TO ABOLISH CONDITIONS OF WAR
by Andrej Pavlisic
Well
interiorized processes of social devastation lately embraced new practices, new
justifications and new legal bases. Not a long time ago there was crisis,
austerity measures and in their service destruction of institutionalized forms
of solidarity. While in this regard governmental policies stay the same,
despite occasionally promoted spectacle of economic growth, the PR section of
the ruling elite succeeded first to institute some new faces to the positions
of power and then to impose a new political narrative, leaving behind even the
mere images of politics on which its legitimacy was built in last decades. Thus
economic crisis gave way to migration crisis and soon, without us being able to
exactly pinpoint the right moment, it will be replaced by war. Since the latter
is an inherent part and fundamental tool of the dominance of capital, the
return of it in our vicinity and in our lives should not really amaze us.
There is more to changes on the level of
dominant political images than just a new cloth of the same politics. We really
do live in the middle of a changing political lanscape but the novelties and
the reasons behind them are not to be found on the surface of images of hate
that elites around Europe launch in such a concerted way. Rather they lie in
the need of those same elites for an atmosphere of agression and fear in the
society. It is not true that the people, which in boats, by foot or in other
ways are seeking their future in Europe, represent a security threat and that
to confront it it is necessary to upgrade further both the system of
surveillance of the whole populations and the system that redirects their
attention. And yet, the check-points are spreading, borders between states
militarizing, walls are being built and merchants with razor-wire fence and
other technical obstacles are enjoying the festival they will fondly remember
for a long time. All this while all kinds of official and unoffical players
echo each other by promoting a sinister command: the existing rights need to
be abolished.
Contrary to the official discourse of the day we
did not go to sleep during the general social crisis and then woke up in a
completely new world, in the time of migrant crisis. The crisis of yesterday is
still here, robbing us of conditions of dignified life and forcing many to seek
opportunities far away from the cities and villages in which we have grown up
or lived before. In order to understand the political meaning of the spectacle
of migrant crisis we need to understand this devastation first. People, one
million of them, two or even ten million of people that like everybody else
explore possibilities of life do not constitute a crisis. Some are fleeing war,
other (might be even the same) are constructing boring mind games, others still
dream of continuation of study of botanics or struggle with depression. They
have many talents, worries and attributes, but nothing on them and in their
acts makes them the agents of crisis. For sure in a world that
due to a wild dance of financial specialists still suffers from the enormous
social costs of the forced austerity we should be able tell the difference
between a real crisis and an image of one. What projects these particular
people into the images of crisis is an enormous investment of the EU-rulers to
use them as an essential element of their current communication strategy on
dealing with the consequences of their own politics of devastation: the rulers
thus finally acknowledge this devastation but they do this through a
spectacular salto-mortale that first transfers it into the future, then
attributes the responsibility for it to the “migrants” only in order that then
those same rulers can present themselves as the only line of defence against
the realization of this terrifying image of the future. Indeed, even in a world that has really been turned upside down the false can be a
moment of the true.
The discrepancy between the stated goals of the
governments of Europe (and the world for that matter) and the real effects of
their policies is clearly felt by a big majority of people. Not only it is
expressed through the regular insurgent explosions of the era, this discrepancy
is corroborated also through many successful electoral projects of last years,
whose core propaganda strategy was exactly to verify it and then to channel the
inevitably unleashed social forces towards the same old project of
strengthening the monopoly of the political parties and state institutions over
politics. Same old projects or not (a possibility, ever so low, for
unforeseable cross-overs exists after all), they are driven to electoral success
by very deep and very real tensions in the society that precede and outlive any
campaign of this nature. No wonder then that the
think-tanks of the ruling elite came up with the conclusion that the
continuation of its dominance demands both a new ideological makeover and a new
set of crimes or else it might soon be challenged.
Enter new-old ally of all the insecure tyrans of
history: security. In the society that is torn apart by class struggle, where
poverty is on the increase, where there is not a single political player on
even the most obscure position of power that would maintain a shred of
credibility, the political space needs to be narrowed or else as a rulling
class you might find yourslef in serious troubles. How to do that in a society
that still remembers the longings of some other times? Difficult challenges of
history filled the toolbox of authoritarian regimes with many well tested
tools: vulgar propaganda, state of emergency, criminalization of even the most
usual practices such as travelling or solidarity, mass incarcerations,
establishment of militarized zones there where once were fields and rivers,
establishment of extremely elaborated regime of hierarchization of access to
rights and as part of it establishment of populations that are stripped of
human and other rights on the basis of personal circumstances, impoverishment
of language and trolling. And since the contemporary regime of terror
that EU has now openly embraced its not at all poetic justification derives
from the future the need of infinite escalation is built in it. Soon enough
its unavoidable and destructive effects will in retrospective establish the
ongoing terror as a preventive measure and an only realistic option that
ever existed. In the middle of devastation of neoliberalism the owners of the
world will not hesitate to discard with the last remnants of the humanist
luggage that in times past, according to the mantras of the same owners, stood
in the way of the development of productive forces of the society.
“Migration crisis” is the name of the official
propaganda for the phase of passage from regime of austerity to regime of war.
The only way to block this passage is to abolish the position from with the
powers-that-be can impose their narrative and their procedures as the only
valid ones, which simultaneously dismantles the regime of austerity as
well. In other words: the only path towards dissolution of the processes that
widen the domain of authoritarian management leads through the abolishment of
monopoly of capital over management of conditions of social life.
These words might appear exagerrated but this is
only so because they take as its starting point an idea, erased from the
language of the spectacle, that despite all we as political collectivities are
capable to intervene and to change the flow of history. We are not powerless
figures on the chessboard of the mighty as the official propaganda is conducing
us to believe in.
In the middle of a whirlwind it is necessary to
find peace. And in times of war the only peace acceptable is the one that
emerges inside the movement that abolishes conditions of war.
The text was originally published on 24 February 2016
in the 16th issue of an irregular bulletin of Acerbic distribution
ph. by Mina Bulic
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