The EZLN is re-engaging with a new effort at encuentro. Their 7 thoughts [es] are fascinating. (via Anarchogeek) Its part of a project to foster a global dialogue, not a global agreement, a set of common questions, not answers. This ties in with a discussion I was having recently that noted that discussions of strategy, and vision in US activism so often get stuck in a few rhetorical ruts, like the non-violence question, as if this is the only thing that needs to be discussed, and result in the whole revolutionary projects horizon being tightly proscribed. This sort of thinking is an antidote.

A few pharses that have stuck with me:

  • On theory (particularly interesting as I fantasize about going into theory): > The position of theory (and of theoretical analysis) in political and social movements is usually obvious. However, everything obvious usually conceals a problem

    Anti-intellectualism is nothing more than a misunderstood self apologia and, as such, it marks a movement as being “adolescent.”

    forgetful academics/pundits hooked on the “today” of the media

    We believe that a movement should produce its own theoretical reflection

    Perhaps that is why we are not pragmatic (another way of saying “action without theory and without principles”).

    We believe that our duty is initiating, following, accompanying, finding and opening spaces for something and someone, including ourselves. (emphasis added)

  • On The Nation State: in which you get a sense of the deeply contradictory war being waged between Capital and its bewildered sometimes ally the State. > Maintained for decades as the reference point for stability, the Nation State is ceasing to exist, but its hologram remains, fed by those dogmas which are fighting to fill the vacuum

    The “others” are no longer somewhere else, but everywhere and all the time. And for the Power, the “other” is a threat. (I think it is not only the society of Power who finds the Other threatening in many ways it is a basic tenent of Western thought)

    What is the hope? Going back to fighting for the street, the barrio? Neither. The fragmentation has been so ruthless and reckless that not even those minimal units of identity have remained stable. The family home? Where and how? If television came in like a queen through the front door, the internet hacked its way in through the crack of cyberspace. Almost every house on the planet was recently invaded by the British and North American troops which occupied Iraq.

    In the dream factories of the great media consortiums

    What nuclear war did not do, the corporations can.

  • On Politics: > The foundations of “western democracy” have been dynamited. Campaigns and elections are being conducted on their rubble.

  • On War > Thousands of years after the emergence of words, and, along with them, reasoned argument, force has again come to occupy the decisive and deciding position. (if I had an argument with you recently where I tried to talk about the role of the rationale, this is what I was talking about, not an embrace of false objectivity often tied to patriarchial power)

    The logic of the marketplace (more profits, always and at any cost) is imposed on the old logic of war (destroy the fighting capacity of the opponent). International legislation then gets in the way, and it must be ignored or it must be destroyed. The time of plausible justifications is over. International bodies are useless and onerous monuments. (Can’t imagine what they could possibly be talking about)

  • On Culture > Culture is one of the few things which keep the Nation State still breathing. The elimination of culture will be the coup d’ grace. No one will attend the funeral, and not because of a lack of knowledge, but because of the “ratings.”

  • On Resistance > Crises precede awareness of their existence, but reflection on the results or solutions of those crises are turned into political actions.

    All resistances, in the history of humanity, have appeared ineffective, not just on the eve, but also well into the night of the attack