Friday, December 16, 2011

The Deterritorial Support Group

Over several hours they dispense praise for radical designers and propagandists such as Atelier Populaire, Grapus, The Designers Republic and Class War, and have harsh words for almost everyone else, including the Labour left ("2011's real utopians"), the Lib Dems ("trepanning on the brain of social democracy"), Adbusters ("hipsters are the abortion of the vanguard"), and the Trotskyist SWP ("how endearing to base your entire political outlook on a text written in 1921, under very specific conditions"). They seem equally in love with radical theorists such as Gilles Dauve, and lolcat pictures . . .
. . . This all sounds wonderful, of course. But DSG isn't that optimistic about the imminent arrival of a new world – at the very least, it's sure change won't come from the TUC, or from Westminster. "Capital has already smashed organised labour, and now it's going to work on parliamentary democracy: across southern Europe, there's this slipping into a state of exception," Pablo says, reflecting on the recent appointments of "technocrats" to head the governments in Greece and Italy, and concern about a resurgence in fascist parties ("the fash"). "This postwar argument that capitalism and democracy go hand in hand; well maybe that was just a transition period before capitalism reaches its actual zenith, which is ... China?"

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