three concurrent struggles

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At the moment, i think in the West (core and periphery) we can distinguish between three struggles in advanced stages.

One is against authoritarian regimes that force a closed set of values on their increasingly diverse societies. Within these societies, a new mind set is emerging that values, understands and can deal with this diversity.

Another one is against the subversion of the democratic processes through the capture of the traditional institutions of liberal democracy by financial markets, which includes the fight against austerity policies and the invention of new democratic institutions redrawing the balance between participation and representation.

And, one is against the increasing subversion of civil liberties through the militarization of the state. This process is certainly the most advanced in the US, and so is the resistance against also mainly coming from the US. However, not from organized interests, but from brave individuals who cannot tolerate the contradiction between what they are supposed to do (defend liberty) and what they are actually doing (destroy liberty).

Of these three, I think the first one we can win and many many people in networks like this and places too numerous to count are working on this. This is what the Internet was made for, particularly those layers that we all can access (aka the "front end of the internet")

The second one is really hard, but also manageable. Perhaps not winning, but it can redraw the balance of forces. The contradictions evident in society can be mobilized by us. A lot of people are working on this too, and there is an increasing mood, from what I understand, that the next step (for social movements) is about creating institutions that can realize the promises we all see.

The third one is extremely difficult. Because it works on layers that are largely removed from access by any form of democratic process and this, too, is what the Internet was made for. It's about engineering the layers of the Internet that only few very well-financed and well-organized interests have access to (aka the "back-end of the Internet"). It's not just this is taking place as an expression of the contemporary "techno-political paradigm" (as Brian [Holmes] and Armin [Medosch] call it) but that there are very few social contradictions (except for the hacker ethic of some of the people working in the machine rooms) that we can mobilize in our favor.

It is also because of the structure of the third conflict, that the potential of actually winning the second conflict is sharply limited. But, of course, anything can change, and it's possible not to let the financial and security interests re-engineer our communication infrastructure. But it's really hard, because what is happening largely invisible and there with few actors to mobilize for it.

(for context, see this discussion thread on nettime)