Re: <nettime> 10 Preliminary Theses on Resistance

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

On 01/31/2017 09:38 AM, Ian Alan Paul wrote:

> To not know
>    precisely where we are headed is to remain open to the possibility of
>    arriving where we couldn�t possibly have planned to, and in refusing
>    the present we also invite what cannot presently exist within it.

The refusal to confront a complex society produces no results. The 
discourse above was repeated hundreds of times in 1999-2011 and then 
again in in 2011-2012. It demonstrated no grip on the real course of 
events. What can stop the coming fascism is not the romantic exaltation 
of revolution. Rather we have to create and propagate a new common sense 
that can traverse multiple classes, generations, religions, language 
groups, professional sectors, philosophical schools and religious 
faiths. The political-economic appeal to defend inherited privileges has 
to be replaced with a new and yet workable formula of societal 
development, which can be translated pragmatically into productive 
action. A little virtuoso rhetoric is not going to do the trick. Street 
protest has to overflow into counter-power, rather than withdrawing into 
some dreamed apotheosis of liberation. Because very rapidly it becomes 
evident that while you dream, the others are busy.

Well, Ian, I tried the same moves as you fifteen years ago and it 
rapidly led me on to much more real things. So I wish you good luck, 
best, Brian

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