Outside a pretty small world, the discussion of anarchism is pretty obscure. On the other hand, issues of how decisions are made democratically, and the meaning of consensus are a completely different matter. OWS has many currents. I say let a thousand flowers bloom. But then there still is the question of what is to be done. Imagining anarchism is one thing, more engaged practical action is another.

I think you are right. We cannot pretend that anarchist ideals and tactics do not play a major role in OWS. We cannot paper that reality over. And I think that we can all agree that the term ‘anarchy’ needs to be taken back. To avoid it, by coming up with less highly charged euphemisms, seems like a cop out. My thesis is that what scares the United States most about ‘anarchy’ is not violence, but instead the opposite.

One anarchist strategy that has been hugely important to OWS has been the consensus decision making process–though its important to note that consensus decision making has been around much longer than the term anarchy. I think that non-competitive forms of political practice such as the consensus decision making process, which is a more truly democratic process than the current one, are seen by the status quo as to be more threatening than violence. Why?; because our current system, values competition above all else. And violence is both the root and the fruit of competition. This results in a society which sees consensus as to be much more alien than violence. More specifically, in such a society, total consensus is not only seen as to be counter intuitive but also violent.

Corporations like FOX not only know this fact, they embrace it unabashedly. In this respect they are perhaps more honest then their liberal counter parts. They of course know that violence is a key ingredient in sensationalism. It is for them a form of currency. Anyone who has ever watched the consensus decision making process in action knows that it is perhaps one of the most frustratingly ‘unsensational’ things one could imagine. And, when played out in its most ideal sense there are no winners or losers. In a capitalist society such as ours this idea is viewed as to be far more radical and alien than violence. One sure sign of this, is the self evident fact that we are told constantly, on a daily basis, that the goal of society is to create ‘competitive individuals’. Given this, I think that what truly scares people about what many anarchist propose, are things like the consensus decision process.

Best,

David

P.S. For anyone interested in the consensus decision process. David Graeber wrote a great little piece on it in the Occupy Wallstreet Journal. Heres the link:

http://occupywallst.org/article/enacting-the-impossible/

I think you are right. We cannot pretend that anarchist ideals and tactics do not play a major role in OWS. We cannot paper that reality over. And I think that we can all agree that the term ‘anarchy’ needs to be taken back. To avoid it, by coming up with less highly charged euphemisms, seems like a cop out. My thesis is that what scares the United States most about ‘anarchy’ is not violence, but instead the opposite.

One anarchist strategy that has been hugely important to OWS has been the consensus decision making process–though its important to note that consensus decision making has been around much longer than the term anarchy. I think that non-competitive forms of political practice such as the consensus decision making process, which is a more truly democratic process than the current one, are seen by the status quo as to be more threatening than violence. Why?; because our current system, values competition above all else. And violence is both the root and the fruit of competition. This results in a society which sees consensus as to be much more alien than violence. More specifically, in such a society, total consensus is not only seen as to be counter intuitive but also violent.

Corporations like FOX not only know this fact, they embrace it unabashedly. In this respect they are perhaps more honest then their liberal counter parts. They of course know that violence is a key ingredient in sensationalism. It is for them a form of currency. Anyone who has ever watched the consensus decision making process in action knows that it is perhaps one of the most frustratingly ‘unsensational’ things one could imagine. And, when played out in its most ideal sense there are no winners or losers. In a capitalist society such as ours this idea is viewed as to be far more radical and alien than violence. One sure sign of this, is the self evident fact that we are told constantly, on a daily basis, that the goal of society is to create ‘competitive individuals’. Given this, I think that what truly scares people about what many anarchist propose, are things like the consensus decision process.

Best,

David

P.S. For anyone interested in the consensus decision process. David Graeber wrote a great little piece on it in the Occupy Wallstreet Journal. Heres the link:

http://occupywallst.org/article/enacting-the-impossible/

I in no way feel as if I’ve stooped to Hannity’s level. I have my reasons for challenging him at his own game however. The fact of the matter is that our websites, facebook pages, and twitter accounts have a reach in the thousands even dozens of thousands daily and even more when things get really tense. An organization like MSNBC however has dozens to hundreds of thousands paying attention to them daily. An organization like Fox unfortunately has hundreds of thousands to millions paying attention to them everyday as Hannity sorta pointed out in spite of the fact that overall rates of TV viewership appear to be going down. Going on Fox, (I’ve done so about 5 times total now) is always a risk, and a necessary one in my opinion. I told Hannity the day after in a 15 minute interview that wound up lasting a whole hour that the reason why once respectable papers such as the Wall Street Journal don’t report on corporate crime on Wall Street is because Hannity’s boss, an international criminal as far as I’m concerned owns the Wall Street Journal. To be clear, Fox news is everybit as responsible for the crisis we are all in as Wall Street, both political parties, the Federal Reserve system, etc. My interview with Hannity may not have gone as well as the other interviews I’ve done on Fox, but the fact of the matter is that I’ll manage all the hate and ridicule I have to in order to confront these people when they offer me the opportunity to do so, because a civil society simply cannot exist so long as Fox continues to make it socially acceptable to pass off hate for others as news.

Furthermore none of those interviews such as this one with Liz Claman had anywhere near as much exposure as the Hannity interview which been posted many times on Youtube with many of the posts several thousands of views. Other have actually made clips to respond directly to the interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7kQHFnVlVRI#!

I don’t particularly enjoy being ridiculed for attempting to have an honest conversation with someone who allegedly reports on the news, I’m not at all happy that the negative attention has spilled over into space which was deliberately set up as an alternative to the mass media spin zone, but this is unfortunately part of the job and I’m mostly ok with the way this is playing out at the moment. Did I make OWS look bad? It’s a matter of perspective. I doubt it mostly because most of the bloggers are slamming me personally rather than OWS. My colleagues in OWS all want to go onto Hannity now because they think that he looked like an idiot and the PR groups are thinking of ways to counter his strategy of interruption. Perhaps a few liberals were turned off by OWS because of this, but I’m willing to wager that they were infinitely more turned off by Hannity than anything I had to say. Consider this comment from democurmudgeon.blogspot.com…”Harrison Schultz took on Sean Hannity, (this is his second visit to Fox News) and showed how easy it is to make these ideologues look stupid. Cliched cartoon hosts really do insult the viewers intelligence…but then we are talking about the Fox News audience, nevermind?” And as for the conservatives? I doubt anything I had to say gave them a favorable opinion about OWS, but I don’t think that any of them had a favorable opinion of OWS to begin with that is if they had any actual opinion bout it at all. I find the fact that their talking this much (badly albeit) about OWS extremely significant. They not only perceived me as getting slammed but they certainly seemed to enjoy it as well, which is precisely why I suspect and hope that FOX news will probably want to start featuring more “news” about OWS, giving the movement more opportunities to return and continue to challenge them. Given this experience I almost think it may be preferable to actually allow hosts like Hannity to verbally abuse occupiers since it seems to get more engagement from conservatives than would completely slamming them. (The hour long radio rematch in which I miked checked Hannity has yet to appear online). Based on my experiences with this movement I’m also quite convinced that if these Hosts continue to verbally abuse occupiers who are less fortunate than themselves, merely for attempting to express their opinions, than I find it rather likely that public sentiment will turn against Fox just as it does when the NYPD physically brutalizes occupiers. I learned from my experience in advertising that ‘awareness’, of a given message often occurs before people become “favorable” to it and then they may choose to identify and “engage” with the message, product etc. Not that things always work out this way in the sequence, given that the conservative masses are totally engaged in slamming me at the moment. This is only the beginning of an “engagement funnel” as far as I’m concerned.

As for anarchy, now, at a time like this? Yes absolutely of course. Most of those I met in the pre-sept 17 days, were in fact anarchists. The general assembly we used to arrive at group consensus was most certainly based upon Anarchist principles of horizontal-ism and leaderlessness. Anarchist ideals have taken this movement an incredibly far way, and given the success of May Day there’s little doubt in my mind that anarchist ideals will continue to take us even further away from business as usual. Anarchy has been a dirty word, associated with romanticized violence for far too long now and part of the reason why I’ve publicly identified myself as an anarchist, and showed up in a suit and (usually a tie) is in a direct attempt to challenge these stereotypes. Anarchy is also exactly the sort of thing that passionately irrational conservatives love to hate, and the more they enjoy hating it, degrading it, and using it as something to reverse-identify with, the more I suspect that they’ll unwittingly learn to love it.

As a self identified leftist as I watched Harrison debating Hannity, I found myself finding pleasure in what I perceived of as the sheer magnitude of Hannity’s stupidity–and Harrison must be given credit for amplifying this more than usual. In short Hannity’s performance in a sense made me feel like an unambiguous winner. But who really is the winner here? I suspect that what I liked about the performance was the lack of ambiguity. It is like when you go to a ball game to see the Red Sox play the Yankees, you know your team and you cheer them on. You also know who the opposing team is and you know not to cheer them on. Most importantly, you can count on the fact that all of these unambiguous relationships will eventually be resolved in the form of an unambiguous win or loss. The problem is of course that with the creation of every winner comes a loser. Much like reality television, shows like Hannity, have transcended this problem. In that they have succeeded in creating a form of entertainment, which leaves fans from both sides feeling as if they have won unambiguously.

I suspect that shows like Hannity are very good at giving many on the so-called left exactly what they want, in that they serve to situate them in a clearly unambiguous relationship. A relationship which brings into being the figure of ‘Hannity’. Hannity, is for the left, a sort of wish figure. A figure that represents everything they detest (capitalism, arrogance, lies, meanness ect). Yet, what makes the figure of Hannity so satisfying for them is that it flaunts these aspects so unambiguously, and in such a seemingly localizable form. The Hannity figure gives us on the so called left the false, yet satisfying, notion that the problem of ‘capitalism’ and ‘inequality’ is unambiguous-though we know that nothing could be further from the truth. Note also how the Hannity figure appears as unambiguously inarticulate and ignorant from the perspective of those on the left. Isn’t this also reassuring in that it gives the left the sense that their ‘enemy’ can be readily identified and is weak. Given this logic, it can be said that Harrison-for whom I have greater sympathy for in this rather pessimistic reading-was also while on that set transformed into a wish figure. I mean of course from the perspective of the right. The ad hominem attacks against him on this thread are evidence that many have come to view him as such a wish figure. One that arguably makes the Hannity wish figure more potent.

In this way I think that FOX has quite artfully created a rather seductive sport where both sides walk away feeling as though they have won. One reason for this is that FOX always casts grotesque polemic opposites (casting is crucial). On the left people can look at Hannity and laugh, and talk about how stupid and mean he is. On the right, people can do the same with Harrison and the Occupy folks that they see him as embodying. Either way there is no room for ambiguity in such a world. This strategy is of course great for FOX in that it increases viewership by getting people who have very different political views than FOX to watch their programming. But in the end it seems destructive to both ‘sides’–sides which the strategy helps reify–because the strategy relies on and promotes, the perpetuation of a wall. And as we know a wall is rather good at creating an unambiguous dichotomy, but not so good at promoting ambiguous dichotomies. And ambiguity seems to be more in accordance with things like empathy and understanding–and even reality.

Best,

David

There are two things here that I see as self evident. Firstly, the majority of these comments do not invite a response. Secondly, FOX news is first and foremost propaganda par excellence. And I do not mean this in some casual metaphoric sense. I mean propaganda with a capital P-with all the historic implications that come with the word. I mean the dangerous kind. I mean the kind that deals in classism, sexism, racism, colonialism and all the various ‘isms’. Capital P propaganda is special in that it has the actual power to perpetuate these ‘isms’. For this reason I doubt that it is possible to express within FOX any utterance that poses any challenge to these ‘isms’ which in fact constitute it. Furthermore, though it may be possible for one to go on FOX and tell ones’ side of the story, one can be certain that it will be framed accordingly. Framed in such a way that it becomes part of the Propaganda.

But I think the problem is even more sinister than framing. What I mean here is the problem of the invitation. FOX’s invitations-like so many of the venomous comments on this site-are not genuine invitations to constructive dialogue. In fact I’m convinced that any invitation from FOX should be politely turned down. I suspect that if FOX invites one back after one has given ones’ side of the story, it is a sure sign that FOX has decided that that person is serving their interest somehow. The interesting aspect of all this is that Propaganda like FOX does not really want guests that endorse it. What it thrives on, hungers for, and cannot survive without, is an antithetical, and equally hostile Other. Therefore, I think that perhaps sometimes the most powerful response to an entity like FOX is complete silence.

David Peppas

Harrison was on Hannity and the Hannity fans have come to Deliberately Considered to attack Harrison. I thought I would eliminate the posts that run counter to the culture of deliberate and respectful deliberation (as specified by our posting policies) but couldn’t get the function to work. Generally, we should welcome strong differences of opinion, but trust people will be careful to be respectful and non – abusive. I condemn anti-disability comments, as I know you do, despair that this is the way people think they must express their opinions and entertain themselves.

As I understand it, this blog was created as platform for dialogue, regardless of the political position of the arguments—all political positions are welcome here. As such, I am surprised to see insults thrown around. However, I understand that politics and affect overlap, emotions rise and hateful words are thrown. I realize the term “retard” is used here to disparage OWS at large and Harrison in specific, but they are also an attempt to delegitimize the politics of disability at large, and the disability rights movement in specific. The cognitively disabled are arguably one of the most marginalized populations in the United States and while this conversation about economic inequality directly relates to these “leeches,” I believe we can have this conversation in a respectful manner, with dignity for all.

That said here is an early link to a post I wrote about OWS when it was still operating in Zuccotti Park. http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2011/11/the-clear-present-and-positive-goals-of-occupy-wall-street/ It presents a partial answer to your question.