@Loukas@mastodon.nu
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

Loukas

@Loukas@mastodon.nu

Journalist, teacher, Londoner, Stockholmer.

Mostly thinking and writing about autism, ADHD and related disability issues.

Profile image description: me on a balcony
Background image description: dry grass reviving after winter

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

lzg, to random
@lzg@mastodon.social avatar

i can’t sleep because i finally understood that a woman i met a few months ago heard I was autistic, and that’s WHY she was treating me a little like a 10 yr old who needed a lot of care and attention and explanation (honestly i loved it)

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

@lzg you had me in the first half ngl

Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

A clever person once said to me: Sweden isn't less racist than Denmark. It's just ten years behind.

Now Sweden's government plans to force public service to adopt a nationalistic line, as Denmark did in 2018.
https://mastodon.nu/@anderslindberg/112431787560076692

laxsill, to random Swedish
@laxsill@social.spejset.org avatar

jag när jag bara skrev krönikor och ledare: fan vad svårt det är hålla sig till så liten teckenbegränsning, vad tråkigt att jag inte får skriva essäer, då kommer jag inte att ha det här problemet
jag när jag skriver essäer: shit

mvh har en beställning på 8 000 tecken, är uppe i 16 och har inte kommit till avslutningen

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

@laxsill det blir en bra bok!

Loukas, (edited ) to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

1/6
The 'green movement' and 'peace movement' don't exist, or at least not in the way most people think these movements exist.

The term movement is really inspiring. It has the air of a huge wave of people moving towards reaching some goal. Unfortunately I think people expect the wrong things from most movements called 'peace' or 'green' (or climate) and that leads to a lot of confusion and wasted energy.

People generally conflate protest movements like this with social movements.

Loukas, (edited )
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

2/6
For me the key difference is in how these two kinds of movement are constituted and how they reproduce themselves.

In other words, social movements involve people changing themselves and changing their conditions of life, and gaining strength and energy from that. Labour movement, women's movement, gay, trans disabled and even national liberation movements can be like this.

The more successful a social movement is, the more energy it gains.

Protest movements are very different.

Loukas, (edited )
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

3/6
A protest movement is usually people working on behalf of something exterior to themselves. The energy of the movement comes from people devoting energy and resources they have got from elsewhere, in their spare time.

The change a protest movement achieves doesn't necessarily affect the movement itself at all. A protest movement can be very successful and gain zero energy for itself at all.

Loukas, (edited )
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

4/6
So to cut to the chase - my point here is that people expect social movement outcomes from protest movements.

Why don't green and peace protests lead to wider changes, and why is it always so hard for them to mobilise? Why, because the work of protest is external to the people involved. And because the energy funneled into protest is coming from elsewhere, meaning it is primarily coming from people who already have money or other resources.

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

5/6
Part of the confusion is because protest movements have often been rooted in social movements. The labour movement was the base of the peace movement in the UK, for example.

Also there can be overlap. People trying to protect their own homes from an industrial project can be a green protest as well as being a social movement.

But I'm general what we call the green and peace 'movements' of Europe and north America are moral protests based on acting on behalf of something external to us.

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

6/6
My conclusion is we need to focus on social movements more, so that they can be a stable base for protest movements. Expecting things to work the other way is just trying to defy the laws of physics.

Energy for action has to come from somewhere and if your movement isn't devoted to liberating energy then you'll always be reliant on the spare time of the middle class.

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

@LALegault no u

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

@magicalthinking my point is they have structural limitations.

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

@LALegault I don't think you've understood my point. I'm not saying protest is infiltrated by outsiders I'm saying protest is fundamentally limited by its focus on that which is external.

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

@LALegault 👍

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

@magicalthinking the limitations exist because of the limited energy.

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

And postscript: this overall point in this thread is also why I spent six articles putting together an argument for how disabled liberation, in my case autistic, should and could be constituted as a social movement based in class activity: https://mastodon.nu/@Loukas/112326471967837638

being, to random
@being@social.ornella.xyz avatar

After Ghana and Sierra Leone, Benin is adopting a law that can grant Beninese citizenship to all afrodescendants!! ✊🏽 https://ortb.bj/infos-une/le-benin-va-adopter-une-loi-pour-accorder-sa-nationalite-aux-afro-descendants/

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

@being wow! That's pretty cool.

bossito, to Portugal Portuguese
@bossito@mastodon.social avatar

Still a word about the total lame references to peace that seemed charged with unsaid words, I felt especially embarrassed by 's Mimicat and Iolanda. If the issue was so important to you and you have such a one sided view, then go all the way and boycott it.

But just like the "online boycotters" they really wanted to be a part of , they just wanted to exclude others from it but unwilling to the minimum personal sacrifice. Shallow morals, deep ignorance, lame, embarrassing.

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

@bossito yes that's basically it.

alexanderhay, to Eurovision
@alexanderhay@mastodon.social avatar

One question - if is found not to have broken any law, does this not mean he's been cheated?

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

@lorrden @alexanderhay I think we can assume EBU/SVT would much rather have hushed it up or smoothed it over if they could possibly have done so.

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

@alexanderhay @lorrden We don't need to rely on their good faith for this to be true. Only on their self-interest.

ChrisMayLA6, to money
@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

Forced cashless society.

Our nearby small market town used to have 3 banks; they're all closed (taking their cash machines with them), and this week one of the two remaining cash machines was removed from the supermarket where it was located.

So, we're down to a single cash machine in an area with a radius (I'm guessing) of around 20 miles.

The cashless society doesn't represent consumer choice, its pace is being forced by financial institutions keen to charge fees on transactions!

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

@ChrisMayLA6 and also the banal pursuit of cost-cutting. Making digital currency available is far cheaper than physical currency.

Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

The new eco-modernism. Zero-car. Zero survivors. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68945445

jordinn, to random
@jordinn@zirk.us avatar

Starting my summer reading with Robert Bellah has so utterly broken my brain that every time I think about it I look like the conspiracy board meme but I'm just staring into space

Loukas,
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

@jordinn I don't know anything about Bellah, but I'm suspicious of any arguments about souls of countries or general spirits of the population. It seems essentialist and a way of avoiding analysis rather than furthering it.

If it's 'individualism' that's changed USA then why was so much capital exerted to dismantle the New Deal, Great Society and the labour unions? The historical record just shows me there was a class war which the plutocrats won.

doktorzjivago, to random Swedish
@doktorzjivago@mastodonsweden.se avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    Loukas,
    @Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

    @doktorzjivago ska den visas via ditt BlueSky konto? Jag följer dig där men ser inte inlägget.

    Loukas,
    @Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

    @doktorzjivago 🌀😵‍💫

    baldur, to random
    @baldur@toot.cafe avatar

    There is an upside to how dysfunctional Google has become in it’s post-layoff all-in-on-Ai era. For every spam website that rises to the top of their badly maintained search engine a dozen pirated movies and TV series that are otherwise unavailable in Iceland get hosted on Youtube

    Loukas,
    @Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

    @baldur this new era of the party in the ruins.

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