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Hundreds of women assaulted in German NYE celebrations

So we seem to have a bit of consensus on a tentative account of how mass sexual assaults might have emerged from street crime networks.

The other challenge being made earlier was to produce some sort of left political account of these events, which I think necessarily considers their wider context, to set against those of the racist right. I think several people did so, but the challenge to produce a left reading kept being repeated anyhow and that eventually turned into a slagging match.

Hence I've pulled together some of the stuff I proposed in answer to that challenge earlier in the thread, much of it nicked from some Badiou I've been reading recently. This is a bit of a quick and dirty job, but if people really actually do want to talk about left perspectives on this stuff, rather than just smearing the left, then it'll do to start with.

Liberalism is triumphant across the globe. As a pathological consequence of capital's current modes of operation, and hence imperialism's current modes of intervention, rather than merely corrupting them as it used to, capital now frequently just collapses states and wrecks ecologies, leaving severely weakened states or increasingly, just a rabble of armed gangs, to manage the consequences while continuing to facilitate the flow of marketable loot.

States are unable and/or unwilling to force capital to treat these impacts as anything other than externalities. Transnational capitalism is actively destroying the relatively weak restraints placed upon it over the last couple of centuries (chiefly through working class organisation) and in the process, its actions are steadily increasing refugee flows into Europe. Meanwhile through the erosion of various forms of social contract, it's scaring the piss out of all but the most privileged classes within Europe.

1% of the global population possess 46% of available resources.

More broadly, the world's resources are divided up as follows (the 1% are counted as part of the 10% below)

10% of the global population possess 86% of the available resources.
40% of the global population possess 14% of the available resources.
50% of the global population possess nothing.

(Badiou's figures from an article that's been taken down for copyright reasons, I'll see if I can find a link elsewhere)

The 40% are potentially and visibly encouraged to be, scared shitless of the destitute 50%, either of joining them or of being victimised by them.

The 10% (and especially the 1%) are quite happy with things being that way, because otherwise they'd have the 90% (or indeed the 99%) taking a long hard look at them instead.

So why, in this context do mass sexual assaults apparently committed by a bunch of young lumpen males, mostly of refugee origin, take on the aspect of a 'clash of civilisation' and take on a demonstrably higher media profile than other, less politically charged sexual assaults which have been going on steadily in our society?

That destitute 50% are nothing to capital. They don't get hired to produce anything, they can't afford to consume anything and while they might have some value as a 'reserve army' with which to discipline the 40% who, for the moment, capital does have a use for, they're irrelevant to the global reproduction of capital. Most of these people are living in the zones where capital has crashed the state or the ecology or both, zones typically run by armed gangs, increasingly often composed of religious loons, and naturally many of them want to get the fuck out of there if they can.

Meanwhile here in our relatively safe European democracies, where enough people still have value to capital as producers and consumers to make it worth allowing a more or less functioning state to remain in place, the 40% who do possess something are actively encouraged by a convergence of interests between capital's propaganda machine and power-hungry neo-fascists to fear and hate the destitute and those from the collapsed zones who manage to find any kind of refuge here.

If violent nihilism is the result, either in the collapsed zones, in the lumpen interstices of Europe or in the form of far-right vigilantes kicking the shit out of random strangers 'in defence of aryan womanhood' then capital doesn't really have any reason to give a shit about it, nor do states have any constructive options for dealing with it, although no doubt their security apparatuses can get some extra perks and concessions if they play their cards right.

Dealing with it constructively would involve stopping capital from collapsing states and ecologies and a Marshall plan for fixing the damage, and those options aren't on offer at the ballot box or capable of being seriously discussed in the corporate media.
 
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Bernie Gunther said:
So we seem to have a bit of consensus on a tentative account of how mass sexual assaults might have emerged from street crime networks.

The other challenge being made earlier was to produce some sort of left political account of these events, which I think necessarily considers the wider context of the events, to set against those of the racist right. I think several people did so, but the challenge to produce a left reading kept being repeated anyhow and that eventually turned into a slagging match.

Hence I've pulled together some of the stuff I proposed in answer to that challenge earlier in the thread, much of it nicked from some Badiou I've been reading recently. This is a bit of a quick and dirty job, but if people really actually do want to talk about left perspectives on this stuff, rather than just smearing the left, then it'll do to start with.

Liberalism is triumphant across the globe. As a pathological consequence of capital's current modes of operation, and hence imperialism's current modes of intervention, rather than merely corrupting them as it used to, capital now frequently just collapses states and wrecks ecologies, leaving severely weakened states or increasingly, just a rabble of armed gangs, to manage the consequences while continuing to facilitate the flow of marketable loot.

States are unable and/or unwilling to force capital to treat these impacts as anything other than externalities. Transnational capitalism is actively destroying the relatively weak restraints placed upon it over the last couple of centuries (chiefly through working class organisation) and in the process, its actions are steadily increasing refugee flows into Europe and through the erosion of various forms of social contract, scaring the piss out of all but the most privileged classes within Europe.

1% of the global population possess 46% of available resources.

More broadly, the world's resources are divided up as follows (the 1% are counted as part of the 10% below)

10% of the global population possess 86% of the available resources.
40% of the global population possess 14% of the available resources.
50% of the global population possess nothing.

(Badiou's figures from an article that's been taken down for copyright reasons, I'll see if I can find a link elsewhere)

The 40% are very frequently scared shitless of the destitute 50%, either of joining them or of being victimised by them.

The 10% (and especially the 1%) are quite happy with things being that way, because otherwise they'd have the 90% (or indeed the 99%) taking a long hard look at them instead.

So why, in this context do mass sexual assaults apparently committed by a bunch of young lumpen males, mostly of refugee origin, take on the aspect of a 'clash of civilisation' and take on a demonstrably higher media profile than other, less politically charged sexual assaults which have been going on steadily in our society?

That destitute 50% are nothing to capital. They don't get hired to produce anything, they can't afford to consume anything and while they might have some value as a 'reserve army' with which to discipline the 40% who, for the moment, capital does have a use for, they're irrelevant to the global reproduction of capital. Most of these people are living in the zones where capital has crashed the state or the ecology or both, zones typically run by armed gangs, increasingly often composed of religious loons, and naturally many of them want to get the fuck out of there if they can.

Meanwhile here in our relatively safe European democracies, where enough people still have value to capital as producers and consumers to make it worth allowing a more or less functioning state to remain in place, the 40% who do possess something are actively encouraged by a convergence of interests between capital's propaganda machine and power-hungry neo-fascists to fear and hate the destitute and those from the collapsed zones who manage to find any kind of refuge here.

If violent nihilism is the result, either in the collapsed zones, in the lumpen interstices of Europe or in the form of far-right vigilantes kicking the shit out of random strangers 'in defence of aryan womanhood' then capital doesn't really have any reason to give a shit about it, nor do states have any constructive options for dealing with it, although no doubt their security apparatuses can get some extra perks and concessions if they play their cards right.

Dealing with it constructively would involve stopping capital from collapsing states and ecologies and a Marshall plan for fixing the damage, and those options aren't on offer at the ballot box or capable of being seriously discussed in the corporate media.
Click to expand...

Lots to think about in there - I just want to give two immediate responses to the bits in bold

1) I don't think you can point so easily to the interests of capital here, the nature of news is that it doesn't report the stuff that goes on steadily. If this had happened with Germans doing it, I think it would have been reported a bit less but still far more than the less politically charged stuff (which gets virtually no coverage at all). Clearly the right wing papers like the mail and express are playing their part for capital and that has driven some of their reporting, but I still think it would be a big news story.

2) working to get the 40% and 50% to see their interests are aligned not opposed. Nothing else is going to force capital's hand, but then, having got close enough to do that, you have to wonder would we be close enough to go further?
 
BigTom said:
Lots to think about in there - I just want to give two immediate responses to the bits in bold

1) I don't think you can point so easily to the interests of capital here, the nature of news is that it doesn't report the stuff that goes on steadily. If this had happened with Germans doing it, I think it would have been reported a bit less but still far more than the less politically charged stuff (which gets virtually no coverage at all). Clearly the right wing papers like the mail and express are playing their part for capital and that has driven some of their reporting, but I still think it would be a big news story.

?
Click to expand...

Again, I'd point out to you, a major part of the outrage is it wasn't reported on at all at the beginning. And deliberately so . That added to the anger and distrust of the establishment .
 
Casually Red said:
Again, I'd point out to you, a major part of the outrage is it wasn't reported on at all at the beginning. And deliberately so . That added to the anger and distrust of the establishment .
Click to expand...

Certainly, but once it had become a story, I don't think you can put the size of the story down to the interests of capital as much as to the nature of news (although that is shaped by capitalism as well).

Thinking overnight as well I think Bernie's post is too focused on how capital uses divide and rule with immigration and doesn't bring out the problem of patriarchy/misogyny which is a big part of this puzzle imo. Maybe too focused on the story/narrative around the events than the events themselves iyswim.
 
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BigTom said:
Certainly, but once it had become a story, I don't think you can put the size of the story down to the interests of capital as much as to the nature of news (although that is shaped by capitalism as well).

Thinking overnight as well I think Bernie's post is too focused on how capital uses divide and rule with immigration and doesn't bring out the problem of patriarchy/misogyny which is a bit part of this puzzle imo. Maybe too focused on the story/narrative around the events than the events themselves iyswim.
Click to expand...
Just yes, agree completely. Only the patriarchy / mysogyny & the sexual aspect of this is (in my view) a big part, not bit part of the story. :)
 
I've no quarrel at all with the idea that the account I gave was incomplete, I more or less said that I thought it was, and I offered it as an additional perspective to the immediately previous discussion on the specifics how how the attacks happened.

I'd only object (fairly strongly too) if someone tried to claim that the economic and political conditions that I was trying to describe above were irrelevant.
 
Bernie Gunther said:
I've no quarrel at all with the idea that the account I gave was incomplete, I more or less said that I thought it was.

I'd only object (fairly strongly too) if someone tried to claim that the economic and political conditions that I was trying to describe above were irrelevant.
Click to expand...
Not at all irrelevant (think i need to just say that, for fear of being misunderstood)
 
Bernie Gunther said:
I've no quarrel at all with the idea that the account I gave was incomplete, I more or less said that I thought it was, and I offered it as an additional perspective to the immediately previous discussion on the specifics how how the attacks happened.

I'd only object (fairly strongly too) if someone tried to claim that the economic and political conditions that I was trying to describe above were irrelevant.
Click to expand...

no, not at all irrelevant.
 
bluescreen said:
Cart, horse, women.
Click to expand...

As I said in a previous reply to one of your posts, I'm certainly not going to make the mistake of trying to tell women about their experience of patriarchy, sexual assault etc.

I'd encourage female urbanites to address those aspects however, as they are qualified to do so.

What I would say, tangential to that stuff though is that 'heroic defence of aryan womanhood against filthy foreign beasts' is an absolutely key theme in white supremacist discourse. It's central for example in David (14 words) Lane's writing.

Also as I believe we've seen on this thread, it can have an explosive effect on both adrenaline and testosterone levels, even in normal blokes if played correctly by shrewd propagandists.
 
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Bernie Gunther said:
So we seem to have a bit of consensus on a tentative account of how mass sexual assaults might have emerged from street crime networks.

The other challenge being made earlier was to produce some sort of left political account of these events, which I think necessarily considers their wider context, to set against those of the racist right. I think several people did so, but the challenge to produce a left reading kept being repeated anyhow and that eventually turned into a slagging match.

Hence I've pulled together some of the stuff I proposed in answer to that challenge earlier in the thread, much of it nicked from some Badiou I've been reading recently. This is a bit of a quick and dirty job, but if people really actually do want to talk about left perspectives on this stuff, rather than just smearing the left, then it'll do to start with.

Liberalism is triumphant across the globe. As a pathological consequence of capital's current modes of operation, and hence imperialism's current modes of intervention, rather than merely corrupting them as it used to, capital now frequently just collapses states and wrecks ecologies, leaving severely weakened states or increasingly, just a rabble of armed gangs, to manage the consequences while continuing to facilitate the flow of marketable loot.

States are unable and/or unwilling to force capital to treat these impacts as anything other than externalities. Transnational capitalism is actively destroying the relatively weak restraints placed upon it over the last couple of centuries (chiefly through working class organisation) and in the process, its actions are steadily increasing refugee flows into Europe. Meanwhile through the erosion of various forms of social contract, it's scaring the piss out of all but the most privileged classes within Europe.

1% of the global population possess 46% of available resources.

More broadly, the world's resources are divided up as follows (the 1% are counted as part of the 10% below)

10% of the global population possess 86% of the available resources.
40% of the global population possess 14% of the available resources.
50% of the global population possess nothing.

(Badiou's figures from an article that's been taken down for copyright reasons, I'll see if I can find a link elsewhere)

The 40% are potentially and visibly encouraged to be, scared shitless of the destitute 50%, either of joining them or of being victimised by them.

The 10% (and especially the 1%) are quite happy with things being that way, because otherwise they'd have the 90% (or indeed the 99%) taking a long hard look at them instead.

So why, in this context do mass sexual assaults apparently committed by a bunch of young lumpen males, mostly of refugee origin, take on the aspect of a 'clash of civilisation' and take on a demonstrably higher media profile than other, less politically charged sexual assaults which have been going on steadily in our society?

That destitute 50% are nothing to capital. They don't get hired to produce anything, they can't afford to consume anything and while they might have some value as a 'reserve army' with which to discipline the 40% who, for the moment, capital does have a use for, they're irrelevant to the global reproduction of capital. Most of these people are living in the zones where capital has crashed the state or the ecology or both, zones typically run by armed gangs, increasingly often composed of religious loons, and naturally many of them want to get the fuck out of there if they can.

Meanwhile here in our relatively safe European democracies, where enough people still have value to capital as producers and consumers to make it worth allowing a more or less functioning state to remain in place, the 40% who do possess something are actively encouraged by a convergence of interests between capital's propaganda machine and power-hungry neo-fascists to fear and hate the destitute and those from the collapsed zones who manage to find any kind of refuge here.

If violent nihilism is the result, either in the collapsed zones, in the lumpen interstices of Europe or in the form of far-right vigilantes kicking the shit out of random strangers 'in defence of aryan womanhood' then capital doesn't really have any reason to give a shit about it, nor do states have any constructive options for dealing with it, although no doubt their security apparatuses can get some extra perks and concessions if they play their cards right.

Dealing with it constructively would involve stopping capital from collapsing states and ecologies and a Marshall plan for fixing the damage, and those options aren't on offer at the ballot box or capable of being seriously discussed in the corporate media.
Click to expand...

Bernie, how are you linking these two? Because all you have really done is say: capitalism bad, blah blah blah, cologne. I can't see a ethnological perspective or anything. I'd be interested to see how you tied it all up.

Thanks.
 
If you think all I said was 'capitalism is bad, blah, blah, blah' then I'm not sure we have any realistic prospect of communicating beyond the grunting and pointing level.

Just out of interest though, why 'ethnological' in particular?

What are you imagining an ethnological account might address?
 
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BigTom said:
Thinking overnight as well I think Bernie's post is too focused on how capital uses divide and rule with immigration and doesn't bring out the problem of patriarchy/misogyny which is a big part of this puzzle imo. Maybe too focused on the story/narrative around the events than the events themselves iyswim.
Click to expand...

I agree.
 
I may be totally wrong but I think Bernie Gunther 's post was basically about asking why "in this context do mass sexual assaults apparently committed by a bunch of young lumpen males, mostly of refugee origin, take on the aspect of a 'clash of civilisation' and take on a demonstrably higher media profile than other, less politically charged sexual assaults which have been going on steadily in our society?"

So, maybe he wasn't so much focussed (in that post) on asking about what actually happened as on questioning why there was so much reaction to it that ran along 'us and them' lines , and whose interests that sort of reaction served, what it was a symptom of etc?

Anyway, like I think bigTom was saying, this focus on the narratives that surround the event and uses that some people have put the story to is interesting & important but hopefully shouldn't occlude people being able to freely discuss their ideas about what actually went on, which is a separate question, right?

Also, ethnological / ethnology is a word best avoided unless you're talking about anthropology fieldwork reports / books - very tricky area wordwise though that's for sure.
 
Yeah, I have noticed this fear around enthnology before. Had a good conversation about it a few months back about it - she gets called racist all the time for her use of the word. It would be funny if it didn't effect her job or her family (parent of a mixed race child).

But hey - racist right!
 
Teenage Cthulhu said:
Yeah, I have noticed this fear around enthnology before. Had a good conversation about it a few months back about it - she gets called racist all the time for her use of the word. It would be funny if it didn't effect her job or her family (parent of a mixed race child).

But hey - racist right!
Click to expand...
Yeah, I don't know - I did years of anthropology degrees at the rightest-onnest universities .. so I of all people haven't got a clue what ethnology / culture / race / society or any of that stuff means, we deconstructed everything until there was just a post modern pile of letters making nonsense patterns on the blackboard :facepalm:
 
bimble said:
Yeah, I don't know - I did years of anthropology degrees at the rightest-onnest universities .. so I of all people haven't got a clue what ethnology / culture / race / society or any of that stuff means, we deconstructed everything until there was just a post modern pile of letters making nonsense patterns on the blackboard :facepalm:
Click to expand...
three years i suppose
 
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