Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it. I’ve read Jones Manoel’s essay before multiple times, but I’ll have to make a note to look into Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle.
The point about the power of negotiation, disruption, etc., I try to think of what signs there are left of this in the US and all I can think of that seems noteworthy is newer union efforts. (Older ones, to my understanding, often suffer from problems of diluted power/influence.) But then I also read stories about one business or another, where a union was being formed and the company shut down entirely the branch it was being formed at in order to stop the unionization.
In general, the modern USian “left” seems broadly mired in a mode of thinking and strategy that goes something like the following: “The constitution gives people certain legal human rights (at least in theory). Rather than challenging the validity of relying on an old document built out of a settler-colonial project that committed genocide and was built through slavery, we start with the belief that the constitution had the right idea but never actualized it. Therefore, to fix problems, we act within the framework of behaving in a way that is legal (as it pertains to theoretical rights provided by the constitution) and challenging what is illegal (as it pertains to theoretical rights provided by the constitution).”
In this way, “civil disobedience” (which often translates to the kind of protest we’re talking about) can be viewed as an actualization process of the constitution rather than a challenge to it. What little potentially “illegal” action people are willing to take becomes a validation of the state project and its origins rather than an invalidation of it. I’m not sure this is what the left wants to be doing as strategy, but it may be somewhat of a fear/survival response to the violence of imperial repression and the dismantling of more militant efforts. The general thought process being that by raising awareness, we can become strong enough to transform into the other, more militant form. The problem there, of course, is that transformation does not arise magically out of numbers. Raised awareness and outrage that is not organized and grounded in disciplined theory and practice leads to riot rather than sustained leverage. (Some of this may apply similarly to parts of the EU, but I don’t know enough about them to say with confidence one way or another.)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it. I’ve read Jones Manoel’s essay before multiple times, but I’ll have to make a note to look into Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle.
The point about the power of negotiation, disruption, etc., I try to think of what signs there are left of this in the US and all I can think of that seems noteworthy is newer union efforts. (Older ones, to my understanding, often suffer from problems of diluted power/influence.) But then I also read stories about one business or another, where a union was being formed and the company shut down entirely the branch it was being formed at in order to stop the unionization.
In general, the modern USian “left” seems broadly mired in a mode of thinking and strategy that goes something like the following: “The constitution gives people certain legal human rights (at least in theory). Rather than challenging the validity of relying on an old document built out of a settler-colonial project that committed genocide and was built through slavery, we start with the belief that the constitution had the right idea but never actualized it. Therefore, to fix problems, we act within the framework of behaving in a way that is legal (as it pertains to theoretical rights provided by the constitution) and challenging what is illegal (as it pertains to theoretical rights provided by the constitution).”
In this way, “civil disobedience” (which often translates to the kind of protest we’re talking about) can be viewed as an actualization process of the constitution rather than a challenge to it. What little potentially “illegal” action people are willing to take becomes a validation of the state project and its origins rather than an invalidation of it. I’m not sure this is what the left wants to be doing as strategy, but it may be somewhat of a fear/survival response to the violence of imperial repression and the dismantling of more militant efforts. The general thought process being that by raising awareness, we can become strong enough to transform into the other, more militant form. The problem there, of course, is that transformation does not arise magically out of numbers. Raised awareness and outrage that is not organized and grounded in disciplined theory and practice leads to riot rather than sustained leverage. (Some of this may apply similarly to parts of the EU, but I don’t know enough about them to say with confidence one way or another.)