Before leaving this question behind, I want to say that I’m personally very unenlightened and not a dropped-out Taoist blockhead master by a long shot. In fact, I despise being perceived by people with money, power, and influence as “marginal.” I think it harms me – it assumes that I can’t have as much agency in this world as they have. I think there’s some kind of dynamic at work there where those with a certain lingering market-consensus mentality assert their dominance by taming people and ideas that might otherwise be challenging. They do this by “loving” outsiders qua outsiders, and defining them within the marketspace as having there own little place of acceptance – a place on the far end of the “long tail.”
TagR.U. Sirius
R.U. Sirius has setup a site for a new project: the Open Source Political Party. It appears to be a relaunching of his old Revolution Party idea, but more… serious.
The Revolution Party was a huge influence on me. I’ve always had a sort of mix of libertarian and progressive ideals, and the Revolution Party platform was the first I saw that tried to reconcile both modes of thinking.
In college, I tried to start a Washington State Revolution Party. We had a couple meetings, but the interest just wasn’t there. I went on to spend some time working with the local Democratic Party and doing community work, and after the crushing defeat of the Dems in 2002, decided that the voting public was still pretty far from supporting progressive or libertarian policies.
It wasn’t long after that “Dean-mania” hit and suddenly the “netroots” was born. 2004 came and went, but people were looking to the successes of Democrats in the “libertarian” mountain-west (such as Brian Schweitzer in Montana and Dave Freudenthal in Wyoming) as the model for the future of the Democrats. Looking back it was an exciting time. Reid seemed to be whipping the remaining Dems into some sort of a cohesive opposition party, and Howard Dean become the DNC chairman, pushing “50 State Strategy.” In 2005 I started Rose Colored News, partially to track the successes of this “new progressivism.” The crowning achievement of the netroots movement came in 2006, with the Democrats taking back both the Senate and the House and of course wins by Jim Webb and Jon Tester.
But this year has been a big disappointment. Back in charge, the Dems seem to have accomplished precious little and have taken to playing it safe now that they’re in charge (Reid has been particularly infuriating). The netroots hasn’t really found a candidate in the Democratic presidential race, instead splintering support amongst pretty much everyone running. Meanwhile, Ron Paul has become the Republican Howard Dean, preventing a sort of libertarian/progressive coalition from forming around any Democratic presidential candidate (Richardson and Gravel seem like particularly choice candidates for something like this).
I guess maybe it’s because it’s more fun to root for the underdog that I’ve found myself drifting back over to the thought of 3rd parties, so I guess the timing of R.U.’s new party is apt. But I can’t really get that excited about the prospect of starting a whole new party from the ground up. Lately I’ve been more interested in stuff like Kevin Zeese’s run for senate in Maryland on a Libertarian-Green-Populist fusion ticket, and the libertarian Freedom Democrats.
I’ve actually been working on an Extreme Democracy inspired “open political platform” myself. The basic idea is not a platform for a party, but a collection of policies and solutions that can be modified and used by candidates running for different offices on different party tickets. So I’m sure I’ll participating in the Open Source Party, at least in the platform discussions. Maybe this will finally motivate me to get my stuff into some sort of presentable form.
So, what made Mondo 2000 so special? It was, in my opinion, the best alternative culture magazine that America ever had. They wrote about smart drugs, brain implants, virtual reality, cyberpunk, Cthulhupunk and cryogenics. They covered Laibach and Lydia Lunch in the same issue. The pantheon of writers was a force to be reckoned with: Bruce Sterling, Robert Anton Wilson, and William Gibson all lent their talents, and there was even a Burroughs vs. Leary interview face-off. Then there was the famous U2-Negativland interview, in which Negativland, disguised as reporters, interviewed U2 into a corner to reveal the band’s hypocrisy over their lawsuit against Negativland over sampling. All in all, the magazine took risks. ‘The good dream for me and Mondo,’ said editor R.U. Sirius in an interview with Purple Prose, ‘is overcoming the limits of biology without necessarily leaving sensuality or sexuality behind.’ Issue after issue, Mondo 2000 threw a sexy dystopian bash and invited the decade’s best thinkers.
Full Story: Coilhouse. And be sure to read Joshua Ellis‘s comment!
See also: My 2002 interview with R.U. Sirius.
Viking Youth Power Hour: Ibrahim for Citizen.
RU Sirius Show: Just Say NOSO – No Social Networking.
NeoFiles Show: Rule The Web with Mark Frauenfelder.
RU Sirius Show: Cartoons For Little Hippies.
RU Sirius Show: Tony Serra Keeps People Out of Iron Cages.
NeoFiles Show: Moira Gunn’s Biotech Nation.
Viking Youth Power Hour: The Vikings Scope ‘Sicko!’
Gspot: Secrets, Cubes and Corporations: An Interview With Douglas Rushkoff.
RU Sirius Show: Free Paris Hilton!.
NeoFiles Show: From Vioxx To Salvia – Everybody Takes Drugs.
RU Sirius Show: Hip Hop & Hyphy Now.
RU Sirius Show: Will We Be Forced To Stop Global Warming?.
NeoFiles Show: Steve Wozniak Talks About His Favorite Pranks.
RU Sirius Show #116: The Kennedy Brothers v. The National Security Establishment.
Sorry, I’ve been slacking on these…
The Viking Youth Power Hour:
R.U. Sirius Show:
Not the Prime Time Josh Wolf Interview.
Why Big War is Becoming Obsolete.
Justin from Justin.tv Brings It.
Can a Pacifist be President or Should we Just Stop Breeding?.
Gonzo: Hunter S. Thompson is Evoked.
Keith Henson’s Space Elevator.
From The Zodiac Killer to Cho.
NeoFiles:
R.U. Sirius (who before becoming a podcasting pioneer, founded Mondo 2000 magazine) interviews From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism author Fred Turner, and prefaces the interview with some of his own thoughts. Very interesting critiques on both sides. I only wish the interview was longer.
[RU:] I must say honestly that, although I was repulsed by the Gingrich alliance and by much of the corporate rhetoric that emerged, at least in part, out of Brand’s digital elitist clan – I think Brand’s tactics were essentially correct. Turner implies that valuable social change is more likely to happen through political activism than through the invention and distribution of tools and through the whole systems approach that is implicit in that activity. But I think that the internet has – palpably – been much more successful in changing lives than 40 years of left oppositional activism has been. For one example out of thousands, the only reason the means of communication that shapes our cultural and political zeitgeist isn’t COMPLETELY locked down by powerful media corporations is the work that these politically ambiguous freaks have accomplished over the past 40 years. In other words, oppositional activism would be even more occult – more hidden from view – today if not for networks built by hippie types who were not averse to working with DARPA and with big corporations. The world is a complex place.
[…]
FT: The idea of back-to-the-country didn’t work. But I think something deeper didn’t work, and it haunts us today, even as it underlies a lot of what we do. The notion that you can build a community around shared style is a deeply bohemian notion. It runs through all sorts of bohemian worlds. The notion that if you just get the right technology you can then build a unified community is a notion that drove a lot of the rural communal efforts. They thought by changing technological regimes; by going to 19th century technologies; by making their own butter; sewing their own clothes – they would be able to build a new kind of community. What they discovered was that if you don’t do politics – explicitly, directly, through parties, through organizations – if you don’t pay attention to and articulate what’s going on with real material power, communities fail.
So I argue that there’s a fantasy that haunts the internet, and it’s haunted it for at least a decade. And it’s the idea that if we just get the tools right and communicate effectively, we will be able to be intimate with one another and build the kinds of communities that don’t exist outside, in the rest of our lives. And I think that’s a deep failure and a fantasy.
Online conversation between R.U. Sirius and What’s the Matter with Kansas author Tom Frank.
Link.
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