Re: <nettime> Nein, danke [was Re: Inhabit: Instructions for Autonomy]

[tbyfield <tbyfield@panix.com>]

So far, the only parts of my initial message I'd retract is "that, I 
think, was based on psychological modeling" and the word "bamboozle." 
Aside from those mistakes — which admittedly carry real freight — my 
analysis was precise and my conclusions were cautious. In particular, 
the conspiratorial theories about how the site is 'really' alt.right 
trolling is people wrestling with their own sloppy reading and straw 
men. I went out of my way not to say things like that, which was easy 
because I don't believe them.

What I *do* believe is that looking carefully at projects like this site 
is a good way to cut through the frontal PR and learn more about where 
they came from (which is *not* reducible to who wrote them — in part 
because they aren't just texts). For example, the authors seem to be 
plucking pictures from sites that sell college essays about police 
corruption, and at some point there was a section called "Let them 
hang..." (Bad combo, imo.) This is nothing more than the kind of 
critical analysis you'd apply to any text you take seriously; but when 
it's applied to visual and technical objects, text-fetishists throw 
tantrums, condescend, etc. YOU'RE JUST OBSESSING OVER A FONT!!! No. The 
font caught my attention and then I looked at the rest of the site.

Brian's comments are most helpful — not a very high bar, given Ian's 
threats to take his radical manifestoes home with him and Nina's 
'splainy review of the last decade in Good German fashion. But even so, 
it's a sorry state of affair when it takes a contentious thread to 
arrive at conclusions like "violent leftist protest can backfire" and we 
"should beware the consequences." Those should be starting points, not 
conclusions. And if loud vices on the US radical left are drifting 
toward the belief that they can light the match that'll spark a 
conflagration of unicorn farts, then count me a moderate centrist.

That's why I'm skeptical about explicit intentions. It's great that the 
authors throw all the right gang signs in a sympathetic podcast, but why 
is that the final word? If they talk about warm-fuzzies but devote half 
the photos on their site to violent fantasies, that's worth knowing. And 
if their aesthetic choices contribute to muddying basic distinctions 
between left and right, does it really matter how 'good' their 
intentions are?

Cheers,
Ted

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