Obsolete Capitalism: From primitive fragmentation to impulsive and uncontrolled excitement (Pt. VIII - The Birth of Digital Populism)

From primitive fragmentation to impulsive and uncontrolled excitement 

The desires of the masses can unquestionably be progressive – better living conditions, a natural tendency to an infinite progress of society, a ratio enlightened by social choices and practices – and, at the same time, regressive – social involution, atrocious divisions between rigid segments, growing hatred and resentment ready to implode with great violence. The delay in considering Gabriel Tarde’s microsociological analysis has been partially recovered by the Deleuzian philosophical thought in Difference and Repetition (1969) first, and in A Thousand Plateaus (1980) later. However, an in-depth analysis of Tarde’s thought appeared only at the beginning of the twenty-first century amongst the most longsighted Deleuzian circles in Paris. Alliez and Lazzarato, among others in France, embraced the idea of curating the publication of the complete writings by Tarde, offering academic (and not only) seminars to study his theorizations, while critically connecting them to the current developments of the global economic-financial system. The primitive geometry of both the homogeneous Greek political sphere and Marxist culture - this based on the rigid fragmentation of a class society - is objectively completed and complicated by Tarde’s molecular analysis. The shift from macro to micro-analysis, although one does not exclude the other, certainly indicates a profound change in the cultural paradigm; this variation is exploited by current digital systemic forces with great imagination and determination. In short, as Deleuze and Guattari put it, ‘everything is political, but every politics is simultaneously macropolitics and micropolitics.’ Affective politics and the manipulation of impulsive and uncontrolled excitement have been suavely exploited; firstly by the total right-wing of Reagan’s universal California, and secondly by a traditional populism that is wary of anti-establishment recriminations virally active within the social corpus. The current populist rhetoric is, in fact, the consequence of the exclusion of large popular strata from the economic and inner-mental standards which were proposed by the post-1989 neo-liberal elites. (...)
Read more@ The Birth of Digital Populism/e.book

Obsolete Capitalism: The explosion of digital populism (Pt. I - The Birth of digital populism)

The explosion of digital populism

On 24^th and 25^th of FebSruary 2013, the general elections for the XVII legislation of the Italian Republic were held in Italy. The election result was defined by most political observers as an earthquake of unprecedented dimensions. For the first time in the history of the West a newly born political association, the Five Star Movement (5SM), which define itself to be an anti-party, ran in a parliamentary electoral competition and won it by a narrow margin; it became the first party in the Italian Chamber of Deputies5 with 25.5% of the votes. Despite the fact that, considering the total amount of votes (including those from Italians living abroad) the Democratic Party (DP) - the leading center-left party- received only 150,000 more votes than the Five Star Movement, the Italian electoral system conferred a substantial ‘majority premium’ on the DP. Regardless of this action, the infant movement led by Beppe Grillo affirmed itself firmly enough to deeply subvert the Italian political panorama. It is suitable, if not even obvious, to define Grillo’s anti-party as a new form of digital Populism. To understand this one only need look at the sharp innovation of the devices used by politics, which has been introduced by the Five Star Movement, such as the extended and innovative use of communication channels provided by the Internet. This has been combined with both the brutal simplification of the political message, in order to attract political consensus, and the dissipation of all acquired forms of institutional-systemic ratio. It is clear that following the unsettling result of Italy’s general election in February 2013, a new time has violently knocked on the door of Italian society, and it is now interrogating real problems with unusual and fast-paced questions.  (...) 
Read more @ e.book The Birth of Digital Populism

Gary Wolf @ Wired, January 2004: The Howard Dean Reading List How a bunch of books about social networking rebooted the Democratic system.

Gary Wolf (Wired, January 2004)

The Howard Dean Reading List
How a bunch of books about social networking rebooted the Democratic system.

1. Out Of Control by Kevin Kelly

KEY POINT: The most powerful information systems of the future will be grown, not made.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Turn every supporter into a potential organizer. "Grow" the grass roots.

2. The Cluetrain Manifesto by Chris Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger

KEY POINT: The Net undermines respect for authority.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Participate: Blog daily, link to indie blogs, and allow open comments; reflect the tone of the community.

3. Emergence by Steven Johnson

KEY POINT: Our media and political movements will be shaped by bottom-up forces, not top-down ones.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Let the ants do the work, not the queen; allow local groups to function independently.

4. Small Pieces Loosely Joined by David Weinberger

KEY POINT: The loose structure of the Web encourages social experimentation and is a balm for alienation.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Encourage face-to-face contact.

5. Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold

KEY POINT: Mobile mobs linked by electronic devices could change history by intervening in politics spontaneously.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Hold events, such as Dean Visibility Days, where the mass of supporters suddenly come together.

6. Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabàsi

KEY POINT: Essential aspects of networks - e.g., the advantage gained by pioneers - are the product of general laws.
DEAN TAKEAWAY: Be first to adopt and invent community tools. The risk is worth the chance of grabbing an early lead.

Read more @ Wired (How the Internet Invented Howard Dean)

Simon Glezos: The Politics of Speed Capitalism, the State and War in an Accelerating World - Routledge, 13Feb2013 (Paperback)

Everyone agrees that the world is accelerating. With advances in communication, transportation and information processing technologies, it is clear that the pace of events in global politics is speeding up at an alarming rate. The implications of this new speed however, continue to be a significant source of debate. Will acceleration lead to a more interconnected, productive, peaceful, and humane world; or a nightmarish descent into ecological devastation, economic exploitation and increasingly violent warfare? 

The Politics of Speed attempts to map the contours of the new global space of speed, and investigates key issue areas – including democratic governance, warfare, capitalism, globalization and transnational activism – to uncover the ways in which acceleration is shaping the world. The book uses contemporary political theory (especially the works of Deleuze and Guattari) to develop an ontological account of speed, showing how its effects are frequently far more complex and surprising than we might expect. The result is an attempt to craft a way of engaging with global acceleration that might help avoid the dangers of speed, while embracing the possibilities it provides us with to produce a safer, more egalitarian, democratic and pluralistic world.

Introduction. Fear of a Fast Planet 1. The Ticking Bomb: Speed, Democracy and the Politics of the Future 2. The Quick and the Dead: State and Nomad War Machines 3. The Acceleration of Inertia: Towards a Political Economy of Speed 4. Regimes of (Im)mobility: Towards an International Political Economy of Speed 5. ‘A world in which many worlds fit: On Rhizomatic Cosmopolitanism Conclusion. 'We Have Never Been Territorial': Fear and Hope in an Accelerating World

Simon Glezos is a limited term senior instructor at the University of Victoria, Canada.

Read more @ Routledge