Post Covid Riot Prime Manifesto – Red October [Part III]

After Post Covid Riot Prime Manifest and Post Covid Riot Prime Manifest Next Level“Doc” Mccoy started a new series: Post Covid Riot Prime Manifest – Red October.  On September 28 we published Post Covid Riot Prime Manifest – Red October [Part I]. On October 17, 2022, Part II. Today we continue the Post Covid Riot Prime Manifesto – Red October series. Here is Part III.

Originally published by Non Copyriot. Written by “Doc” Mccoy. Translated by Riot Turtle.

Fifty-one: “Before the proletariat wins its victories on barricades and battle lines, it announces the arrival of its rule by a series of intellectual victories.” – Karl Marx. It is being conspired again. In every corner of the world. Conspired and discussed. The revolts and uprisings in recent years, their potential and their limitations. That it is not enough to loot Dior on the Champs-Élysées, or take a dip in the swimming pool of Colombo’s presidential palace, or paralyze Quito, or burn down cop stations in Minneapolis. The primacy of praxis [P(A)=U-p] was indispensable to no longer claim the era of insurgencies, but to materialize it into the present class conflict. But now every wave that crashes against the barrage of the Empire is thrown back by it and levels the amplitudes of the next undulations if it does not succeed in jumping over the first defensive bulwark.

For this, a new insurrectionary conceptualization is needed that goes beyond the previous theoretical ammo of the uprisings. A conceptuality that tears open the horizon for a fundamental revolutionary uprising for all. The first task would be to demythologize the omnipotence of the Empire. Sectors of the class that are too substantial, remain bound in fear to power. Social rejections and the notion of the end of the world as we know it have eroded basic compliant consciousness, but fear is the fragile sealant that still holds the partitioning bulletproof glass in its frame, maintaining isolation and atomization, the primary conditions of subjugation and impotence. Courage does not help against fear, but awareness of the conditions of its emergence. Maintenance, as well as limitation; and thus insurmountability.

The first act of every colonialist is to deceive. About his intentions and plans. The second is to sow fear in order to distract from his initial inferiority until he has gathered enough troops and war matériel around him. Whereby almost always parts of his troops consist of auxiliary troops made up of those to be subjugated. The third act is to spread diseases among those to be colonized. (Cortés invaded the Aztec Empire with only 300 of his own men). The disease of the colonized of postmodernity is fear in all its varieties, including depression, which has now affected large parts of the population, especially in the so-called developed countries (but not only there). (I already stated in Part ll that e.g. every third US American suffers from an anxiety disorder and/or depression requiring treatment).

In the pandemic state of emergency, one could experience how the Empire played entire symphonies on the keyboard of fear and how effectively this paralyzed (but only for a limited time) class conflictuality. Since this experience was a global one (and understandably more distinctive in the so-called developed countries), it is inevitable to analyze this experience, which carries within it the terror of the shock strategy (which robs the victim of the possibilities to counterattack as well as to flee, ergo puts him into a state of shock), more fundamentally and to make it the subject to redefine revolutionary strategy. Our opponents have long since analyzed the experience of mass internment practices and aligned it with the calculation models of their preparedness think tanks, and we can assume that their next strike will be even better prepared. For us, for our side, the task now is to apply the most basic lesson of any martial art: To absorb the energy of the attack of our adversary and turn it into ours. We can learn as much as our adversary from the experiences of the pandemic emergency. We can even learn more about our adversary’s behavior than he learned about ours, since it was his maneuver that was executed.

Demythologizing the omnipotence of the empire as the first step of an essential revolutionary analysis thus succeeds best and only via the path of examining the pandemic state of emergency and its mechanisms. An examination of its tangible unfolding of power over the last 2.5 years. All those who shy away from this path (many of them are so-called leftists who want to make their own part in the repressive totality nothing but a distant memory) inevitably do not act on the level of the present class conflictuality. To spread the revolutionary narrative about the pandemic state of emergency among the people is the first victory of the series of intellectual victories Marx spoke of. “In the context of the last two years, there has been talk of a great confusion of minds. But there is a form of confusion right before insight. For those who are willing to see, the past two years brought a great clarity. For those who are willing to clean up, the field is open.” – Manifeste Conspirationniste

Fifty-two: Now that the inevitable is done or it is not, there is only the choice between the end of history or making history. We get to the point of choosing our weapons, which must be chosen wisely. When the revolutionary horizon emerges in real terms (and not in the imagination of small leftist splinter groups that live in the past) every poem, every lore, every lecture, every conversation among friends, every kiss in a tear gas cloud, every fire barrel in a dreary place, every heated discussion, every embracement, every honest word,… becomes a revolutionary terrain. A terrain, defined by us. By defining this terrain, we snatch another spot from where the Empire can rage, where it can impose its destructive logic of exploitation. So the real art of weapons choice is that we choose and define these places, that we pick the places that are least connected to the logic of exploitation. The non-movements have taught us a lot about selecting these places, not coincidentally they often emerged at traffic circles, in poor neighborhoods, at the edges of metropolises, in indigenous areas… The second great task is to develop a profound understanding of our own uprisings and revolts, to understand how the non-movements and their genesis are related to the actual places in a way that we have not been aware of until now, the places that are defined first and foremost by relationships. For the core of any actual relationship between people, as long as the alienation processes do not take effect, is beyond any logic of exploitation. For this reason, too, and especially for this reason, the pandemic state of emergency aimed at putting any relations in a fragile state, in its final result as an act of mercy of power, a privilege that can be granted or denied. “Arendt pointed to friendship as a possible basis for politics in dark times. I think that’s a good point, provided we remember that friendship – that is, the fact of sensing an otherness in our experience of existing – is a kind of political minimum, a threshold that both unifies and divides the individual vis-à-vis the community. That means, provided we will remember, that it is nothing less than an attempt to form a society everywhere, or a community within society. In other words, given the increasing depoliticization of individuals, to find in friendship the radical principle of a renewed politicization.” – Giorgio Agamben

Fifty-three: To be true to oneself. Hating betrayal. Settling old scores. Calling lies lies. Denouncing enemies. Loving truths. Not forgetting the fallen and the prisoners. Not joining in. Listening. Putting up with inconvenience. To be aware of what is at stake. Maintaining composure amid the noise and hectic pace of turmoil. To remain impatient and yet taking all the time in the world. To grow old and wise and still looking at everything with a child’s eyes every day. Giving presents. Cooking. Writing. Writing poetry. Fighting. Sleeping. Dreaming. Learning from those who fight on the front lines, even if they can’t find the right words. Studying history. Over and over again. Being weak. Being tired. Still being there when needed. Translating. Reporting. Traveling to conspire. “A fire in the hearts” – George Jackson

Fifty-four: “Fascism is omnipresent on the Italian and European stage: in the return of nationalist rage, in the glorification of war as the only hygiene in the world, in anti-worker and anti-union violence, in contempt for culture and science, in the demographic-racist obsession that wants to convince women to have children with a white skin in order to avoid the great ethnic exchange and because the nation ages and disintegrates when the cradles are empty, as they say. All this nonsense is back. Is it fascism? Not quite. Mussolini’s fascism was a futurist fascism that glorified youth, conquest and expansion. But a hundred years later, expansion is over, the urge to conquer has been replaced by fear of being invaded by foreign immigrants. And instead of the glorious future, there is the progressing disintegration of the structures that made civilization possible. – ‘The sun rises free and prolific, / you will see no greater glory in the world than Rome’ – , according to the nationalist rhetoric of the last century. Now the sun is eerie, as the rivers dry-out and the forests burn. What is on the rise is geronto-fascism: the fascism of senile old age. Fascism as a furious reaction to the aging of the ‘white race.’” – Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi writes in his article ‘Geronto Fascism’ [1]. An article about the recent electoral success of the far right in Italy.

Without a doubt, there are currently two options for Empire in the Endgame. “Green Governance”, which I have addressed more detailed earlier and which until recently appeared to be the future option, and the Fascist option (in whatever modified form). However, in the permanence of the state of emergency into which we have entered, the rapid succession of crises that follow one another, obviously a permanent fragility of power itself arises. It carries so many inconstant moments that anything seems possible, including a fundamental renaissance of a fascism that carries no futurity. Faced with the reality of a fascist power option, revolutionary forces are faced with the same dilemma that has already become clear in the war in Ukraine, which is also and not insignificantly an inner-imperialist war. There is a relevant time factor that, given the situation in which our forces find themselves, calls into question everything we have achieved so far and everything that finally seems to be historically possible again. This has to be integrated into what is currently being discussed in the revolutionary movement worldwide. I will get into this more detailed in the next, fourth part of the Post Covid Riot Prime Manifesto (Red October series), but I wanted to bring up this point briefly because of the current developments.

Fifty-five: “The Leviathan feeds itself from the energy of the living. The more its interlocking expands quantitatively and qualitatively, the more it directly colonizes the bodies. But since the bodies with the most energy are the ones that believe in something – a facet ignored by the technocrats of the West, who are convinced that if they can recombine genes or produce synthetic steaks, their laboratories can also engineer souls – the emerging powers are the ones that have both colonial violence and the opposing force of anti-colonial revolutions in their gears: Forced labor and collective identification.” [2] Zuckerberg’s huge meta-world project is running full speed into a brick wall right now. The value of his empire has been reduced from $1 trillion to $360 billion within a year. The corporation is currently losing $1.5 billion in listings at the stock market on a daily basis. In essence, all futures are only conceivable through projections of the postmodern colonized, or in other words, without the proclamation of the modern slaves, everything is on the brink, up for disposition. The Chinese state leadership is having the same experience, which has tied its fate to its Zero Covid policy at present and is therefore having trouble to keep the growing unrest under control despite an incredibly perfected surveillance apparatus, while at the same time having to cope with high drops in growth rates, which is to a substantial extent also due to the Zero Covid policy. It is not hard to imagine what will become of the Chinese societal model when economic growth fails to materialize. Anyway, a return to a North Korean model is no longer possible.

Either way, wherever you look, all current models of power are reaching their limits. All that keeps things going is passivity, the acceptance of those who are dominated, the apparent lack of alternatives. A world that is doomed, in which there are no more credible visions to sell, a cold, naked desert. A desert that is becoming more and more visible, a world that cries out for rebellion. This is the situation we find ourselves in. A world made for revolutionaries…

to be continued…

Notes

[1] Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi: Geronto Fascism. Originally published on Nero Editions (Italian). In German in Sunzi Bingfa #41.

[2] ‘The tower and the basement vaults’ on Il Rovescio (Italian). In German in Sunzi Bingfa #35.

here too

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