Saturday 30th of March 2024

preparing the revolution...

assuming...

Assuming Boycott

RESISTANCE, AGENCY, AND CULTURAL PRODUCTION


Edited by KAREEM ESTEFANCARIN KUONI, and LAURA RAICOVICH

“The brilliant writers and debaters assembled here come at the issue from different angles, all from the central belief that art is never not political. In the end, they are less interested in arguing for or against tactics than they are in advocating an art of political thinking.” 
—Holland Cotter, co-chief art critic, The New York Times


“Artistic resistance has seldom proven so socially useful, or as complicated. This intellectually engaging study targets the paradoxes, limitations, and media spectacle of organized cultural boycotts and state-sponsored censorship from South African apartheid in the 1980s, to present day Israel-Palestine, Cuba, the Gulf States, the United Kingdom, and the United States among other geopolitical zones of conflict.” —Gregory Sholette, artist and author of Delirium and Resistance: Activist Art and the Crisis of Capitalism

Assuming Boycott defiantly holds the best arguments regarding boycott. It shows that boycott is not only a form of sanctions but also an invitation to dialogue. This collection of essays offers a historical perspective with comparative case studies, making it the ultimate resource to help decide where to draw the ethical line.” —Galit Eilat, writer and curator, co-curator of 31st São Paulo Biennial

Assuming Boycott is an essential contribution to an ongoing, urgent conversation about how artists, writers, and thinkers have time and again created subtle, meaningful, powerful, and vibrant ways to engage the political sphere. This book is a valuable guide to cultural boycotts from South Africa to Palestine.” —Walid Raad, artist, professor, Cooper Union

“Without a trace of left-wing melancholy, the authors offer us an essential guide to the terrain of cultural politics today. With colleagues and comrades like these, one feels not only bolstered but downright emboldened.” —Hal Foster, Townsend Martin Professor of Art and Archeology, Princeton University; editor, The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture

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Boycott and divestment are essential tools for activists around the globe. Today’s organizers target museums, universities, corporations, and governments to curtail unethical sources of profit, discriminatory practices, or human rights violations. They leverage cultural production – and challenge its institutional supports – helping transform situations in the name of social justice.

The refusal to participate in an oppressive system has long been one of the most powerful weapons in the organizer’s arsenal. Since the days of the 19th century Irish land wars, when Irish tenant farmers defied the actions of Captain Charles Boycott and English landlords, “boycott” has been a method that’s shown its effectiveness time and again. In the 20th century, it notably played central roles in the liberation of India and South Africa and the struggle for civil rights in the U.S.: the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott is generally seen as a turning point in the movement against segregation.

Assuming Boycott is the essential reader for today’s creative leaders and cultural practitioners, including original contributions by artists, scholars, activists, critics, curators and writers who examine the historical precedent of South Africa; the current cultural boycott of Israel; freedom of speech and self-censorship; and long-distance activism. Far from withdrawal or cynicism, boycott emerges as a productive tool of creative and productive engagement.

Including essays by Nasser Abourahme, Ariella Azoulay, Tania Bruguera, Noura Erakat, Kareem Estefan, Mariam Ghani with Haig Aivazian, Nathan Gray and Ahmet Öğüt, Chelsea Haines, Sean Jacobs, Yazan Khalili, Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich, Svetlana Mintcheva, Naeem Mohaiemen, Hlonipha Mokoena, John Peffer, Joshua Simon, Ann Laura Stoler, Radhika Subramaniam, Eyal Weizman and Kareem Estefan, and Frank B. Wilderson III.

Cover art by Josh MacPhee.

276 pages • Paperback ISBN 978-1-682190-92-0 • E-book 978-1-68219-093-7

Please visit O/R books at

http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/assuming-boycott/

 

 

soap boxes of the revolution...

 

In the spring of 2013 we wrote an article about emerging problems of post-crisis political organisation. We sensed, in particular, the disquieting possibility that a populist icon might spark an anti-political movement. To find a new angle on this potent prospect we turned to the figure of Ziggy Stardust. We weren't sure this would resonate. With austerity entrenched and popular movements scarce, perhaps our problem was out of time. Did we compound this untimeliness with a metaphor drawn from 40-year-old pop history? Perhaps we were falling prey to the trend for retro-mania and its eclipse of the present with nostalgia for our past.

And then, from nowhere, we heard a voice calmly pointing out that the emperor was wearing no clothes … Russell Brand, interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight, punctured the illusion that the time for change was past. Paxman repeatedly tried to drag Brand back within the traditional boundaries of political debate, but every time Brand refused. Instead he was able to raise again those wider, more fundamental questions of environmental disaster, global poverty and capital's incessant desire for "growth". When Paxman eventually asked, "You don't believe in democracy; you want a revolution, don't you?", Brand replied, "The planet is being destroyed, we are creating an underclass, we're exploiting poor people all over the world, and there are genuine, legitimate problems of the people not being addressed by our political class."

And suddenly it felt like the most natural, normal thing in the world to be talking about a revolution …

Brand is not an isolated figure. In Italy the comedian Beppe Grillo has been the catalyst for the Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Star Movement), a populist, anti-corruption organisation which has tried to position itself outside of the traditional left-right paradigm.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/12/comedians-musician...

 

And then Donald Trump came in to do stand ups...

 

The cosy children of the elite non-revolution.

 

 

 

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity isn’t for everyone. it should be. But democracy is controlled by the elites at the service of capitalism. The French democratic revolution tried to do away with both. Same with the Russian revolution. Eventually, the elites clawed back into privileged positions, including being trained in exclusive Colleges to become the next wave in the dynastical control. 

 

When Erika Christakis spoke of too many regulations for the Halloween costumes at a college under conservative administration, the students revolted and manufactured their own “alternative” facts about racism and other matters, with an indignity that could have appeared fake because it mostly was. One does not really know why, nor against whom they vented their spleen, apart from against Christakis who is relatively trying to capture intelligence to improve society at all levels. At this stage it has to be understood that in the USA, many colleges (private of course) are sheltered sausage factories for the children of the elite to go and bonk at Goldmann Sasch or at any other prestigious banks. 


“Middlebury College just completed its final round of disciplinary hearings for students involved in March’s violent disruption of a lecture by Charles Murray, the influential but controversial social scientist. The punishments to date have been laughably lax. Guilty students have been presented with non-official “probation” letters that’ll vanish upon graduation. This toothless response reflects a deeper rot. Middlebury, like many prestigious colleges, has steadily gravitated away from its core educational mission and now serves primarily as a sort of finishing school for the ruling class. Professors and administrators alike are simply expected to shower students with affirmation — and then hand over a degree securing smooth entry into America’s elite. College has become four years of expensive fun. This is what parents and students now demand.


This change—from institutions of learning to institutions of affirming—threatens the nation’s future as colleges foster a vicious strain of anti-intellectualism.” 

 

This means that the kids entering colleges are groomed to become the future fiddlers of the levers of capitalism, and to understand the minutie of tweaking dollar making machines while keeping most of the population in the low value of importance in the herachied “democracy”.

 

In Australia, the recent exposure of a Tax Office sting is indicative of a similar trend. One can be outraged ar the relentless drive by our governments to outsource its public duties. The profit motive often drives the privatised operators to fiddle beyond fair play. The decreases of the public services erodes the ability to monitor these effectively. The range of high level people who have been caught in an ATO sting is staggering but not surprising. Here comes the colleges...

 

Take our own Tony Abbott -- a Bachelor of Economics and Bachelor of Laws at the University of Sydney, who then attended The Queen’s College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, graduating as a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Politics and Economics -- an overeducated twit who shows very little intellect but a full-fist of five when it comes to enforcement of stupid ideas. 

 

Tony was not involved in the ATO sting, but some of his ilk were. Abbott proceeded to become a Master of Arts -- Martial arts, I presume. After graduating from Oxford (not in sciences), Abbott trained as a Roman Catholic seminarian, and later worked as a journalist, a manager, and a political adviser. He became the basher of public government and the promoter of “Catholic” private enterprise while being cunning and deceitful -- saying one thing and doing another. That is the style of many in the elite. 

 

I believe a lot of taxpayers money was wasted on this Tony fellow, because when he was at Sydney Uni, the fees were like non-existent. Tony still hangs in the political spheres because he is unemployable anywhere else. Not even in a bank -- say possibly as a bouncer in front of the NAB door, but he would get bored within five seconds, not having to bash someone or destroy some issues. 

 

So, some of masterminds behind the $165 million ATO tax evasion case attended St Aloysius College, and the Scots College at Sydney Uni. Massive reference. Not all College-degreed students become thieves but most are trained to become leaders of something to fiddle. Add a bit of our natural sociopathy to the mix and some of them can become fully rabid. Once on the loose, they try to take over the social agenda with their own brand of deceit. The education problem is as hermetic as the opaque screen of the Catholic Church. Even the former Minister of Education in New South Wales, Adrian Picoli, himself a Catholic, is miffed as the way these religious schools cream the public purse without any accountability whatsoever. But our Tony Abbott had (and still has) no qualms in giving them more cash in order to create more little Tony Abbotts. Ugly.

 

These are designed to invade our spaces with anti-revolutionary reactionary dudes, intelligent or not. Some will become the leaders of the rat pack while the others play the enforcers with morality at their side. They will prevent progressive thoughts of any kind and they will bend the twigs to make basket cases. They are helped by a docile media. 

 

Even former Secretary of State John Kerry went for the inane with some light-hearted and more serious jabs at President Donald Trump during a “commencement” address at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, including allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He offered the new alumni some advice.

“I’m often asked what the secret is to have a real impact on government,” he said. “I used to say, either run for office or get a degree from Harvard Kennedy School. With this White House I’d say, buy Rosetta Stone and learn Russian,” he joked. The students cheered. 

 

Silly. Easy quip. Cheap, not even worth of a Murdoch headline. The Rosetta Stone was the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, now it has become the trade mark for a language course. But beyond this it takes a clever person to understand the real dynamics of the various social human contexts on the planet. At least the little guy, Putin can speak a few languages, including German very well. 

 

So it appears that Kerry is telling the student NOT to learn Russian in a reverse manner. Why? 

 

Yep... But he still promoting the brand of “democracy” which has nothing to do with democracy, but an elitocracy in which the “truth” is that of Big Brother in a permanent state of war, to promote its brand of corn-fake democracy, like Kellogs promotes its cornflakes. 

 

So when do we start the real revolution? That that is supposed to be from the university students... for LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY.... at all levels...

 

 

Gus Leonisky

 

Your local revolutionary

People never stand a chance...

 

On April 16, 1917, Vladimir Ulyanov, the Russian exile better known by his revolutionary alias, Lenin, arrived at St. Petersburg’s Finland Station following a roundabout journey from Switzerland, after spending nearly two decades abroad. Lenin made an immediate splash with a fiery speech and a radical political program known as the “April Theses.” Russian, and world, politics would never be the same.

Because he returned home by way of Germany — and with the obvious cooperation of the German High Command — which was then at war against Russia and her Entente allies (France, Britain and, from April 6, the United States), allegations that Lenin was a German agent were immediately hurled by his opponents, a charge that remains controversial to this day. If it is ever proved that Lenin was acting on behalf of the German Imperial Government in 1917, the implications for our understanding of the October Revolution, and the Soviet Communist regime born of it, which lasted until 1991, would be profound. This would amount to the greatest influence operation of all time, making present-day concerns about Russian meddling in Western elections, including last year’s American presidential contest, seem tame in comparison. Was it true?

In a sense, there was nothing particularly new about a German plot to undermine an enemy government in wartime. For centuries, great powers had played at this game. During the Napoleonic wars, France aided Irish rebels to undermine Britain, and Polish nationalists against Russia. Britain, in turn, backed Spanish guerrillas fighting French occupation forces. The Germans, though latecomers to the arena, were quick learners after Germany’s unification in 1871. They even coined a word for this specific type of influence operation: “Revolutionierungspolitik,” or policy of revolutionizing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/opinion/was-lenin-a-german-agent.html

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This "policy of revolutionizing" is still going on today, with a new name: “regime change”. The article by the New York Time is conveneniently forgetting that the USA still indulges in this caper with fabricated false moralistic reasons such as promoting “democracy” and “freedom”... 

The dynamics of the Russian revolutions are often misunderstood in the West. One needs to be a dedicated historian and forensic analyst to pick the trends that followed the social manipulations within Russia and outside Russia, 1900. To a certain level, Gus Leonisky would parallel the soft revolution brought in by Vladimir Putin in 2000 after the collapse of the Soviet Union to that of a hundred years ago -- except the present winner of this renewal was more in line with the minority leader then in 1900, Zinoviev.  Zinoviev preferred that the proletariat did a deal with the “Bourgeoisie” while not killing the public goose for overseas interests. In Australia, we muffed this one big time. We gave up huge sways of mining rights to plunderers, in exchange for peanuts.

Back then, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party morphed into the revolution and the communist party thereafter, aided by Lenin but as we all should know, Lenin had his enemies. One interesting part of the Oliver Stone’s Interview with Putin is the mention of the French revolution ideals influence on the Socialist Party in Russia. 

All of this would soon become academic when Stalin took over. In the same way as Hitler took over in Germany, there was discontent and dispute within the ruling party, still in its infancy. The need for a focus, bad or good, led the new change with a strong man in charge in both countries.

No matter what comes along, one needs to maintain a certain narrative to hold the people together.

In the USA, being American (StarNstripist) comes first and foremost in most Americans -- poor, elitist, bourgeois, black or white, women and men. This spirit of the American dream is maintained by various tricks of patriotic markers -- from the 4th of July to other celebratory events. Meanwhile, unavoidably, the system cultivates divisions: black and white, rich and poor, to make sure only the rich can control the system. Pageantry, traditions and cash makes sure that, Republican or Democrat, you cannot push a revolutionary ideal without going broke, being pilloried by the media -- or be killed. The Bernie experience came close to changing the ball game, but the Democrats made sure Sanders would be snuffed by whatever means. The "Russian interfered" (they did not) in the US elections is only a diversion to get Americans to think away from the socialist possibility. America does not indulge in Socialism. Socialism prevents huge personal fortunes to be made, though in China, there are exceptions. One could ask why and here the answer in a nutshell is simple. Multibillionaires can buy into overseas affairs and territory as if they were ordinary private citizens while recent revelations in Australia exposed that these rich chinese are linked to the communist party of China. If we did not see this coming, it’s because as a whole, Australians are naive in terms of international understanding. We delegated our foreign policies to the UK then to the USA and the sun is still shinning. Today we have to shift our defence cyber-storage from a firm in Sydney which has been bought by a "Chinese" consortium.

I am sure that Vladimir Putin is on the ball with all these moires of political and historical trends which cannot be explained in two second flat on a blog. 

When the USA installed the Shah in Iran, it was not in praise of democracy and freedom. It was a device to control that country and plunder its oil. When the popular revolution threw the Shah out of Iran, the USA organised a war between Iraq and Iran to bleed both countries economically. The USA have been a bully and continue to be a bully in regard to making a buck. There is no sophistication in the US diplomacy. We all know the “you’re with us or against us” mantra. Quite stupid but effective to threaten people. 

The same caper is going on in Syria. Nothing to do with “freedom and democracy”. The USA supports rebels who are no more than terrorists, employed to remove a recalcitrant government that does not like loosing its sovereignty in favour of Saudi Arabia -- all because there is oodles of dollars to be made and favours to solicit and pay.

Meanwhile amongst all this crap, the poor people pay with their life and become forgotten like an Armenian genocide would be but for the number of people killed.  

Collateral damage was an aberration till the second world war. Ratio of innocent people versus army personnel killed keeps increasing despite “smart bombs” designed to minimise collateral damage. 

The rulers in the USA hate people (socialism, communism, grass-root democracy) winning the loot. Nothing new. 

Putin is not a Tsar and he knows it. But he has done as much as possible to prevent Russia falling into the hands of US elites. To these, Democrat or Republican, Putin is the enemy of freedom, the freedom of cash. For the Democrat and the Republicans, people can go to hell.

People never stand a chance. Strangely, at this level, Putin is protecting people's rights far better than the USA ever did.

 

Gus Leonisky

Old local people-ist...