>>

By Maha Maamoun, during her visit to Switzerland 2007

Am 02.02.2011 um 18:48 schrieb Mattathias Schwartz:

Hannes,

I loved your P.S. -- the news from Egypt is so exciting and I am still trying to figure out what to make of it. I am very curious how it is being received in your country.


Matt,

It's absolutely amazing times. You are right.
I have visited Egypt several Times and quite recently Tunisia. I wonder whether we are all missing a chance.

Egypt:

I haven't received any news from my friends in Egypt. I do actually worry about them. some of them seem to be at Tahrir place right now, according to another friend. Some others are in Alexandria.
I fear for their lives, as these guys are artists, who in many ways lead a different lifestyle.
Currently there seems to be anarchy. No protection for nobody. A mix of hope and fear.

From my perspective Obama has missed a historic chance to attract huge part of the young hearts of the arab world. There is momentum comparable to 1989/90 eastern Europe.
European politics failed even worse. Berlusconi supports Mubarak, Westerwelle does nothing but "fear the islamists taking over".

Me, I do fear an islamist Egypt could be really bad for Israel of course.

My idea was to set a clear, very symbolic meeting, but strictly non-interventionist signal from the so called free world, that "free arab nations" would be welcomed.
Knowing the region a little bit and speaking some few words in arabic I feel like there is movements pulling in several direction, towards secular democratic or theocratic directions. but people want to be more free.

Most of the people over there are part of our generation or younger. Like us, they mostly despise political ideologies as outdated. People neither have nor want general directions. This pluralist generation, some might also say egoistic, is prone to be overrun by small, well organized groups who share common goals i.e. ideologies.

My Egypt Friends:
- http://www.acafspace.org/main.html
- http://www.ciccairo.com/

Tunisia
My tunisian friends are doing okay, by the time. I think my May visit to Tunisia was one of my biggest fails as a journalist. I was invited by some agency who together with the tunisian government had set up a luxurious rallye for wealthy westerners. Their idea was to send a signal to the western world, that Tunisia has potential.

I saw another potential. The power of the internet. Look at that picture. I stopped our driver - a government guy who wouldn't talk about politics - because I was fascinated. this painting was in one of the medium sized towns (it could even have been sidi bouzid) which we crossed on our way back from the sahara to tunis.


pre-revolutionary mindset. evidence in Tunisia, May 2010.

now, in this setting, the graffiti is amazing. it talks about porn and punk rock, it's several authors, who join together. also they mix english, arabic and asian letters. these are globalists. most fascinating to me: they use the internet heart <3.

Back in Tunis, I met a young actress, beautiful, former miss arab world, who had short hair. Because she was starring in a movie about a young student, whose traditional daddy would shave her head, because he had found out about her relationship to another guy in her student town tunis. she was together with an elitist guy, who was actually quite cool personally, surfer dude and former fashion apprentice for a well known european designer. even though he was involved in some kind of Ben Ali family issues, he openly admitted he disliked the system. It was all to obvious. Even the elites were fallin apart, joining hands with different minded people.

I felt something was going on, I felt it was internet and politics. but I felt like nobody would understand me if I write about it. I didn't write anything. I failed.

That was the rally in NYT: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/burning-fish-rally/

Now I think it might be interesting to follow the transition in Tunisia and Egypt from a personal view. "How does anarchy and revolution feel at home?" Like an ongoing story.
I have people down there who would talk about that. One of them had set up a branch of an international model agency in Tunisia back then. Later on Gaddafi ruined his business by not paying him for a certain event.

Any better ideas?

Best, Hannes



Hannes,

Wow, thank you for this. I haven't been to Egypt or Tunisia--I'm super grateful to you for all these insights. I don't think that you failed on your mission in Tunisia. It seems like you came away with experience, and insight, which is more than what usually happens on a
junket. It would be such a cool travelogue for you to write up now, with everything that's happened since. Yeah, that could be such a great story.

I think we here in the United States feel at a further remove from what's happening in Egypt and Tunisia, although we are excited and always in favor of people clamoring for more freedom. But really,revolution hasn't been a serious subject here, domestically, since 1969, so people have sort of lost their mental vocabulary for thinking it through, except as something that brown people do, from time to time, on other continents. Even the Tea Party / anti-Obama people here in the U.S. are not very serious--they are frustrated, and they like to talk, but they are highly aware of how much they benefit from our current system, flawed as it is.

I wish there were some way to organize direct, ground-level communication between people in Egypt and Tunisia and other places. Twitter is the beginning of this, but it doesn't feel very collective, deliberative, or substantive.

This ...

Now I think it might be interesting to follow the transition in Tunisia and Egypt from a personal view. "How does anarchy and revolution feel at home?" Like an ongoing story.

... is such a terrific idea. How do you think it could be accomplished?

This ...

Most of the people over there are part of our generation or younger. Like us, they mostly despise political ideologies as outdated. People neither have nor want general directions. This pluralist generation, some might also say egotistic, is prone to be overrun by small, well organized groups who share common goals.


... really struck me. Yeah, that's the problem in a nutshell. How can we, the global anti-ideological egoists, organize ourselves into a collective political force while maintaining our essential independence and free thought, with succumbing to any ideologies?

In N. O. right now, trying to put together a long piece about XXXX.

Best, Matt


Dear Matt

funny. the moment I read your thoughts I thought, maybe I wanna ask him, whether I can publish this dialogue on my website.

You said ...
I think we here in the United States feel at a further remove from what's happening in Egypt and Tunisia, although we are excited and always in favor of people clamoring for more freedom. But really, revolution hasn't been a serious subject here, domestically, since 1969, so people have sort of lost their mental vocabulary for thinking it through, except as something that brown people do, from time to time, on other continents.

-That's amazing. I thought, americans would feel much more self confident and powerful. Also, I was wondering how do american people with a non-western-european background feel about revolutions? Ukrainian, persian, african americans?

...I wish there were some way to organize direct, ground-level communication between people in Egypt and Tunisia and other places.

- This sounds like a good idea. Do I understand you correctly: You mean, like a dialogue between people from different countries? Or a tool to enable many-to-many communication amongst people? Something like the internet, but more direct? More like an issue related channel?

....This ... Now I think it might be interesting to follow the transition in Tunisia and Egypt from a personal view. "How does anarchy and revolution feel at home?" Like an ongoing story.

... is such a terrific idea. How do you think it could be accomplished?

I thought about publishing a daily thing, maybe just copy-paste a skype chat between me and some tunisian/egyptian friends?
The format of skype dialogue is great. I have used it for print, it appears familiar. A very international tool. An additional feature could be letting readers send in their questions.

...This ...

Most of the people over there are part of our generation or younger. Like us, they mostly despise political ideologies as outdated. People neither have nor want general directions. This pluralist generation, some might also say egoistic, is prone to be overrun by small, well organized groups who share common goals.

... really struck me. Yeah, that's the problem in a nutshell. How ca we, the global anti-ideological egoists, organize ourselves into a collective political force while maintaining our essential independence and free thought, with succumbing to any ideologies?

yours is a much more straightforward way of bringing it to the point.

It's exactly this point I have been thinking about for years. How can a liberal society exist when there is fear of radical minorities? How, without becoming totalitarian and oppressing all kinds of ideologies? To me, this has been the number one big issue of the zero years. Being german, I have experienced this situation first hand with tiny naziskin minorities literally ruling public spaces in eastern germany.

Then I was thinking about the late 1980s, early 1990s. Happy times, walls were crumbling. Fukuyama thought the end of history was here. All kinds of micro cultures were developing. From counterculture to subculture to pluralism. Remember this italian clothing brand "United Colors of Benetton"? It had a very interesting integrative approach. Uniform cuts, made to suit everybody, but in all kinds of colors. Advertisements were featuring all races, with everybody wearing "his" color of the ever same very bourgeois V-neck pullover. The greatest common denominator.

Then the towers were brought down, 911, and distrust, fear, suddenly developed. Like, wait, maybe what if all these other micro-cultures were dangerous? how can you establish a society, with groups that don't have now common denominator, no universal concept of human rights etc? Look at hiphop, maybe the most dominating worldwide musical trend of these years. A friend of mine, a "real guy" said: "what if hiphop could become a political system?" I just started laughing. But he was right. Its a musical form of the "ghetto", where micro groups in a setting of distrust just look for themselves. Fuck the common denominator, gangster. In Switzerland, were I live, people just started throwing out foreigners (picture of political campaign of the leading swiss party (30%): http://ch.indymedia.org/images/2007/09/52920.jpg). Hiphop is amazingly popular here, still.

Maybe because there is much less physical threat and also because you don't have to have a "coherent identity" I think the internets has recently shown an approach to act collectively without falling back into outdated, potentially totalitarian "collectivism".

look at "anonymous" attacks on certain websites like paypal etc. From the outside, this looked like a well-organised, collective action. activists, terrorists, like fox news said. from the inside, it was just single persons, out for the lulz. acting freely. somebody came up with the idea: "let's attack this and that. because of, er.....okay: they are against wikileaks." someone else liked the idea and found the justification legitimate. then somebody else popped up and said: "hi, here is the ion-cannon. download here and use for/against whatever." all those who downloaded the ion thing to use it against "the enemies of wikileaks" just acted a single entities, out for fun. but individuals grasped a collective feeling at the same time. they were just following an idea on an opt-in opt-out level.

But, as you were pointing out in your trolling report, this is not truly a liberal society. But it's a society, where as a matter of fact, you don't have to fear other peoples totalitarianism so much.

What will be the impact of this on peoples minds, if they grow up in the internet a 50% of their time?

sorry for tl;dr, hannes



Hannes, this is a very cool conversation. It made my day yesterday.


Also, I was wondering how do american people with a non-western-european background feel about revolutions? Ukrainian, persian, african americans?

This is a great question, one that I don't know the answer to. My hunch is that African Americans have a very wide range of opinions about it, and what it might mean for the rest of Africa, if anything.
The other minority are probably more homogenous. One interesting thing about minorities in the U.S. is that they are the real bearers of the "American Dream," the idea that you can work hard, get a good job, lead a materially rich lifestyle, and have your children go to college and prosper even more. White elites don't buy into this, having experienced firsthand all the spiritual void that the luxuries of the neoliberal order can't satisfy. And most working-class whites have given up on the hope of ever getting there. But the folks who come here from India and China and Latin America are still on the rising side of that mountain. And many of them lived through real revolutions, or had parents who did. Still, I have no idea how they're reacting to Egypt.


There is huge uncertainty in europe about how serious the tea-party should be taken. It looks like we need some good information or a great report about this.

I gave this a shot, a few months back ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/magazine/01Appleseed-t.html ... the Tea Party is sort of an accidental conspiracy between the hypersensitive liberal U.S. media and tough-talking conservative wannabe extremists, to create the illusion of a threat. It serves both of their purposes. At least that's my opinion.

...This.... sounds like a good idea. Do I understand you correctly: You mean, like a dialogue between people from different countries? Or a tool to enable many-to-many communication amongst people? Something like the internet, but more direct? More like an issue related channel?

Honestly, I have no idea what this would look like. It would definitely happen over the Internet and is starting to happen.
Basically, once you give everyone the tools to communicate with one another, instantly, you're going to see the emerge of a cosmopolitan global consciousness, and it's going to start talking to itself and about itself and getting more and more advanced. Wikipedia and Couchsurfing are probably my two favorite examples of this so far..

I thought about publishing a daily thing, maybe just copy-paste a skype chat between me and some tunisian/egyptian friends? The format of skype dialogue is great. I have used it for print, it appears familiar. A very international tool. An additional feature could be letting readers send in their questions.


Yeah, you should totally do this. People want to know what's happening on the ground. I only fear that I won't be able to read it, as I don't speak German or Arabic.


... following an idea on an opt-in opt-out level.

We need more ways to do this, and for the act of opting in to have consequences in the street, not just the Internet. I read one analyst who said the dumbest thing the Egyptian government did was turn off the Internet, because then all of the kids had nothing to do but go out and protest. I don't know if that's actually true, but I like the idea. In some ways, a person sitting alone in a room hitting keys is the greatest threat to the totalitarian state; in other ways it's exactly what the state wants--a way for people to vent without initiating real action.

Hip-hop is indeed fascinating. Such a rich and potentially revolutionary cultural movement, that literally came out of nowhere and took over the ghetto, and was then almost completely co-opted by capitalism. But you can still find that original Public Enemy strain in certain places ...



How can a liberal society exist when there is fear of radical minorities? How, without becoming totalitarian and oppressing all kinds of ideologies?

Yes, this is *the* big question. I think we have to be really careful about publicly labeling certain people as "extremists." There's a certain population that says (and sometimes does) crazy things because they feel like no one's listening to them. If they feel like someone on the other side heard and understood them and somehow wove them into the consensus (this is different from agreeing) then they'll calm down and moderate their own views. The real trouble comes from the folks who won't be appeased by listening, or whose views are so abhorrent that they can't be incorporated into the liberal consensus. But a lot of these folks, even, if you pick away at their surface beliefs (hatred of racial minorities, say) you'll find some valid concerns (fear of globalization, distrust of elites). Part of the hardcore trolls' agenda is to create an ideology so self-consciously abhorrent that it will resist any of these attempts at engagement. And yeah, engagement is impossible unless you start with sincere people, communicating in good faith, and the trolls are certainly not that.

You should feel free to publish any or all of this on your website, if you like...

PS Also, I should ask, what's your best answer to this question ... >> How can a liberal society exist when there is fear of radical minorities? How, without becoming totalitarian and oppressing all kinds of ideologies?