Comment 42678

By Borrelli (registered) | Posted July 01, 2010 at 09:27:13

Undustrial: "Do you think the heroes who first fought for Labour Rights, Women's Rights (Emma Goldman in particular) or environmental in this country weren't dirty, disreputable and crass?" --> Excellent points, which I won't dispute. I'm not eager to fully characterize my position on violence in a comment on a website, but it's safe to say that I'm skeptical of the argument that there is such a thing as "violence" against property, and I have enormous sympathy for those activists who are driven to angry action due to emergent factors (like those individuals now denied the special diet supplement, or labour unionists during the tumultuous years early in the last century).

However my views (being in the choir and all) are not really those the Movement needs to be concerned with. Whether we like it or not, we are a culture that lives on mediated images and narratives, and our grand cultural obsession with cultural products from places like Hollywood has essentially driven the dirty, crass, and disreputable image/narrative to the fringes. The important stories of our past have been re-imagined by the culture-industry as polished and populated by one-dimensional (always virtuous) individuals. Even the slaves and warriors from our histories are depicted with gleaming white teeth, and act as erudite examples of the cultural characteristics we now value, as opposed to the ones that actually helped create those people.

Competing with these images in the very media where millions of people are first exposed to these re-imagined histories is going to be difficult I fear, which is why I believe it's far more important for the average weakly-informed suburbanite to KNOW an activist, than to have SEEN one on TV or the newspaper.

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