Re: <nettime> Stormy weather?

The polycrisis Brian is detailing (the end of peace, neoliberalism, human history) in my view makes a shared ideological understanding necessary for all those forces that are critical of capitalism and have long abandoned the marxist-leninist redux (which can justify repression of hong kong and putin's war crimes). The basic contradiction as kohei saito and the monthly reviewers have been saying is between capital and nature - labor can unseat capital if it works with those forces that wanna overthrow fossilism and patriarchy.

we can debate whether this is gonna be a red black green thing or a pink black green thing - autonomist and/or anarchist - eco+trans+fem and in many other ways - and we feel that the congress for climate justice in milano could start sketching a horizon, strategies, campaigns in a sort of First Internationale of movements against fossil capitalism and petrofeudalism which we hope will then be replicated in other cities around the world to constitute what the Transnational Social Strike Assembly has termed "the radical faction of the climate front".

neoliberalism is dead but oligotech is very much alive and the fascists are threatening america and brazil, while italy has succumbed to nazipopulism threading on the footsteps of hungary and poland. social democracy is unable to create a modern statist alternative to the crisis of market globalization, while the greens are emerging as the middle-class and young alternative to conservatism and reaction, but are unable to push reform of carbon-intensive capitalism to the level that's needed to stave off catastrophe (see Luetzerath, where Greta and FFF converged on the direct-action disobedience tactics of the German autonomist movement - Ende Gelaende - while the greens shamefully defended the deal with cdu and spd to save coal and ditch nuclear). Much as social democracy was about industrial fordism, ecological democracy is about green capitalism - problem is capitalism will never decarbonize fast enough to prevent thermal death for a billion people - it's promethean and cannot control scale even if everything went water, wind and solar.

So the problem of a modern, genZ-relevant anticapitalism becomes a civilizational challenge and we wanna do that with 20somethings as well as middle-aged activists like me. Hope that you can sign the call like Brian Holmes did and you can bring your ideas and strategies to Milano. There will be around 300 delegates from many parts of the world, and we'll be subsidizing travel for African and Latin American activists. Nettimers will be given a preference;)

best ciaos to friends near and far,

Alex

PS updated list of individual signatures:

Alex Foti, Milan – Penny Travlou, Athens/Edinburgh – Tadzio Mueller, Berlin – Eric Collard, Liège – Lissy Romanow, Brooklyn – Nicola Carella, Berlin/Bari – Francesca Coin, Lugano/Milan – Gianluca Grimalda Kiel/Milan – Al Mikey, London – Bruno Montesano Rome/Turin – John Sinha, London – Giulio Fatti, Jinjiu – Emanuele Leonardi, Parma – Emanuele Cozzo, Barcelona – Slim Essaker, Liège – Kaz Sakurada, Osaka – Andreas Malm, Lund – Francesca Maremonti, Berlin – Joshua Eichen, Portland – Peppe Allegri, Rome – Nicola Villa, Milano/Rome – Lorenzo Teodonio/Romea – Federico Scirchio, Milan – Enrico Pirovano, Milano – Jacopo Pallagrosi, Roma/Pavia – Micol Meghnagi, Roma/Dublino – Dario Bassani, Roma/Torino – Simone Caputo, Rome – Maria Chiara Franceschelli, Florence – Marco Spagnuolo, Paris – Elisatron Valtolina, Milan – Ferdinando Pezzopane, Turin - Giorgio De Girolamo, Lucca/Pisa - Veronica Pecile, Zurich – Abo Di Monte, Milan – Francesco Sticchi, Oxford Brookes University – Mathias Wåg, Stockholm – Teo Colò, Milan – Marco Palma, Bologna – Sisco, La Spezia – Cedric Jonckheere, Liège – Emanuele Braga, Milan/Berlin – Alessandro Delfanti, Toronto – Francesco Fortinguerra, Milan – Caterina Orsenigo, Milan – Luca Trada, Milan – Marco Pitò, Brussels – Manu Louis, Berlin/Valencia – Francesca Sconnessioni, Milan – Daniele Molteni, Milan – Nicola Vallinoto, Genoa/Rome – Aidah Nakku, Kampala – Joshua Omonuk, Kampala – Lorenzo Velotti/Barcelona, Andreas Petrossiants, e-flux, New York – Caterina Orsenigo, Milano – Bani Brusadin, Barcelona – Brian Holmes, Chicago – Elena Climate Social Camp, Turin – Michael Hardt, Durham – Teo Comet, Brussels

On Sun, Feb 12, 2023 at 8:53 PM Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com> wrote:

I wonder how nettimers from different perspectives around the world see the current, remarkably tense international situation? Where do you think all the anxieties of war, economic competition, natural disaster and climate change are going to lead in the near future? How do you think one should intervene?

-- There's a war on in Europe, which is a proxy war that pits NATO against Russia, via the fighting force of Ukraine. Definitely check out the list of equipment which the US alone has sent: https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sleepwalking-elites (list begins in paragraph 3)

-- There's likely to be a second refugee crisis in the EU due to the earthquake in Turkey and Syria as well (I mean, added to the exodus from Ukraine).

-- There are rapidly rising tensions between the US and China, with this week's US airspace-defence operations visibly influenced by domestic get-tough politics, and a lot of uncertainty as to whether China will try to use a nationalist, rally-around-the-flag effect to quash the social protest and state-delegitimation brought by the zero-covid fiasco. As part of all this, an industrial re-orientation is being attempted from the US side (CHIPS act, electric-car subsidies for nationally made products). I am not clear if the EU, and especially Germany, participates in this reorientation, or not.

-- Lower-income countries dependent on international finance have had to absorb the interest-rate consequences of pandemic inflation in the rich countries, leading to stalled development and left-right conflicts.

-- Fires, droughts and floods have made climate change into an openly admitted crisis, an economic factor in its own right, and a crucial element in strategic economic military planning.

-- And in parallel to all that, another technology shift is coming through the application of AI to existing industrial and communications technologies.

I think those are undeniable factors whose spillovers must affect most people somehow, wherever you live, so I'm totally curious what you make of this conjuncture.

From my viewpoint, I think that the neoliberal model of society has now irretrievably broken down, leaving vast psycho-social disarray and increasing conflict as state and corporate actors begin trying new strategies. Currently there is a lot of happy talk about "solving the climate crisis" with solar panels and electric cars, and I'm glad about it too, but I think this masks the enormity of the changes ahead. On the one hand, the reason of state calls simultaneously for protective reterritorialization (nationalism, militarized borders, renegotiated alliances) and, in a diametrically opposite way, for intensified international regulatory and planning regimes, as well as a certain coordination of production to achieve energy transitions. On the other hand, populations at all class levels seem to sense that these changes will again be highly disruptive (I mean, as they were in the 80s-90s when neoliberalism came in) - so you have an incredible repositioning going on at the molecular level, not only politically but above all, psychologically. It's noteworthy that in the US, almost none of the sprawling social-welfare package that was originally intended to accompany the Green Capitalism legislation made it through, and more broadly, I don't think capitalist societies have overcome their basic social contradictions. Instead they are being exacerbated, which makes it much, much harder to steer the big ships of state...

It all adds up to stormy weather ahead, and I was just interrupted by a friend telling me that NORAD had closed the airspace over Lake Michigan. That's right out my window! They just opened it again, no explanation yet, but it seems like a good place to end.

curious what you think, Brian
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