Another
interesting part of the new film of Adam Curtis,
'HyperNormalisation', is the one that describes the sudden retirement
of the Left to fight the financial mafia that actually took over New York in the mid 70s. It marks the beginning
of a new perception for the Left that has lost contact with the
reality of power and the collective action.
As Curtis
describes:
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The
extraordinary thing was that no one opposed the bankers. The
radicals and the Left wingers who, ten years before, had dreamed
of changing America through revolution, did nothing. They had
retreated and were living in abandoned buildings in Manhattan.
The
singer Patti Smith later described the mood of disillusion that
had come over them. "I could not identify with the
political movements any longer," she said. "All
the manic activity in the streets. In trying to join them, I felt
overwhelmed by yet another form of bureaucracy." What she
was describing was a rise of a new, powerful individualism that
could not fit with the idea of collective political action.
Instead, Patti Smith and many others became a new kind of
individual radical, who watched the decaying city with a cool
detachment. They didn't try to change it. They just experienced
it.
Instead,
radicals across America turned to art and music as a means of
expressing their criticism of society. They believed that instead
of trying to change the world outside, the new radicalism should
try and change what was inside people's heads. And the way to do
this, was through self-expression, not collective action.
But some of the Left saw that
something else was really going on. That by detaching themselves
and retreating into an ironic coolness, a whole generation were
beginning to lose touch with the reality of power. One of them
wrote at that time, "It was the mood of the era and the
revolution was deferred indefinitely. And while we were dozing,
the money crept in."
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The absence
of struggle by the radical movements at that time, was a key
parameter for the final domination of the destructive financial
capitalism for about four decades, until today.
As the Left
has lost its power and autonomy through all these decades, the new
generation of the Leftist politicians is characterized by a lack of
an autonomous thought, free from capitalist terms, that could inspire
societies a different model away from the destructive financialized
capitalism.
We are
seeing the heritage of this retirement of the Left in today's Leftist leaders, both in Europe and the US. Most of
them believe that they could change this brutal system from inside.
Without, however, a totally different proposition, a totally
autonomous idea on how to run the societies, this monstrous system
will sooner or later "swallow" them. They will be lost,
eventually, inside its monstrous structure, becoming completely
unable to deliver a new political proposition to the societies.
In defense of the left, we faced an all out attack by the state starting with th 68 assassinations and followed by massive infiltration of our ranks by federal and local agents as well as the sabotage of various publications. Also we were split by feminism and black nationalism which fragmented the left deeply. I think Patti's solution was the right one because society was already deeply entrenched in the culture of narcissism as even the idea of community became impossible.
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DeleteThank you. Agree. Allow me to add the endless CIA-inspired provocative operations, in Europe (and Latin America), especially during 60s and 70s, in order to demonize Leftist radicalism. Only an example: CIA's Operation Gladio in Italy.
I concur Christopher. The FBI famously had files, pictures, tapes, pictures of files and files of the pictures of files on every activist, their friends, friends of friends, family members and friends of family members from late in the 1950's going forward. All of the chatter about the NSA was just a rehashing of the FBI efforts who did not need technology so much as footmen walking the street and watching who came out the front door-or the back door or who answered the phone.
DeleteFast forward and take up the Obama administration where movements (like BLM) go to die. OWS was literally killed by the Obama administration empowering local police to bash as many heads as possible. Anyone planning to overthrow the government had better have some very, very skilled hackers.
Gladio was not only in Italy. It was all over western Europe, IndoChina (what do you think the Vietnam War was about?), South America (the Dirty Wars) and then back to Afghanistan, Turkey, etc. and those areas. Read: Operation Gladio: the Unholy Alliance of the Vatican, the CIA and the Mafia by Paul L. Williams. Some people don't think Gladio ended, or is now Gladio B.
ReplyDeleteAgree. I mentioned Gladio in Italy only as an example.
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