{"id":1142,"date":"2008-05-14T05:57:52","date_gmt":"2008-05-13T19:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=1142"},"modified":"2008-05-14T05:59:48","modified_gmt":"2008-05-13T19:59:48","slug":"mills-on-may-68","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=1142","title":{"rendered":"Mills on May ’68"},"content":{"rendered":"

Demanding the Impossible<\/a>, Jennifer Mills<\/a>, newmatilda, May 2008.<\/p>\n

Choice quotes:<\/p>\n

“The movement’s strengths were its diversity and spontaneity<\/a>, which is why it’s so often quoted by anarchists when they’re trying to tell people what to do. But those strengths are also what makes soixante-huit<\/em> hard to pin down as a piece of history<\/a>, to slot neatly into our [sic<\/em>] narrative of post-war European development as tending inexorably toward democracy.”<\/p>\n

“A quick look at the APEC and G20 protests will illustrate that technologies of surveillance have altered the policing of protest movements. Police at G20 had the media-savvy<\/a> trick of making no [sic<\/em>] arrests on the day then rounding up protesters<\/a> across the country for months afterwards on painstakingly collated evidence. I’m not sure how much all this is costing the taxpayer but it’s costing the protesters a packet – it seems like there’s a new benefit gig every week<\/a> – and now the Victorian Police will be compensated for their losses.<\/p>\n

[“By the time it was all over, police had about 10,000 photographs and 3500 hours of footage to scan for malefactors. The white paper overalls<\/a> worn by so many “persons of interest” presented a challenge. Police had to rely on glimpses of shoes, bandanas, glasses, earrings, moles, teeth and T-shirts to identify suspects. When the raids began around Melbourne and later in Sydney, police headed straight for clothes cupboards. The 109-page official Summary of Offences<\/em> reads like a rag-trade inventory.”]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The methods of \u201868 have certainly been influential – if we remember nothing else, we remember<\/a> the slogans<\/a>. Many of the aesthetic techniques of the Situationists which infected the revolutionary attempt have since been seized upon by artists and media makers – the popularity of culture jamming, including shows like The Chaser<\/em>, owes its existence to the Situationist International<\/a> and intellectuals such as Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem.<\/p>\n

As Naomi Klein has pointed out [sic<\/em>] in No Logo<\/a><\/em>, corporations are also appropriating the aesthetics and tactics of street artists and jammers. But for a generation which grew up after punk these double ironies are a fact of culture.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the hardest thing of all about continuing the anarchist project is the art of navigating its tired language. Take crimethinc<\/a>, at its best a movement which breaks revolutionary ground for a new generation of youth, at its worst a set of dirgeful instruction manuals for emos<\/a>. It is part of the pleasure of youth to be alienated from the mainstream, but it is also true that times have changed. Information and choice are everywhere, and you can get a bottle of chardonnay for seven bucks. But are we any more free or merely saturated in images of freedom?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On “corporations… appropriating the aesthetics and tactics of street artists<\/a> and jammers<\/a>“, see<\/em> Anne Elizabeth Moore, Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity<\/a><\/em>, The New Press, 2007.<\/p>\n

On “punk”<\/a>, “double ironies” and “facts of culture”<\/a>, see<\/em> Nike Web Site Is Taken Over By Protesters<\/a>, Matt Richtel, The New York Times<\/em>, June 22, 2000; The Empire Strikes Back<\/a>… for a while anyway. There’s a million other examples<\/a>. Go create some more. (That’s an order.)<\/p>\n