. This innovative book is a must-read for everyone interested in China's growing role in the world community."
Reviews: "Anne-Marie Brady has written a timely book about the Chinese media. She has done much to demystify an understudied topic. [...] Brady's work deserves much admiration." (Ashley Esarey, "The China Journal")
"[T]he surface diversity of the Chinese media hides the guiding hand of a high-level Party office in Beijing called the Central Propaganda Department, which works its will across the whole spectrum of activities in media, education, entertainment – [...] what Brady calls a campaign of mass distraction." ("New Republic")
The book is fully searchable on Google Book Search (including table of contents):
http://books.google.com/books?id=uj-1sxeO99kC&printsec=frontcover
Anne-Marie Brady is Associate Professor in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Canterbury.
05 May 2010
Press release: Governments flood internet with antidemocratic views
Pro-democracy organization Freedom House on 29 April 2010 released its annual "Freedom of the Press" survey. The 2010 report was accompanied by a press release titled "Restrictions on Press Freedom Intensifying":
http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&release=1177
Excerpt: "Governments in China, Russia, Venezuela, and other countries have been systematically encroaching on the comparatively free environment of the internet and new media. Sophisticated techniques are being used to censor and block access to particular types of information, to flood the internet with antidemocratic, nationalistic views, and to provide broad surveillance of citizen activity."
Despite an intensive search I could not find any further elaboration or substantiation of the "flood the internet with antidemocratic [...] views" claim either in the overview essay or any of the charts, tables, and maps provided by Freedom House online.
http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=70&release=1177
Excerpt: "Governments in China, Russia, Venezuela, and other countries have been systematically encroaching on the comparatively free environment of the internet and new media. Sophisticated techniques are being used to censor and block access to particular types of information, to flood the internet with antidemocratic, nationalistic views, and to provide broad surveillance of citizen activity."
Despite an intensive search I could not find any further elaboration or substantiation of the "flood the internet with antidemocratic [...] views" claim either in the overview essay or any of the charts, tables, and maps provided by Freedom House online.
01 March 2010
Reports on Islamist opposition to democracy
In November 2009, the centre-right think tank Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC) published a report titled "Hizb ut-Tahrir: Ideology and Strategy", authored by Houriya Ahmed and Hannah Stuart.
The full text is available free of charge here:
www.socialcohesion.co.uk/files/1257159197_1.pdf
Excerpts: "Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) is a revolutionary Islamist party that works to establish an expansionist super-state in Muslim-majority countries, unifying Muslims worldwide as one political bloc, or 'ummah'. [...] Inherent to HT's worldview is a clash between 'Western' and 'Islamic' civilisations. [...] Promoting democracy, for example, is seen as part of a Western conspiracy to weaken Islam. [...] HT actively seeks mass support for its Islamist revolution among Western Muslims. Party ideology commands them to oppose Western civilisation and to subvert their societies. All Western states are considered 'enemies' of Islam and potential land for HT's expansionist Islamist state via jihad. [...]
"Furthermore, the party denounces Muslim integration, forbids Muslims from voting in democratic elections and describes Muslims who call for human rights and democracy as apostates. [...] HT describes democracy as: '… (T)he political framework of the Capitalist thought…' [....] The party believes that Muslims who adopt democracy reject Allah as the sole legislator: 'For Muslims to adopt democracy means to disbelieve in all – may Allah forbid – the decisive evidences and conclusive evidences, (...) which oblige them to follow Allah and to reject any other law.' [...] Islam is a divinely-inspired political system and therefore superior to liberal democracy which is man-made."
Another CSC publication of possible interest in this context is "Virtual Caliphate: Islamic extremists and their websites" by James Brandon (January 2008).
The full text is available free of charge here:
www.socialcohesion.co.uk/files/1229624704_1.pdf
Excerpts: "Abu Hamza described democracy as un-Islamic because it allows mankind to make laws which are not based on the Quran. [...] The Islambase website contains audio recordings of several of al-Faisal's sermons given prior to his imprisonment. One recording, [...] contains denunciations of democracy as shirk (idolatry) [....] Abu Uthman [...] attacks democracy as 'man-made law' and [...] urged his audience to struggle against western influences and to actively reject modern-day corruption such as democracy [....] 'Voting in Democratic Elections: The Islamic Ruling concerning its participation' by 'Abu Osama' [...] says that democracy is un-Islamic and that it is not permissible for Muslims to take part in any aspects of the democratic process [....] Democracy: A religion [...] is one of the most important modern works on jihad. The book seeks to persuade the reader that a Muslim who believes in democracy thereby makes himself a 'kuffar' or unbeliever. Those who support the 'man-made' system of democracy, Maqdisi says, should be killed".
The full text is available free of charge here:
www.socialcohesion.co.uk/files/1257159197_1.pdf
Excerpts: "Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) is a revolutionary Islamist party that works to establish an expansionist super-state in Muslim-majority countries, unifying Muslims worldwide as one political bloc, or 'ummah'. [...] Inherent to HT's worldview is a clash between 'Western' and 'Islamic' civilisations. [...] Promoting democracy, for example, is seen as part of a Western conspiracy to weaken Islam. [...] HT actively seeks mass support for its Islamist revolution among Western Muslims. Party ideology commands them to oppose Western civilisation and to subvert their societies. All Western states are considered 'enemies' of Islam and potential land for HT's expansionist Islamist state via jihad. [...]
"Furthermore, the party denounces Muslim integration, forbids Muslims from voting in democratic elections and describes Muslims who call for human rights and democracy as apostates. [...] HT describes democracy as: '… (T)he political framework of the Capitalist thought…' [....] The party believes that Muslims who adopt democracy reject Allah as the sole legislator: 'For Muslims to adopt democracy means to disbelieve in all – may Allah forbid – the decisive evidences and conclusive evidences, (...) which oblige them to follow Allah and to reject any other law.' [...] Islam is a divinely-inspired political system and therefore superior to liberal democracy which is man-made."
Another CSC publication of possible interest in this context is "Virtual Caliphate: Islamic extremists and their websites" by James Brandon (January 2008).
The full text is available free of charge here:
www.socialcohesion.co.uk/files/1229624704_1.pdf
Excerpts: "Abu Hamza described democracy as un-Islamic because it allows mankind to make laws which are not based on the Quran. [...] The Islambase website contains audio recordings of several of al-Faisal's sermons given prior to his imprisonment. One recording, [...] contains denunciations of democracy as shirk (idolatry) [....] Abu Uthman [...] attacks democracy as 'man-made law' and [...] urged his audience to struggle against western influences and to actively reject modern-day corruption such as democracy [....] 'Voting in Democratic Elections: The Islamic Ruling concerning its participation' by 'Abu Osama' [...] says that democracy is un-Islamic and that it is not permissible for Muslims to take part in any aspects of the democratic process [....] Democracy: A religion [...] is one of the most important modern works on jihad. The book seeks to persuade the reader that a Muslim who believes in democracy thereby makes himself a 'kuffar' or unbeliever. Those who support the 'man-made' system of democracy, Maqdisi says, should be killed".
28 February 2010
Report: Blood & Honour: Britain's Far-Right Militants
The Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), a right-leaning UK think tank, and Nothing British, an organization that "seeks to promote [liberal democratic] British values and combat political extremism and racism", this week released a report (dated January 2010) under the title "Blood & Honour: Britain's Far-Right Militants", authored by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens and Edmund Standing, with a foreword by Denis MacShane, a Labour Party member of parliament and former Minister of State for Europe.
The full text is available free of charge here:
www.socialcohesion.co.uk/files/1266837784_1.pdf
Excerpts: "Blood & Honour (B&H) is an international neo-Nazi network that has evolved from its original incarnation as a neo-Nazi music scene into a far-right franchise. Through music CDs and ideological texts, the B&H network reinforces and disseminates a violent 'white power' supremacist ideology. This ideology derives from Third Reich Nazism and, unlike some other far-right organisations, B&H seeks the creation of a 'Fourth Reich'. While it is not an organisation with official membership, B&H acts as a very effective international network through which to spread violent neo-Nazism [...], a number of recently convicted far-right terrorists were found to be followers of B&H music and literature [...].
"However, unlike Islamist terror, the neo-Nazi equivalent is still in an immature and ineffectual stage in the UK. [...] B&H is ostensibly a 'political' movement; but arguably it has far more in common with other violent ideological forms of extremism than it does with what is generally understood as 'politics', even of a nationalist variety. Certainly, as an explicitly anti-democratic, anti-liberal, fascist organisation, B&H constitutes an atavistic manifestation [...] outside the bounds of normal social and political interaction. The group, therefore, acts as a magnet to those who feel disenfranchised".
Endorsement: "This well-researched and forcefully written exposure of the threat to democracy posed by Blood & Honour is a wake-up call to all those liberals who complacently assume the militant far-right died with the National Front." (Roger Griffin, Oxford Brookes University)
Another CSC publication of possible interest in this context is "The BNP and the Online Fascist Network: an investigation into the online activities of British National Party members and online activists" by Edmund Standing, with an introduction by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens (July 2009).
The full text is available free of charge here:
www.douglasmurray.co.uk/TheBNPandtheOnlineFascistNetwork.pdf
The full text is available free of charge here:
www.socialcohesion.co.uk/files/1266837784_1.pdf
Excerpts: "Blood & Honour (B&H) is an international neo-Nazi network that has evolved from its original incarnation as a neo-Nazi music scene into a far-right franchise. Through music CDs and ideological texts, the B&H network reinforces and disseminates a violent 'white power' supremacist ideology. This ideology derives from Third Reich Nazism and, unlike some other far-right organisations, B&H seeks the creation of a 'Fourth Reich'. While it is not an organisation with official membership, B&H acts as a very effective international network through which to spread violent neo-Nazism [...], a number of recently convicted far-right terrorists were found to be followers of B&H music and literature [...].
"However, unlike Islamist terror, the neo-Nazi equivalent is still in an immature and ineffectual stage in the UK. [...] B&H is ostensibly a 'political' movement; but arguably it has far more in common with other violent ideological forms of extremism than it does with what is generally understood as 'politics', even of a nationalist variety. Certainly, as an explicitly anti-democratic, anti-liberal, fascist organisation, B&H constitutes an atavistic manifestation [...] outside the bounds of normal social and political interaction. The group, therefore, acts as a magnet to those who feel disenfranchised".
Endorsement: "This well-researched and forcefully written exposure of the threat to democracy posed by Blood & Honour is a wake-up call to all those liberals who complacently assume the militant far-right died with the National Front." (Roger Griffin, Oxford Brookes University)
Another CSC publication of possible interest in this context is "The BNP and the Online Fascist Network: an investigation into the online activities of British National Party members and online activists" by Edmund Standing, with an introduction by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens (July 2009).
The full text is available free of charge here:
www.douglasmurray.co.uk/TheBNPandtheOnlineFascistNetwork.pdf
19 February 2010
Article: Democratic and Anti-Democratic Regulators of the Internet
Michael L. Best and Keegan W. Wade, "Democratic and Anti-Democratic Regulators of the Internet: A Framework" ("The Information Society", 23 [5], October 2007: pp. 405-11):
www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a782998202
Abstract: "We employ Lessig's framework of regulation to conceptualize the relationship between the Internet and democracy. Lessig defines four classes of regulators, forces that control and define systems such as the Internet. They are markets, architectures, norms, and laws. We propose that a 'democratic regulator' is a force that serves to enhance civil or political liberties. And we argue by example that there are democratic (and, indeed, anti-democratic) regulators that control aspects of cyberspace. Expressing the democratic effects of the Internet in this manner may prove useful for future comparisons across existing Internet and democracy theories, especially in the realm of quantitative analyses."
Excerpts: "Over the past 15 or so years there has been substantial speculation as to the relationship between the Internet and democracy, with most scholars falling into one of two main camps: the pro-democracy, 'cyberoptimist' camp, and the anti-democracy, 'cyberpessimist' camp [....] [E]xponents of the anti-democracy camp [...] demonstrate that authoritarian governments can harness the Internet for their own purposes. [...] An anti-democratic regulator is the opposite of a democratic regulator – it undermines civil liberties or political rights. If a government were to limit the speed at which their backbone servers operated by imposing bandwidth quotas, this could [...] result in citizens being less able to engage in civil society activities online, causing democracy to suffer. Similarly, if a private Internet service provider (ISP) privileged certain commercial communications while restricting the communication of civil society, this too would be anti-democratic within our framework. Witness the ongoing debate over Net Neutrality [...].
"For each of Lessig's categories of regulation, prominent democratic or anti-democratic regulators of the Internet can be identified. [...] Encryption can have a powerful positive effect on the democratization process by allowing, for instance, dissident groups to organize secretly. But, as Lessig points out, cryptography is 'Janus-faced ... it [...] will undermine dictatorships and it will drive them to new excesses' [....] Filtration software can have negative implications for civil society since it can make it difficult for citizens to access media concerning political ideas, and can prevent people from associating with certain groups. [...] Filtration software, when embedded in the architecture of networks run by authoritarian states, serves as an undemocratic element of code. [...]
"It is possible that some governments use price controls to keep certain users/citizens away from the Internet. [...] [A]ccess price can prevent citizens from exercising the civil liberties and political rights that they might otherwise gain if they could afford access [...]. Thus, low Internet access prices encourage a broader set of users and are thus democratic market regulators. Conversely, high Internet access prices would discourage use and be an undemocratic market regulator. [...] [V]arious governments around the world – in Malaysia, Turkey, China, and other places – have criminalized politically dissident online speech, and this hurts civil liberties in those nations [...]. Even if these kinds of laws cannot be enforced in full, governments can still make occasional examples of dissenters, intimidating others."
Michael L. Best is Assistant Professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Keegan W. Wade is a Technical Consultant at Blackbaud Inc.
www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a782998202
Abstract: "We employ Lessig's framework of regulation to conceptualize the relationship between the Internet and democracy. Lessig defines four classes of regulators, forces that control and define systems such as the Internet. They are markets, architectures, norms, and laws. We propose that a 'democratic regulator' is a force that serves to enhance civil or political liberties. And we argue by example that there are democratic (and, indeed, anti-democratic) regulators that control aspects of cyberspace. Expressing the democratic effects of the Internet in this manner may prove useful for future comparisons across existing Internet and democracy theories, especially in the realm of quantitative analyses."
Excerpts: "Over the past 15 or so years there has been substantial speculation as to the relationship between the Internet and democracy, with most scholars falling into one of two main camps: the pro-democracy, 'cyberoptimist' camp, and the anti-democracy, 'cyberpessimist' camp [....] [E]xponents of the anti-democracy camp [...] demonstrate that authoritarian governments can harness the Internet for their own purposes. [...] An anti-democratic regulator is the opposite of a democratic regulator – it undermines civil liberties or political rights. If a government were to limit the speed at which their backbone servers operated by imposing bandwidth quotas, this could [...] result in citizens being less able to engage in civil society activities online, causing democracy to suffer. Similarly, if a private Internet service provider (ISP) privileged certain commercial communications while restricting the communication of civil society, this too would be anti-democratic within our framework. Witness the ongoing debate over Net Neutrality [...].
"For each of Lessig's categories of regulation, prominent democratic or anti-democratic regulators of the Internet can be identified. [...] Encryption can have a powerful positive effect on the democratization process by allowing, for instance, dissident groups to organize secretly. But, as Lessig points out, cryptography is 'Janus-faced ... it [...] will undermine dictatorships and it will drive them to new excesses' [....] Filtration software can have negative implications for civil society since it can make it difficult for citizens to access media concerning political ideas, and can prevent people from associating with certain groups. [...] Filtration software, when embedded in the architecture of networks run by authoritarian states, serves as an undemocratic element of code. [...]
"It is possible that some governments use price controls to keep certain users/citizens away from the Internet. [...] [A]ccess price can prevent citizens from exercising the civil liberties and political rights that they might otherwise gain if they could afford access [...]. Thus, low Internet access prices encourage a broader set of users and are thus democratic market regulators. Conversely, high Internet access prices would discourage use and be an undemocratic market regulator. [...] [V]arious governments around the world – in Malaysia, Turkey, China, and other places – have criminalized politically dissident online speech, and this hurts civil liberties in those nations [...]. Even if these kinds of laws cannot be enforced in full, governments can still make occasional examples of dissenters, intimidating others."
Michael L. Best is Assistant Professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Keegan W. Wade is a Technical Consultant at Blackbaud Inc.
17 February 2010
Book: Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies
Jodi Dean, "Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics" (Duke University Press, July 2009):
www.dukeupress.edu/books.php3?isbn=978-0-8223-4505-3
From the publisher's description: "Through an assessment of the ideologies underlying contemporary political culture, Jodi Dean [...] argues that the left's ability to develop and defend a collective vision of equality and solidarity has been undermined [...]. As Dean explains, communicative capitalism is enabled and exacerbated by the Web and other networked communications media, which reduce political energies to the registration of opinion and the transmission of feelings. The result is a psychotic politics where certainty displaces credibility and the circulation of intense feeling trumps the exchange of reason. Dean's critique ranges from her argument that the term democracy has become a meaningless cipher invoked by the left and right alike to [...] confronting the marriage of neoliberalism and democracy".
Under the title "W(h)ither the State", she yesterday wrote on her blog: "In a discussion of Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies today some students pressed a point of weakness in my discussion: namely, the critique of democracy in all or nothing terms. Rather than considering the multiplicity of forms of local action and community engagement, I reject the democratic 'system,' its liberal-democratic justifications, and its materialization in communicative capitalism. The state is rotten and thus the only solution is revolution."
Reviews: "Her diagnosis of 'communicative capitalism' discloses how our 'really existing democracies' curtail prospects of radical emancipatory politics. Dean demonstrates this status of democracy as a political fantasy not through cheap, pseudo-Marxist denunciations but through a detailed examination of social, symbolic, and libidinal mechanisms and practices. To anyone who continues to dwell on illusions about liberal democracy, one should simply say: 'Hey, didn't you read Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies?'" (Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana/Birkbeck College, London)
"Jodi Dean provides an incredibly lucid explanation of what neoliberalism has been in terms of both policy and collective fantasies regarding the relation of markets to freedom." (Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago)
Dean is also the author of a number of articles apparently opposed to democracy. Among those I haven't been able to access (and that were published in journals that many university libraries may not be subscribed to) is "The Democratic Deadlock" ("Theory & Event", 10 [4], 2007: pp. not given):
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.4dean.html
Excerpt: "A commonplace of media punditry in the middle years of the first decade of the twenty-first century concerns the deep divide in American politics. Whether in terms of political parties, red states and blue states, support or opposition to US militarism in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the ongoing culture war between the religious right and the secular left, the United States is depicted as a nation split in its fundamental ethico-political self-understanding. This depiction is misleading. It occludes the way these seeming opponents continue to appeal to democracy. Thus, the administration of George W. Bush presents itself as actively engaged in bringing democracy to the Middle East, as encouraging countries throughout the world to strengthen their democratic institutions. The Left, although seemingly opposed to the Bush administration, also appeals to democracy as that which it wishes to restore, redeem, or reach. Why does the Left continue to appeal to democracy? Is democracy, as Slavoj Žižek asks, the ultimate horizon of political thought? For Žižek, to accept this horizon is to accept an impoverished political field, a diminishment of aspirations to something better. We accept the limitation of democracy, convinced that this is as good as it gets. Real existing constitutional democracies privilege the wealthy. They exclude, exploit, and oppress the poor. Crucial determinants of our lives and conditions remain outside the frame of political deliberation and response."
I also had no access to her article "Feminism, Communicative Capitalism, and the Inadequacies of Radical Democracy", published as a chapter in the contributed volume "Radical Democracy and the Internet: Interrogating Theory and Practice", eds. Lincoln Dahlberg and Eugenia Siapera (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2007).
Presumably the book covers most of the arguments she made in her earlier articles.
Jodi Dean is Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Erasmus Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
www.dukeupress.edu/books.php3?isbn=978-0-8223-4505-3
From the publisher's description: "Through an assessment of the ideologies underlying contemporary political culture, Jodi Dean [...] argues that the left's ability to develop and defend a collective vision of equality and solidarity has been undermined [...]. As Dean explains, communicative capitalism is enabled and exacerbated by the Web and other networked communications media, which reduce political energies to the registration of opinion and the transmission of feelings. The result is a psychotic politics where certainty displaces credibility and the circulation of intense feeling trumps the exchange of reason. Dean's critique ranges from her argument that the term democracy has become a meaningless cipher invoked by the left and right alike to [...] confronting the marriage of neoliberalism and democracy".
Under the title "W(h)ither the State", she yesterday wrote on her blog: "In a discussion of Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies today some students pressed a point of weakness in my discussion: namely, the critique of democracy in all or nothing terms. Rather than considering the multiplicity of forms of local action and community engagement, I reject the democratic 'system,' its liberal-democratic justifications, and its materialization in communicative capitalism. The state is rotten and thus the only solution is revolution."
Reviews: "Her diagnosis of 'communicative capitalism' discloses how our 'really existing democracies' curtail prospects of radical emancipatory politics. Dean demonstrates this status of democracy as a political fantasy not through cheap, pseudo-Marxist denunciations but through a detailed examination of social, symbolic, and libidinal mechanisms and practices. To anyone who continues to dwell on illusions about liberal democracy, one should simply say: 'Hey, didn't you read Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies?'" (Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana/Birkbeck College, London)
"Jodi Dean provides an incredibly lucid explanation of what neoliberalism has been in terms of both policy and collective fantasies regarding the relation of markets to freedom." (Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago)
Dean is also the author of a number of articles apparently opposed to democracy. Among those I haven't been able to access (and that were published in journals that many university libraries may not be subscribed to) is "The Democratic Deadlock" ("Theory & Event", 10 [4], 2007: pp. not given):
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.4dean.html
Excerpt: "A commonplace of media punditry in the middle years of the first decade of the twenty-first century concerns the deep divide in American politics. Whether in terms of political parties, red states and blue states, support or opposition to US militarism in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the ongoing culture war between the religious right and the secular left, the United States is depicted as a nation split in its fundamental ethico-political self-understanding. This depiction is misleading. It occludes the way these seeming opponents continue to appeal to democracy. Thus, the administration of George W. Bush presents itself as actively engaged in bringing democracy to the Middle East, as encouraging countries throughout the world to strengthen their democratic institutions. The Left, although seemingly opposed to the Bush administration, also appeals to democracy as that which it wishes to restore, redeem, or reach. Why does the Left continue to appeal to democracy? Is democracy, as Slavoj Žižek asks, the ultimate horizon of political thought? For Žižek, to accept this horizon is to accept an impoverished political field, a diminishment of aspirations to something better. We accept the limitation of democracy, convinced that this is as good as it gets. Real existing constitutional democracies privilege the wealthy. They exclude, exploit, and oppress the poor. Crucial determinants of our lives and conditions remain outside the frame of political deliberation and response."
I also had no access to her article "Feminism, Communicative Capitalism, and the Inadequacies of Radical Democracy", published as a chapter in the contributed volume "Radical Democracy and the Internet: Interrogating Theory and Practice", eds. Lincoln Dahlberg and Eugenia Siapera (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2007).
Presumably the book covers most of the arguments she made in her earlier articles.
Jodi Dean is Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Erasmus Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
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