Indyrad writes:

Cyber-movement Against The War
By Adam Roark

On February 15, 2003, 10 million people simultaneously rallied in protest of the pending U.S. invasion of Iraq. It was the largest coordinated protest in the history of the world,(1) kicking off nearly 2 years of mass demonstrations culminating with the 400,000 – 1 million-strong Republican National Convention protest in New York City on August 29, 2004. The swift rise and demise of this movement leads one to question its strength and function; both the spectacular scale of these protests and the coordination of them are noteworthy. The U.S. peace movement in particular largely failed to present itself as ungovernable and effective, acting rather to reaffirm the legitimacy of a political system which had lost substantial credibility following the 1998-2000 crisis.

In “Networks, Swarms, Multitudes”, Eugene Thacker gives definition to the form which the anti-war movement took. The movement emerged as a swarm: a dynamic, heterogeneous phenomenon with ambiguous politics. The swarm emphasizes collective pragmatism and a tension between unorchestrated pattern and undefined purpose. Conceptually, the swarm is the postmodern convergence of biological, political, and technological understanding: the anti-war swarm is grounded in the biological notion of swarm intelligence, an undefined political theory, and an emergent technological calculability.(2)

While the anti-war movement functions as a swarm, it becomes structured by the technological network connections which it rallies around, constructing its development around the possibilities (virtualities) allowed by internet-based mobilization.

The anti-war movement has used the internet as an advanced flyering system rather than as a new ground for struggle. Anti-capitalist activism has thrived on the internet for years, ranging from challenging notions of property and scarcity (private property assumes scarcity, but file-sharing deprives no one of property),(3) to embarrassing and/or shutting down corporate and government networks. Anti-capitalist and anti-war movements overlap, however the erupting anti-war movement found few ways to utilize network technology in order to impede the war’s progress.

In March 2003, Direct Action To Stop The War in San Francisco typified a 'swarm within a swarm,' disrupting the city's Financial District during a protest march. Utilizing a mobile, de-centralized strategy, protesters halted business as usual and targeted war profiteers for disruption.

In Italy that same month, train blockades slowed the transportation of US war material for 7 days. Utilizing personal communications technology and de-centralized planning, efforts begun by the Disobedientti led to the mobilization of train workers and tens of thousands of protestors in Pisa. Police were ultimately forced to march with the train as it drifted along. The cargo was transported across the country, but the appearance of a train with military escorts marching alongside it led some to proclaim that "the war has already come to Italy."(4)

Throughout the rest of the movement’s brief history, the indefinite yet predictable network infrastructure was dependent on numerical effectiveness to accomplish ambiguous goals. It is this organizational uncertainty which allowed the movement to be redirected into solidifying the U.S. political process.

The dependence on technological networks to build a movement in the U.S. has produced little more than large crowds which have digital connectivity, but are lacking in more than a generalized collectivity. While connectivity may be a prerequisite for collectivity, collectivity is not necessarily a prerequisite for connectivity as such. Complications arise when a combination of technological euphoria and new social practices lead to an over-optimistic view of connectivity as immediately implying a collectivity.(5)

If the US movement meets Thacker’s definition of a swarm, it is debatable whether this is a desirable manifestation of a popular movement. Instead, swarm intelligence seems to describe the schizophrenic byproduct of political discourse in an information society.

The excessive optimism surrounding the possibilities of the cyber-movement seemed to be contagious, spanning from progressive sociology departments in the US and UK to the nettime list-serv discussions and other intersections of anti-imperialist and technological theory. There is an abundance of essays with titles like ‘From Virtual Public Spheres to Global Justice’. The collectivity which was celebrated by the full spectrum of the Left in 2003 feels ironically like the tech stock bubble crash. The dependence on connectivity demonstrated widespread alienation and a troubling attempt to fuse together the virtual and the cyber, which are defined by their opposition.

Cyber-virtuality

For Deleuze, the virtual has an ideality that is proper to it, but which does not merge with any possible image, any abstract idea. The virtual is thus real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.(6) Cyber-[movement] refers to mediation of activity through computers and networks. The US anti-war movement is a purely cyber-movement which looks to the virtual to guide its action.

The relation between the real and the probable, however, also evokes the spectre of the improbable, the fluctuation and hence the virtual. As such, a cultural politics of information somehow resists the confinement of social change to a closed set of mutually excluding and predetermined alternatives, and deploys an active engagement with the transformative potential of the virtual (that which is beyond measure).(7)

In all fairness, the virtual is the architect of the cyber. But attempting to build the kingdom of the virtual on earth within the limitless expanse of cyberspace is a destructive task. Cyberspace has its own system philosophy which, when applied to virtuality, creates mediated spaces(8) more or less like any other space on earth.

If inability to stop the war is indicative of failure, it is mistaken to try and build a virtual cyber-movement. The cyber-movement is inherently destructive of its own potential. Attempting to make real the virtual within the constrictive framework allowed by email, cell phones, and html involves the isolation of its potential for larger social transformation. The limitations are built into the dependence on technological mediums with predetermined possibilities. Where can the movement go? Larger gatherings, more crowded list-servs, more hits, more pages.

The virtual is then broken down into a digestible and dismal cycle of expansion and contraction which ultimately has nothing to do with the war except highlighting collective frustration, alienation, and technological addiction.

Co-optation

Leading up to the 2004 U.S. election, the cyber movement failed to resolve what Hardt and Negri term the incommunicability of struggle(9), the inability of people to identify struggles around the world as being related to their own, thus reacting and resisting in common. The construction of the cyber movement highlighted the incommunicability of struggle and caused further constriction by its mediated conception of the virtual which, in a machinic fashion, envisions only larger gatherings and more inclusive networks.

The logical direction for this cycle is back into electoral politics. What potential is there in volume without collectivity? The breakdown of such a movement was eminent, defaulting to a least-common-denominator: that Bush has to go.

The demise of the virtual in the U.S. opposition is best characterized by the rise and fall of MoveOn.org, and by the rallying cry of anyonebutbush around John Kerry, a pro-war opposition candidate. Kerry, attempting to formulate a stance which appeals to the anti-war swarm of the American left, resolved that the war should be fought differently, more multi-laterally. This is a stern warning to the model anti-war movement: its strategy and collective form permits it to valorize Empire’s functioning, but not threaten it.

In fact, the greatest challenge to the Iraq police action (besides widespread Iraqi resistance) may have emerged independently of the organized anti-war movement. Following the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid, over 10 million Spaniards demonstrated against the Popular Party’s participation, resulting in their removal from power and the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. Further, the intimidating ferocity of the ‘insurgency’ led the majority of the coalition to announce troop withdrawal during the intense fighting prior to Bush’s re-election.(10)

Should toppling conservative government be the goal of the U.S. anti-war movement? By March of 2004, Kerry was clearly a pro-war candidate, and his election would mean only better management of Empire rather than translation of Aznar’s defeat in Spain into defeat of the war. In the case of the U.S., toppling liberal government would be an equally necessary prerequisite for stopping the war.

Perhaps the movement was sterilized by its adoption of the technological network, robbing itself of destructive power. Marches in the U.S. resemble heavily-policed parades, while unrestrained frustration is expressed in the night against Army recruitment centers across the country. Brandon Walsh and David Segal, respectively facing 5 and 20 year sentences for destruction of military property, are largely isolated from the broader movement. Why is it that small acts of destruction, motivated by similar politics and identical desires, are so alien to the anti-war movement? Dependence on surveilled and permanently recorded mediums of communication certainly influences the militancy of a movement. Collective acts of defiance are also lost to the cyber-movement, as reviving the democratic destructive power of past movements is neither discussable nor imaginable in a movement that exists primarily on the internet.

This problem is also at the heart of the movement’s co-optation by electoral politics. For Kerry, there was no consequence for endorsing the Iraq war. Opposing the war would have aided the movement in unleashing its potential, revisiting the shaken confidence of the U.S. political system in the period from 1998 to 2000. With few ties to the Iraqi resistance and trapped by the system philosophy of internet mobilization, the anti-war movement presented Empire with a frustrated, unconvincing swarm which was welcomed with open arms into the fold of electoral politics.

(1) “Millions Join Global Anti-war Protests”. BBC News, February 17, 2003

(2) Thacker, Eugene , “Networks, Swarms, Multitudes Part 1”. http://www.ctheory.net

(3) Hardt, Michael & Negri, Antonio. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire 187. Penguin Press, New York.

(4) Oliveri, Adele, “Stop That Train!” http://ww.zmag.org

(5) Thacker, Eugene. “Networks, Swarms, Multitudes Part 2”. http://www.ctheory.net

(6) Deleuze, Gilles, “How Do We Recognize Structuralism?”. Desert Islands and Other Texts. Semiotext(e), New York.

(7) Terranova, Tiziana. Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. Pluto Press, London.

(8) Cole, David R, Learning Through the Virtual. http://www.ctheory.net

(9) Hardt, Michael & Negri, Antonio. Empire 54. Harvard Press.

(10) Richberg, Keith B. “Spanish Socialists Oust Party of U.S. War Ally”. Washington Post, March 15, 2004."