The Oedipal depolitical
There’s to be an APEC meeting in Sydney in September. Sydney’s Stop the War Coalition, intent on even further depoliticisation, is gearing up for organising demonstrations that have little to do with APEC but are, instead, protests against Bush (who will be in town for the duration).
Now, I’m not suggesting that such protests should be against APEC or, I mean to say, I don’t agree that the location and target of protests should continue to be set by institutions such as APEC - or G20, the World Bank, etc. Appending oneself to such conferences and their apparatus of security and PR is to give them and the state the upper hand in determining how and when protests take place, not to mention that doing so doesn’t amount to a trajectory, a flight and a development, so much as an activist calendar. Movement and anti-summit repetitiveness are not the same thing, but their confusion has become an index of just how unimaginative and cynical activists can be. I don’t doubt there are some incredibly stupid people in the world who believe that Bush is either/both an explanation or source of the problem, or at least the cause of the war - though I’ve never actually met any. But really, it’s more likely that activists think their potential audience/recruits are incredibly stupid people who might believe such a thing.
But surely, if one were to protest at an APEC meeting, you’d think there’d be some connection to the terrain at hand, some proximity to the Asia-Pacific: Australia’s military-police deployments, migration policing, the land enclosures in China … It’s not as if there aren’t significant struggles occurring that might be raised, connected with. (Plus I’m reluctant to grant the war, and an antiwar activism, its geopolitical, often explicitly nationalist sway - the whole ‘Bring Our Troops Home’ and similar standpoints.)
But no. Instead, the Stop the War Coalition’s pitch is an expression of infantilisation and cretinisation: anti-Bush, anti-Howard. Daddy is bad! It’s enough to make one a vulgar Freudian: kill the Father so that one can have uninterrupted relations with Mother (which for trots and social democrats, is likely figured as ‘the people’ or, worse, in the case of environmentalists, ‘the earth’). I joke, but it’s difficult to see how that’s not in play at some level, so determined are these people to not construe protests in another way.
I do note that the SWC is concerned that they might not be able to persuade ‘the unions’ - read: parts of the Labor Party - that protests against APEC Bush might be a good idea, that they might not have proven their capacity to control those protests as aspiring participants of a managerial alliance might. Which makes it something of a certainty that they’ll put more effort into doing so. And I note that, among the three or four things discussed at the meeting, one of which was “police liaison” and guaranteeing “our right to protest.” Which is as good a reason to stay away as any, imo.
Though, I don’t doubt that there are people who, while presenting themselves as anarchists, autonomists, or similar, are in fact democrats - and therefore believe that protests have the function of being parliaments of the people, something that ‘we all’ must be represented in and through. Or maybe it is just a case of too much passivity, and of the herd kind. Then again, maybe I’ll be surprised, and the capacity for refusal and exodus will be reinvigorated. Stranger things have happened.
In some ways summit protests are not only appending themselves to the security, PR and authority of these summits but are mimicking them.
My last contact with the G20 stuff, as part of an OCDish contribution to their efforts, was a ‘reflections’ meeting where illustrious media man Marcus Greville said that the anti-APEC would focus on anti-howard and anti-war in order to address the issue revealed by the G20 counter summit. (How the ’should’ got to be a ‘would’ I cannot say but there was mention of ‘people’ who had already started organising who could have been responsible … )
These issue were apparently the difficulty that the ‘movement’ had in getting ‘ordinary people’ to support and attend their rally due to the confusing nature of the ‘ ‘issues’. So apparently movement and summit protest repetitiveness are the same thing because, you know lots of little fish that get together into the shape of a big fish can eat a big fish and that is good … perhaps not so much the killing of the father but the rounding up of a big enough gang of brothers for that task …
…meanwhile I am still clinging to the idea that Arterial bloc melieu are making a cynical attempt at getting money from the dull left for court stuff with their media statement, which suggests that they are just another bunch of ‘anarchist’ democrats.
Nick Richardson [January 21, 2007 @ 8:01 pm]
The link to the Arterial Bloc’s statement didn’t come through. Do you mean the communique thing, or something else?
Edit: Oh, I found it - this. Such a prominent status given to “participatory democracy” too, whatever that means.
s0metim3s [January 21, 2007 @ 9:39 pm]
Aside from taking pot shots at others, you don’t seem to articulate any particular political view here - no positive presription about how action/resistance ought to be done.
All political action is imperfect, and there are valid and important critiques that can and should be made. But they need to be balanced by meaningful alternatives. There is a dangerous and poisonous tendancy among some on the left, to be so fircely, bitterly cynical, that they can only attck other left wing groups and their methods. The stopstopg20 blog was a prime example of this. The saddest part is that such people render themselves impotent against their real enemies on the right - it is as though they have forgotten that they exist, or find critiqing them too difficult.
I am loathe to buy into this ridiculous, psychoanalytic, second guessing of the motivations of others, however it must be pointed out that the bitter cynical left represent a much better example of oedipal behaviour. So terrified of authority are these people that they mistake organised and competant comrades for father figures. As soon as anyone proposes any action, they must be dragged down. Safer to stay at home and whinge.
I’m not sure I understand your objection to summit repetition. There seems to be a view in some circles that ’summit hopping’ is naff and so, like, 1999. Obviously such views entirely miss the point. My reason for protesting at such events, is to oppose the power that they represent, and in doing so, hopefully draw attention to this unjust power. They are the defining institutions of global capitalism and as such, they are worthy targets of protest. This was the case in 1999, and it remains the case today. The fact that a succession of such events does not make a movement is not the point, and it certainly is not a reason not to protest. If it is a movement you desire, then by all means take action to help build one (can I suggest you start by dropping the attacks on groups who do organise events).
As for Bush - there may or may not be people who mistake him for the cause of the problem - but I see no reason to conclude that Stop the War are such people. Perhaps Bush can be protested against because he is the symbol and the figure head. Are people supposed to stay home and not oppose Howard and Bush, lest people mistakenly conclude they are afflicted with the Oedipus Complex? George Bush is President of a nation that has carried out a brutal and unjust war. But you seem to imply that because he is not the source or cause of this, that we shouldn’t protest. When should we protest? What should we do?
Matthew [January 24, 2007 @ 8:05 am]
no positive presription about how action/resistance ought to be done.
Without getting into a longer discussion about prescriptions, immunisation programmes and the like, might I suggest you re-read the above. Specifically the third para.
I’m not sure I understand your objection to summit repetition.
Might I recommend the second para, this bit: Appending oneself to such conferences and their apparatus of security and PR is to give them and the state the upper hand in determining how and when protests take place, not to mention that doing so doesn’t amount to a trajectory, a flight and a development, so much as an activist calendar. Or, a less pithy version, this.
And I think Nick is right: anti-summit protests increasingly do mimic those institutions, or at least seek to. Many of the organisations who involve themselves in such protests are not in fact opposed to the form of those institutions, merely their personnel and policy (as if such things can be distinguished). And the distinction is made because such organisations harbour aspirations of taking over the commanding heights, as it were. This isn’t a protest, then. It’s a competition - not politics, but economics (with all the marketing and pitching to consumers that economics entails).
As for the “bitter, cynical left” and the ’stay-at-homes’ - on the latter, you (or should I say, activists) define politics as action in a rather dogmatic way, without a sense of how inaction and refusal is also a form of politics. In this sense, you repeat the work ethic (and capitalist productivism). But, to mention the most obvious, no strike would be possible without either refusal or inaction. Anticapitalist politics should emphasise the non-work aspects of politics, surely.
Which is to say, assuming that constant action is a virtue isn’t a politics. To borrow a phrase: It’s economics, stupid. It means promoting an atmosphere in which people are unwilling to make political decisions about what to do and what not to do - not only ‘what is to be done’ (a la Lenin) but also (contra Lenin) what is to be undone.
And these complaints about “the bitter, cynical left” is a function of that disinclination to be political. A version of ’shut up and be part of what we decide’. Hence my remark about depoliticisation.
s0metim3s [January 24, 2007 @ 12:20 pm]
Matthew said:
no positive presription about how action/resistance ought to be done.
Right, and talking about how Bush is a sociopath prescribes some form of action which will bring down capitalism all of its own accord?
az [January 24, 2007 @ 1:16 pm]
that is not a statement from the Arterial Block. As AB is not a on going formation and can and should not be read as such.
Grumpy Cat [January 25, 2007 @ 12:41 pm]
Ok. Whoever wrote it, and granting that there doesn’t seem to be anything else about, the statement was, as others have said, disappointing. It’s difficult to see how it might persuade those who might not otherwise have felt inclined, to some solidarity. I could be wrong, but from conversations, there seems to be a duck-and-cover mood in the city.
s0metim3s [January 25, 2007 @ 1:47 pm]