What does the author mean by democracy? He has an obvious antipathy for the idea but isn’t direct democracy a central tenet of most anarchist organizations? Is he holding to some fringe idea where democracy is not needed or is he using democracy in a different way than I am?
I also am completely baffled by the statement that the climate movement is the world’s greatest threat to life on earth? This idea raises so many questions I don’t know where to begin to understand it but I guess I’ll first ask: is this some kind of accelerationist idea?
There is a rich body of anarchist critique of democracy, or the dictatorship of the 51% as some like to call it. Direct democracy, while better, is not without problems either, but personally I think it’s sometimes necessary to do when no consensus can be reached.
I am not sure where you got that part about the climate movement. He seems to be specifically referring to the liberal idea that renewable energy investments or so allow to preserve the status quo, but I am not totally clear on what he means exactly by that part either.
It’s towards the bottom of his lessons learned from recent events at the top of the article. Seems to come out of left field and requires further explanation in my opinion.
Criticisms of democracy are definitely valid but I don’t really see any other alternative for making decisions in large groups. As you point out, consensus can’t always be reached and it is often very slow—which is fine for some situations but not for others.
There is definitely a need for social structures to prevent the majority from terrorizing the minority but there are lots of ideas I’ve on how to address this, so I’m not ready to write off the idea entirely as the author does. At the very least I would like to know what would be used instead.
Upon reading, I came across some statements that I’d like to improve or alter, if it was me writing the text.
Each successive world system has a leading state
Here, I would say: there can be many. Multiple centers of power can exist and persist for long periods of time.
After World War II, the US took over from the UK and became the architect of the next world system, centered around a putatively universal order of states governed by the UN
The author has mis-stated the nature of the UN - it has no capability to govern. It’s a sofa corner where states chat through their delegates - and proceed to do what they really want. Only a small state takes a resolution of the UN seriously.
The US and its closest allies are no longer the main motors of economic growth, and the share of new investments they capture is diminishing.
Almost correct. China is on equal footing in terms of economic output, and still growing faster -> thus, likely to surpass the US. However, the “US and its closest allies” is a term that makes further comparison impossible - it could be right or wrong depending on how one charts alliances.
Politically, the NATO bloc had been expanding its web of alliances into territory that had long belonged in the Russian sphere of influence. Russia is pushing back in Ukraine
This sentence irritates me - a lot. Countries aren’t forced to join NATO, they choose to join NATO - Finland joined last year, Sweden will join this year, most of Eastern Europe joined when they could. Ukraine never joined and never seriously had a chance before the Russian invasion.
Russia’s “push-back” in Ukraine however, is not something Ukraine chose - it’s a full-scale war. NATO didn’t get Poland or Hungary or Estonia to join by waging a full-scale war against them. They just left the door open - the countries applied, nobody vetoed, they became members. A direct comparison between NATO expansion and Russia’s actions in Ukraine on such simple terms is highly inadequate, unless one’s trying to fool the reader.
divisions within NATO and the EU have recently immobilized those alliances
That would be false. The EU recently passed its 50 billion euros of aid to Ukraine. Member states continue to send armaments. Finland shipped its 22-nd armaments package to Ukraine, the Netherlands and Denmark have probably already handed over F-16 fighters (there have been photos of an F-16 in Ukrainian colors). France continues to supply artillery to Ukraine, Germany continues to supply air defense. Greece is negotiating the handing over of Soviet-made weapons. Bulgaria is supplying considerable amounts of ammunition and also giving away its Soviet-made war machines.
The sore thumb at the moment is the US - for several months in a row, the parliament of the US has been deadlocked, and 90% of the blame seems to be on Trumpist Republicans. About 60 billion of aid stands behind the deadlock - about as much as the EU gave, but this package of aid has higher percentage of critcally important weapons. Thus the fuss.
Elsewhere, Russia has suffered humiliating defeats, as in its inability to support Armenia against the expansionism of Azerbaijan
I would agree with this assessment, but I’d note that both Armenian and Azerbaijan are allies of Russia. It was supposed to mediate between them - in more direct terms, to play them against each other so they can be ruled over - but it failed due to being drawn out in Ukraine.
Turkey is acting on a strategic level like a non-aligned country, even as it continues to wield the ability to block consensus within NATO
Yes, it behaves like on. However, the blocking of Sweden’s NATO accession was overcome by US foreign policy - Turkey needed weapons systems which the Congress would not permit giving, unless Turkey would permit Sweden to join NATO. So recently, Turkey ratified the deal (Hungary still blocks at the moment).
In the US, the political elite already consider China an adversary worthy of a new Cold War, whereas in Europe, China is considered a partially reliable strategic partner. If something does not change quickly, the US will be relegated to the same status.
This assessment seems accurate, but I’d like to quote the EU on this. Their position is more complex:
“The EU sees China as a partner for cooperation, an economic competitor and a systemic rival” – EU-China Relations factsheet
the US would need to make grand gestures in order to expiate their rotten brand: /…/ normalizing relations with China and Iran
Iran is actively supplying armaments to Russia for its war in Ukraine. China meanwhile has not excluded conducting a violent invasion of Taiwan, and drills their military for this course of action on regular basis. How does one normalize relations with an ally of an agressor, or a party preparing for agression?
…I actually liked the rest of the article.
P.S. As for legitimacy: yes, there are horrors in the behaviour of past US administrations. States get away with violating international law if they are powerful enough. :( The US has done to South America what the USSR did to Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan and various places it occupied. The USSR has crumbled (apparently, one of its successor states has the same habits). The US - has it reformed itself? I can only say “maybe”, “hopefully” but there’s no certainty. The system doesn’t look particularly different, people might have higher awareness and standards but the sprockets and wheels are the same.
Geopolitics tends to be a field of analysis for experts and journalists interested in the competing fortunes of nation-states, their alliances and institutions. They bring to it a level of strategizing similar to sports commentators at Sunday football: they understand the repertoire of plays, they can suss out strengths and weaknesses, but they will never deconstruct the history of the game
We must not read the same source of geopolitics. The common question is “how does this change the game?” “Have the rules changed?”. Of particular anarchist interest is the fact that armies tend to veer towards more local autonomy rather than top down hierarchies (still a far cry from anarchism, but one can see there a vindication of our ideas). The role of UN is constantly discussed and illustrates the limits of (kinda) consensus-based non-coercive approaches. EU-Hungary politics or NATO-Turkey give a lesson on the cost of decisions by unanimity and ways to circumvent vetos. I think that is disingenuous to not interest one-self in geopolitics on the premise that country-states are undesirable. Don’t get too emotionally involved, sure, but it remains interesting.
I did not go to the end of the article, disagreeing at half the sentences. Just wanted to state a strong disagreement on that statement:
Fascists are not close to taking over
In the US? They have been extremely close to take over. There is one single person that stood between them and the officials they wanted to kill: Lt. Michael Byrd. And the luck that was with us about the one well-armed insurrectionist group that got lost in the building. Nothing has been effectively done to prevent a rematch, it was extremely close.
It’s hyperbole to think had the January 6th riots succeeded in doing what ever it was they attempted to do, the US would be ruled by outright fascists right now. Sure, the situation would be likely worse than it is now, but very likely not substantially different.
I think the article is correct at least in so far as to make a distinction between right wing populists like Trump and outright fascists.
It is not hyperbole. They were out there to kill some high ranking officials they did not like. It would have been a real, non-hyperbole, coup. It would have been a situation of actual, non-hyperbole, civil war, with military taking sides. It would have been a suspension of US democracy. They were there to install a new regime. Had Pelosi, Pence and AOC (named targets of the assailants) been killed on that day, do you really think it would be business as usual?
I want to believe that 99% of the army would know who to support and that this would have ended in 24h but even in that case, the world would be substantially different.
People who bear a middle class culture need to unlearn it, as it manifests in a politics of comfort: building informal social power, flattening contradictions, and avoiding conflict. Currently, its crusade is to destroy practices of transformative justice—and the difficult experiences those practices come from—in favor of the kind of attitudes (simultaneously fragile and vicious) that flourish on social media.
what are some examples of what the author might mean here?
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