Friday, January 20, 2017

Negation II

To say that one is Anti-X implies that one is against something, opposed, in opposition. Strictly, being an enemy of X is to be opposed to X. 


But the matter is hardly easy to address, which is why the word of the margarine word contains so much insight: It is too easy to say that if you are not with us, you're against us, that, if you are in opposition to leftism (because it is pro-state/civilization), you agree with right wing politics.--As if these positions were easy to figure. In Negation I, I implied that there is a world of difference between double negation contained and spelled out in Logical operations, whereby not-not A is logically equivalent to A (boolean equivalency), and, on the other hand, the operation that occurs in a delicate qualification when we bracket the position and negate, as in not(not-A); for in the latter moment, the term has a different meaning, because the negation being negated does not permit alteration. Of course, it is not that this operation of bracketing functions coercively to deny the reduction to boolean equivalence, obviously; it is that this possibility might shed some light on some contradictions and difficulties in anarchist practise. Consider being against the left. By now most of us can see that being post-left doesn't mean one is right wing, alt-right or whatever; the explanation is that the margarine world (Cf. Margarine Words) is a rendering only by coercion and ignorance, of logical reductions switched and imposed upon pragmatic uses. However, the important thing is that the margarine word as a logical maneuver doesn't have any loyalty. Given that most of us can see that post-left signifies a position beyond the right and beyond the left, perhaps this can-opener can help us to see other issues. To gather the question before us, I want to note that Nationalism is not a special property of Fascism, unless Left Fascism means something. Now, Antifa doesn't seem to see the point spelled out by Fredy Perlman  here; only groups roughly associated with Neo-Nazis fit the bill; rarely, if ever, Stalinists; rarely, if ever, Maoists. The critique that both these authoritarian positions are fascisms because capital creates classes, because the state never withered away in Leftist Countries is important; but even more important is the historical fact that Nationalism has supported popular leftist uprisings. It would seem then that, prima facie, Nationalism is not sufficient for defining right wing politics. Perhaps we can untangle the problem by making a concerted effort to understand the social imaginary around "race". 

Terms like "racism" are nearly meaningless because they tend to be vaguely univocal, to the point that it is difficult to convince someone that falls under racism, from one side, to think of themselves as such. If racism was originally defined as being anti-Black, that a racist¹ is one that is trying to protect the white race, then, analogously, the idea is that, in its second stage, it is racist² to be against immigration because such is an effort to protect White (read: national) privilege. The racist¹ position is that, the one that has been rendered included (bare-life, on the way to full inclusion, however subordinate) ought to remain subordinate with respect to rights; in the second sense, the idea is that those that have been included, without rights ought not to have rights, and ought to be returned wherever, and that those not yet included ought to remain excluded. The aporia surrounding this double sense is that everyday people think we are talking about racism¹ when we are talking about racism², and that, importantly, protecting national privilege has, at once, something properly historical to do with being white--which everyone accepts--but which now (under racism²) means the problem of having become (or becoming) white. Thus, one can easily point to the problem of the black President leading the Empire of white privilege; his blackness was never poor; it was never the APOC revolutionary figure set to challenge white privilege, because, National privilege is no longer white privilege in the sense that reifies external bodily markings. Anyone can become an enemy of the state, anyone can become bare-life under the continuous threat of martial law defined as such in an exemplary and ontologically explicit way for the prisoner or the homeless person. These have been rendered right-less; and it is because the state gives us rights that these can be taken away. The State is Sovereign and independent of us in its capacity to narrow and make explicit the ontology of Martial Law, which need not be totally explicit. Thus, if anyone can be rendered bare life, anyone can participate in the production of wealth that is signified by the meaning of Becoming White.  The obvious conclusion which returns to mark race¹ and race² as a mere and difficult analogy to argue is that not All National Privilege is the sole property of white people, because, being a white person isn't necessary for Becoming White.  

And so, the average poor person in the west may very well be anti-immigrant--given the problem of vying for scraps, for jobs--but it is difficult to label them racist because, as they would insist, they are evidently not anti-black. They do not hate all blacks--they have black friends, they might say--they are just pro-nationalist, and as such, it is a consequence for them to despise Others in the way things are going badly, Others in an uncertain future that might still be controlled to their redneck favour through a few petty reforms of law. The redneck that hates the immigrant, perhaps not explicitly but rather simply because they themselves are patriotic, is no more common on the left than on the right, since patriotism is neither explicitly left or right. The racist that thinks all blacks should be lynched deserves nothing good, obviously. What I want to say is that the redneck living in the woods that doesn't really care about much except life with their family and survival, may very well be a racist, but it is not simply because they love their country that they are racist. It is mere rhetoric to label them nazis; the negation of what anti-fascists say poorly is not noncoercively reducible to neo-nazi fascism. Nationalism is not essentially neo-nazi fascism. This is another consequence of the logic of the margarine word; we have to watch the slippage it creates. And not because racists deserve a free pass, but rather because everyday people aren't political. 


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