An Earnest Politics

The fact that there are thousands of demonstrators currently on the streets of New York (as well as other places around the country) is a piece of good news. But if the existence of Occupy Wall Street is exciting, its content is not. As of yet, it does not contain any actual potential for a true political moment. That is, it does not have any revolutionary content, any real social change within the logic of the movement itself. I don’t mean to say that the protestors don’t have goals and demands—in fact, they have lists and lists of them. But every system of government has a level of resistance which is both expected and thrived upon. Many of those people who defy social norms and resist, in whatever way they have available to them, in even the most authoritarian politics, serve to mark out the limits of acceptability. The outsiders can be punished, made example of, ignored, or mocked, but in each case it is the same—they are naught but a social tool for the perpetuation of the status quo. Every shopping mall has a store to sell studded belts and gauge earrings because teenage rebellion is something expected, something which has no real content to it. Occupy Wall Street currently holds that place in political discourse. 

Our political system as it stands now is one in which wealth garners power; one in which lobbyists determine policy; one in which, as each of the Occupiers is want to tell you, 1% of the people have all of the power. These are no secrets. Corporate influence in elections, especially following the Citizens United ruling, has taken an unprecedented place in typical political maneuvering. These are, in fact, what Occupy Wall Street is in response to. However, the way the movement exists now is in truth only a way of saying “they have power and we don’t like it.” That is much different than protesting an injustice or a wrong. So far, the protests have not approached the justice of our politics. They make claims about justice, certainly. But the way in which Occupy Wall Street has taken place puts it in the realm of teenage rebellion rather than something more meaningful. Even when making a legitimate claim about the crimes of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, doing so with a sign that reads “Make Love Not War,” comes off as trite, expected, and without any power. Too much of the focus during Occupy Wall Street has been on signs like this—in being pithy and clever. The result is to make the movement seem adolescent, and allows the powers that be to ignore or mock the protestors. 

All of this doesn’t mean Occupy Wall Street can’t have any meaning, or that it can’t develop any revolutionary potential though. It takes a great deal of bravado to be trite, and even those trite teenage rebellions often lead to much greater things later in life. Occupy Wall Street should be held in the same light—it should be celebrated as a beginning, as a necessary first step before something meaningful can be done. After all, the status quo must be pointed out before it can be changed.  What this means is that the methods of Occupy Wall Street must change. It is these methods which have undermined the content of the movement and made it farcical.

Specifically, it needs more frankness and more resolve. On the first part, that means the protestors need to conduct themselves in a way befitting a serious movement. They need to stop making signs with catchy slogans and ranting rhetoric. They need to stop with kitschy tactics from the 60s. They need to take off the Guy Fawkes masks and realize a true political movement will be something greater. For Occupy Wall Street to have a content it must refocus itself on a political discourse, not on catchphrases as it has been. It is this show at revolution, this lack of seriousness that makes it easy to discard. Further, the movement must become resolute. By suing the NYPD over the recent mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge Occupy Wall Street is turning to the current political system to judge an abuse of power rather than confronting it themselves. If the goal is to alter the political system, one cannot turn to that system for judgement. This is showing implicit deference to very thing the protestors are protesting (after all, the problem is that Wall Street is protected by law to engage in their malevolent deals).

These two failures of frankness and resolve, and indeed all failures of Occupy Wall Street, are demonstrated best in the reaction to various macing incidents. They show that a generally accepted (if not justified) crowd dispersal tactic is being treated as a grave attack on civil liberties. Though the macings are wrong, real change costs more than stinging eyes. Moreover, whenever one of these incidents occur, the protestors have immediately hidden behind camera phones and retreated to blogs to post the videos under titles like “POLICE BRUTALITY ON WALL STREET!” In using these tactics, the protestors are leaving it to the police to decide when it is beneficial for them to change their ways. This still leaves them with the power. And what does the uncaring response from the NYPD show if not their lack of concern? At worst they would have to fire an officer and issue an apology—they are still in complete control. This public shaming tactic only works with grave abuses to humanity, which is why they succeeded in the Arab Spring. But even in Egypt, however, the Army’s power was never threatened and the ruling generals are acting in ways that, to many, seem to border on the undemocratic and as possibly undoing of much of what the revolution accomplished. In any revolutionary movement, the protestors must be willing to fight crime with more than youtube videos. I am not asking for open violence against police officers. I am, however, echoing Albert Camus’ old cry of “neither victim nor executioner” and saying that if a police officer is using illegal and unjustified violence against a protestor, the other protestors should fight back, even if that requires a physical confrontation. In filming and editorializing it, in using the courts to complain about it, the protestors are implicitly refraining from confronting it.

And yet the confrontation of power, in name and in the very methods of a movement, is what makes the true content of any political movement. America needs its May ’68—a movement that was frank and resolute beyond all doubt. Occupy Wall Street contains within it the first step, a nod towards what must be done. But so far it has merely brought the forefront some of the social problems which exist in the status quo. This is not enough. For any change to come, for any revolutionary potential, the movement must be willing to confront the powers which have protected that status quo, to institute the frankness and resolve necessary into the daily make-up of the protests and into the way in which the movement operates. We must make politics earnest.

The Fatal Flaw of a Faux-Revolution

To have any meaningful discussion of political movements in 2011, one must account for the Arab Spring. The mass protests which choked the regimes of Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Bahrain, and Syria have highlighted a new and effective mode of dissent. That a movement of this kind could launch a long overdue war against Muammar Gaddafi is a sign that these mass demonstrations have true political power. Protests in Greece and Spain show that the mass occupation tactics used in the Arab Spring have been noticed throughout the world, that they are being used to put pressure on any government which is not working for its people.

Yesterday, the Arab Spring came home to New York City. The Occupy Wall Street movement chose September 17 as the day when the people would reclaim American wealth as their own with a demonstration of power and mass support. They are putting forward a “call for revolution,” demanding election reform, an equalizing of wealth, limitations of corporate power, and democratic collectivizing of workplaces. It’s a movement that combines the pacifism of the 1960s with the socialist ideals of turn of the century protests. The Occupy Wall Street movement has taken the Arab Spring and used it to harkened back to, ironically, the most violent of American uprisings against robber baron capitalism.

But the movement is doomed. No era of American history was as filled with progress for the mass public as the late 1800s and early 1900s: the forty hour work week was institutionalized, child labor laws came to be, minimum wage laws were passed, work safety standards first protected the most endangered employees. But none of these victories were made easily. These reforms were created by groups forming and organizing in completely new ways. The creation of unions, mass unions bringing together wide arrays of people under a common cause, the reorganization of the bonds which tied people together—those were the precursors to any legal victories. Before factory management could be made to listen about workplace issues, before any social strife could be eased, the people had to invent new ways of relating to each other, new places for discourse and new spaces for political self-determination.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is not doing that. The use of social media in the movement—just as in the Arab Spring—places the movement itself into the hands of Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other massive corporations. Depending upon the very few internet providers for access to the rest of the movement gives those companies complete control over the entirety of what the movement can accomplish. In order for a political uprising to be successful, it must control its own terms. Until it does so, it will always be severely limited. If it goes too far, the lines of communication are cut and all progressive potential is gone.

The fact internet access is controlled by a few corporations is very problematic, but there can be no argument about the fact that it did not hinder the Arab Spring. In fact, it certainly aided the protesters. I do not mean to belittle the Arab Spring or the gains they have made. However, society is organized along the lines through which we communicate to one another. Social bonds are determined by the ways in which we relate. A political movement which does not reorganize the methods of (political) discourse with never succeed in changing the social organization. Within America, this means we must wrestle the means of communication from out of moneyed interests before any movement with true revolutionary potential can begin.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, moreover, faces an even worse fate—not only does it not make an attempt to build new social ties, it reinforces old ones. On the front page of the movement’s website is a picture of kids in Guy Fawkes masks holding signs made from internet memes. This movement cannot even go far enough to be limited by corporations. Before they even reach that point, they begin to label themselves and protest through a set of meaningless jokes. These memes are not the sort of thing you can start a revolution with, they are shibboleths of social groups which exist within the capitalist system, not in spite of it. They do not challenge a system; they show a distinction between two parts of it. Before the movement even begins, the members are implicitly saying that the current social order, the order that houses these memes, is their end goal. “We call for a revolution of the mind as well as the body politic,” the website claims, but no revolution can be had while maintaining the social status quo. At best power can only shift from one side of the system to the other.

And though the Arab Spring is a far more important movement, a movement which needs to be analyzed and considered, the basic problem is still the same. The terms of social communication are not changed and therefore no true and lasting revolutionary potential can exist, only the shifting of power between two groups within the capitalist system.

Imaginary Battle Lines

There are at least two ongoing tragedies in Modern American culture that are accepted: murder and poverty. Moreover, they go hand-in-hand. A murder in a rich suburb will always make itself known while the countless violent crimes that happen daily in the rotting inner-city neighborhoods around the country will only make the third page in a local paper. The disparity in class here cannot be overlooked—class in terms of both social status and income. The only violent crimes which make national news are those involving beautiful little girls or something exceedingly heinous.

Perhaps this is best demonstrated with the ongoing drug war in Mexico. It is a tragedy whose existence is well-known. Every important media outlet runs frequent stories on the Mexican drug war, and many have run cover stories. And yet there is no public discourse about the events. The issue, then, is that Americans do not care enough about it for it to become a pressing matter. The reason for this is the very same reason we ignore the crime in our ghettos.

To see this, it’s important to first note what we do discuss with regard to Mexico: immigration. The political discourse is focused on jobs plans, medical inefficiencies, and tax rates, all with the implicit reference to the illegal immigrant as the cause of these problems. He is the one, as the often mocked story goes, who is stealing our jobs. He is taking all tax revenue for his medical care. Modern American politics often contains the illegal immigrant as the great Other who is threatening our way of life. Such a discourse does not easily allow, much less encourage, a humane discussion about the situation within Mexico.

With the only real imprint of Mexico on American life being the illegal immigrant, Mexico is seldom viewed as more than an irreconcilably different land of poverty and, even in the best of times, crime. What else would force so many to risk their lives to come to a nation trying to remove the little social structure that exists for the poor? Just think of the typical picture of Mexico in the American psyche, of that Mexico which exists in jokes and caricatures. It is a nation that exists in the picture of Tijuana, of a dirty, cheap, and hilariously shameful place to party or buy drugs. This caricature does not entirely represent the stance Americans’ stance on Mexico, but it is reflects how our southern neighbor is adopted into the American zeitgeist. It also must be mentioned, of course, that the drug cartels who are pillaging the country made their fortunes supplying our drug habits.

So what separates Mexico from America? The obvious answer seems to be class. If Mexico exists, as the cartoon picture of it goes, to supply Americans with cheap fun and drugs, it is because Mexico is lower class. Class here again referring to social status—smuggling cocaine over the border is anything but glamorous for the actual smugglers—and income levels—it takes a certain level of economic desperation to risk the narcotics industry. Mexico is thought of solely as our “dollar store,” as our supply of shameful and cheap things that America is too good to supply. Think of the typical ways you hear Mexico mentioned. I, for one, have not heard it discussed often, as it should be, as a land of culture and history, of pride and strength. Rather, it is a shameful joke. No one mentions the glorious history of Mexican nationals, rebels, and those who gained independence. It seems, then, that the American picture of Mexico is one of a lesser place, of a place without worth. It is lower class and of lower value.

But it would be premature to say Americans ignore Mexico simply because of class. It helps to see the numbers here. Since December 2006, 34,600 people have been murdered in Mexico in cartel-related violence. That is a mind-boggling number. But every year in the United States about 14,000 are violently killed. Twice the number of people killed in cartel violence have faced a parallel fate within the (ostensibly) most first world of first world countries. Per-capita that still leaves far more murders in Mexico than here. However, Mexico is in the hands of an extreme situation, an all out war on the streets while we are living with the highest standard of living in the world. For that reason, few discuss our murder problem as a blight or epidemic. It’s something we’ve come to accept of our rotting ghettos and collapsing inner-cities. It is, daresay, acceptable. 

The problem, then, is an apathetic lack of understanding. By painting Mexico in such a poor light within pop-culture, we have made a psychic separation along class lines that allows us to overlook the horrors happening just on the other side of the border. But the problem is even more perverse than that—this is the exact same thing we do to those living in poverty within America. Is the treatment of the (mythical) illegal immigrant not almost identical to the treatment of the (mythical) welfare scammer? In a strange way, Mexicans have been adopted into American culture through our disregard of them. It is, in fact, something that lies at the core of American culture: poverty and murder existing together without any real remorse. If we won’t discuss giving aid to the Mexican government or asylum to the threatened Mexicans, we should at the very least discuss the reflection it has on our very uncivil values.

9/11: Material Thinking and the End of 90s Optimism

On 9/11, as a thirteen year old, I remember very clearly not understanding the gravity of the situation until the first building fell. Our class had been interrupted during a standardized test by the gym teacher who turned on the news. Shortly after, the second plane hit. The explosion put a quick end to most of the middle school chatter. As I watched flames flicker, almost like a candle except for the scale, I tried to make sense of what was going on. I knew it was important, but it was somehow inaccesible. Even with the second plane, a new open wound searing across an old television, it almost seemed a matter of a world outside of mine, outside of the suburban quiet. And then debris and rubble tumbled, smoke billowed and in a short moment, there was only one twin tower. “That was a skyscraper, a huge structure,” I thought that morning, “that was where people worked and toured and now it’s gone.” It was such a meaningful thought to me, so powerful. Events abstracted by TV waves became not only evident but personal, near to my guarded life. As a thirteen year old, I watched thousands of people die and felt uninvolved. But with the loss of a single building, I was inextricably connected.

The impact of those planes was felt for me directly through the buildings themselves, through steal and concrete. It was the collapse of a singled office building—a collection of corner offices that kept mother from daughter and cubicles that kept father from son—that signaled the severity of what was happening. These were places for making money. The World Trade Center wasn’t even a place for craft or passion, but solely for securing wealth. On New York vacations, like mine six months prior, it was a stop that held nothing more than grumbling and the occasional view. And yet the loss of it was felt more strongly in my young mind than watching hundreds of people die in an instant or hundreds more deciding to leap to their death rather than burn. It is empty materialism at its most powerful—symbols of modernity that hold more power than the lives of people I supposedly share a culture with: a well chosen target, perhaps. But as walls crumbled and debris fell, I finally understood the fact that a new era had begun.

Looking back now I realize innocence died. My innocence as well as that of the age itself. Of course I didn’t understand the global class politics or the Capitalistic over-development at the time. That came later. But when that tower fell, and then the next, my young brain recognized the permanent mark that had been made. Even then, even while so unaware of the world, I knew the supreme optimism of the 90s was gone. The simplistic goodness that surrounded life in that time had suffered a fatal blow. For various people that goodness was found in the growing environmentalist movements or in the WTO protests in Seattle; or in the rampant globalization movements that those environmentalists and protestors opposed. But both sides suffered, as we can now see through the lens of 9/11, from a supreme lack of depth. They were white washed movements, paint stretching to cover the cracks that were exploited in 2001. And once the planes hit, the Capitalist values that guided the American decade were defunct. The wholesomeness that was so ubiquitous had evaporated, the unquestionable progress of that era now seems so childish. A mere decade ago seems so out of touch with the world that exists today. Being a teenager at the time of the attacks, I am perfectly situated in history to experience childhood during the effervescent 90s and adulthood in the aftermath, in Iraq and Afghanistan. In losing the World Trade Center I lost both the naive jubilation of youth and the cultural milieu that formed it.

The social understanding of 9/11 is therefore one which governs the totality of my interaction with the political world, with political subjectivity itself. The evil of 9/11 was profound, and in it’s awful power it has made known the rumblings that went unnoticed during the end of the millenium. It was a redefinition through terror and murder. Our response must therefore be equally profound: without justifying the act we must recognize our complicity in the era which birthed, even necessitated 9/11. This is not to say Al Qaeda are at all just or right. Quite the opposite: it is to say that 90s Capitalism and its attackers are part of a political sequence in which a building holds more meaning than a person. The political dialogue since the towers fell has been a grand effort to fit the attack into previous subjective frameworks; to preserve the optimism of infinite growth economics and claim 9/11 as an event on which to launch even higher along the same path. But that day should serve as reminder of the totality of the age in which income disparity grew, in which Sudanese and Rwandans were murdered in plain view of the world, in which the ethical bankruptcy of Capitalism matured into the torturous vapidity of ever-lengthening work days in middle management. We must instead find a radical break from the last millenium and build anew with a new politics, a new subjectivity in which community—that ideal so often discussed but never achieved in the days after September 11—stands at the center. We failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no question of that. But with the death of Bin Laden, perhaps we can finally let go of the bloodlust (as George Bush claimed there was, without any sense of disappointment in it) and focus instead on repairing the cracks which were masked in neon during the Clinton years, which were decried as the evil of Islam in the Bush years, and rebuild a new and coherent politics.

Fighting Words

In the aftermath of September 11 George W. Bush hastily explained that those held in Guantanamo Bay, those who would be water-boarded and sleep deprived, were not protected by the Geneva Conventions because they were not soldiers or reservists, but unlawful combatants. They were civilians who lacked the legal right to use their AK-47s and their explosive devices and, as such, were combatants of an entirely new era.

The 1990s contained a wide range of illegal acts of war—genocide in Darfur and Rwanda, mass slaughter in Bosnia, Oklahoma City, the first attack on the World Trade Center—but none of these brought the understanding of “unlawful combatant” into the public sphere like the American response to 9/11. With the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, America promised, in the words of President Bush in his address to the nation that night, “to find those responsible and to bring them to justice.” In doing so, he was labeling those behind the attacks unlawful combatants and denying them any of the due process which modern civilization has decided is owed to foes in combat. But, more importantly, he promised to “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” With that, the line which divided civilian from solider began to melt away. There began, immediately after the attack, a grouping together of those who perpetrated an act and those who merely supported it, all under the heading of unlawful combatants. Lost was the subtlety of guilt and responsibility behind the broad stroke of “us vs. them.”

But those broad strokes have continued covering ground in the past decade. Last year, as Wikileaks began the release of thousands of documents, Barack Obama and his administration declared that organization to be criminal. Ignoring common understandings of law—understandings which have upheld news organizations for decades—President Obama attempted to charge the organization with the crime of disseminating information, even though they had no part in the gathering of that information. Those who did gather (and, it is true, ‘steal’ is a fitting word here) the information, such as Bradley Manning, faced increasingly harsh punishments. Mannings was only recently released from an intense solitary confinement which was decried by dozens of Human Rights organizations as an inhumane torture.

In other words, it has only taken a short decade to take us from labeling terrorists as unlawful combatants to including civilians, journalists, and American citizens. All are treated in the same (illegal) ways once they have been judged to not be sufficiently behind the American cause. They are unlawful combatants and they will be punished.

This is where we find ourselves today in this post-modern, post-industrial digital age. A false binary choice has become ubiquitous in politics. That framework is a thing which must be rejected. In doing so, we shall be combatants ourselves, combatants of the digital age who toil in information and reason to realign the political sphere on a worthy axis. Seventy years ago, Pascal Pia and Albert Camus, among others, worked to keep Combat, one of the resistance newspapers of occupied France, independent of poorly reasoned positions and undue influence from political forces. This is our ideal.