Paul Mason: Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere

Twenty reasons why it's kicking off everywhere
by Paul Mason
BBC

We've had revolution in Tunisia, Egypt's Mubarak is teetering; in Yemen, Jordan and Syria suddenly protests have appeared. In Ireland young techno-savvy professionals are agitating for a "Second Republic"; in France the youth from banlieues battled police on the streets to defend the retirement rights of 60-year olds; in Greece striking and rioting have become a national pastime. And in Britain we've had riots and student occupations that changed the political mood.

What's going on? What's the wider social dynamic?

My editors yesterday asked me put some bullet points down for a discussion on the programme that then didn't happen but I am throwing them into the mix here, on the basis of various conversations with academics who study this and also the participants themselves.

At the heart of it all are young people, obviously; students; westernised; secularised. They use social media - as the mainstream media has now woken up to - but this obsession with reporting "they use twitter" is missing the point of what they use it for.

In so far as there are common threads to be found in these different situation, here's 20 things I have spotted:

1. At the heart if it all is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future

2. ...with access to social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and eg Yfrog so they can express themselves in a variety of situations ranging from parliamentary democracy to tyrrany.

3. Therefore truth moves faster than lies, and propaganda becomes flammable.

4. They are not prone to traditional and endemic ideologies: Labourism, Islamism, Fianna Fail Catholicism etc... in fact hermetic ideologies of all forms are rejected.

5. Women very numerous as the backbone of movements. After twenty years of modernised labour markets and higher-education access the "archetypal" protest leader, organizer, facilitator, spokesperson now is an educated young woman.

6. Horizontalism has become endemic because technology makes it easy: it kills vertical hierarchies spontaneously, whereas before - and the quintessential experience of the 20th century - was the killing of dissent within movements, the channeling of movements and their bureaucratisaton.

7. Memes: "A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures." (Wikipedia) - so what happens is that ideas arise, are very quickly "market tested" and either take off, bubble under, insinuate themselves or if they are deemed no good they disappear. Ideas self-replicate like genes. Prior to the internet this theory (see Richard Dawkins, 1976) seemed an over-statement but you can now clearly trace the evolution of memes.

8. They all seem to know each other: not only is the network more powerful than the hierarchy - but the ad-hoc network has become easier to form. So if you "follow" somebody from the UCL occupation on Twitter, as I have done, you can easily run into a radical blogger from Egypt, or a lecturer in peaceful resistance in California who mainly does work on Burma so then there are the Burmese tweets to follow. During the early 20th century people would ride hanging on the undersides of train carriages across borders just to make links like these.

9. The specifics of economic failure: the rise of mass access to university-level education is a given. Maybe soon even 50% in higher education will be not enough. In most of the world this is being funded by personal indebtedess - so people are making a rational judgement to go into debt so they will be better paid later. However the prospect of ten years of fiscal retrenchment in some countries means they now know they will be poorer than their parents. And the effect has been like throwing a light switch; the prosperity story is replaced with the doom story, even if for individuals reality will be more complex, and not as bad as they expect.

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MUBI: The Notebook's 2nd Annual Writers' Poll -- Fantasy Double Features of 2009, Part I

(From last year, but still fascinating and should be made into a regular feature)

The Notebook's 2nd Annual Writers' Poll: Fantasy Double Features of 2009, Part I
by Daniel Kasman
MUBI

With 2009 rounding to a close, it already feels like best-of and top-ten lists have been pouring in for months, and we’re already tired of them: the ranking, the exclusions (and inclusions), the rules and the qualifiers. Some people got to see films at festivals, others only catch movies on video; and the ability for us, or any publication, to come up with a system to fairly determine who saw what when and what they thought was the best seems an impossible feat. That doesn’t stop most people from doing it, but we thought we’d shake things up a bit. Last year we polled the contributors to The Notebook to find some general consensus on what movies everyone liked. For our 2nd Annual Writers’ Poll, we’re doing things differently.

I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2009—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2009 to create a unique double feature. Some writers chose their favorites of 2009, some chose out-of-the-way gems, others made some pretty strange connections—and some frankly just want to create a kerfuffle. All the contributors were asked to write a paragraph explaining their 2009 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.

How would you program some of 2009's most interesting films into double features with movies of the past?

To see the lists and descriptions

Thinking About 2010 and Looking Forward to 2011

Inspired by Ondine

The Bad

The 2010 elections

Michael/Stephanie having to go to Amsterdam to find work

Austerity (and the propaganda surrounding the concept)

The continuing militarization of our society linked to a call for us to police ourselves.

The sad state of cinema (and art in general)

Corporate consolidation of media ---> limitation of public awareness about important social/political issues

Citizen United vs U.S.

Emergency surgery

The Good

Laura comes home from France at the end of the year

Building a home

Comrades that make life worth living

Students that seize upon the concept of learning as a life long collective project

Spending time with family in California

Realizing that I still don't have the answers, but still searching for the questions that might help.

North of Center, Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, Socialist Student Union, Lexington Film League, Gay/Straight Alliance, KY Theater, Peace and Justice Coalition, Peace Training-Peace Learning Institute

Teaching--and the opportunity to interact with new students

Wikileaks

2011: The Hopes

Continuing to build a home with Laura and a forge a strong community of comrades

Working on my doubts/insecurites about myself and developing strength so that I can help others do the same

Developing a local coalition of activists/artists/citizens that want to fight for justice and still desire to act freely--individually and collectively

Build the most beautiful backyard herb garden

Travel to Amsterdam to visit Michael/Stephanie

Go to the 2011 Socialist Forum

Work on my novel, write essays, develop my film criticism, and write for North of Center.

Get tenure and celebrate it by writing a slew of poems (and to get up at the Holler to read them--already have a bunch just need to "do it").

Realize my philosophy of anarchism through my most intimate individual relations all the way to my most collective (instituional) obligations.

Talk to people about what socialism is really about.