Bamako Appeal spikes controversy

Tord Björk

15 February, 2006

Dear all

The discussion on form and content regarding the political future of the "alter globalization" movement on the NIGD list seems to have some interesting points, but is also lacking empirical arguments and connection to the political world outside the party left or established transnational movement network sectors.

Writing on a two hours train ride to Copenhagen, the political center of the right wing Western radicalisation of the political struggle against underprivileged, some of the discussion seem somewhat distant. The news today said that the protests against Denmark reached Pakistan causing some deaths, a country that will soon be hosting WSF.

To react upon the debate I have a few remarks and a proposal:

FORM

The discussion on form have like the masterly discourse made by Jai Sen, a necessary exercise to remind us all about the need to stick to principles and not drown in the pragmatic necessities when organising resources for huge events like WSF. But enough is enough, form without content will also never survive, and thus the counter arguments against looking only at form, and avoiding content will survive. The rather trivial discussion on whether WSF should be an open space or a decision making congress are continuous, but gladly, it is starting to be a bit more focused beyond the internal WSF questions. Asking the question, who will change politics, movements, political parties, NGOs, civil society you easily get trapped in a historical notion stating new century socialsim or strategy as something more valuable than old century ways of doing things, but not explaining much of what that difference is.

I am afraid that the issue at stake, parties or not parties is not the crucial one, but it is rather the issue that was buried when WSF sidestepped PGA. These delinked seminars, cultural manifestation and intellectual professional work from nonviolent mass civil disobedience, and also mystified the relationship to violence. The key ideological category in the present reactionary politics of Denmark and the EU is demonising system criticism as terrorism scapegoating, not only Muslims, but also those defending the welfare state as violent protesters threatening democracy.

CONTENT

Is there a need for a more comprehensive, generalist program of action, or as Ruth Reitan states a bottom up perspective linking massive transnational networks? Well is this not one more trivial dichotomy. What we might need is both, the generalist attempts in all its tendency of academic or other professional party-NGO limitations if it develops something that goes beyond the limitations of the single-issue campaigning. Problems cannot only be discussed from a sector organised network level; there is also a need for a more general view. I, myself, am actively promoting the kind of strategy Reitan propose within Friends of the Earth, but I have no illusion that this is enough to state from the bottom up. Changes do not only occur within such spatial metaphors, there is also a need for the perspectives "from above" or generalist, but one has to keep in mind that we have the academicians, WSF strategists or political parties we deserve.

The main argument against the discussion on parties, or linking movement networks is that we do not know what we do not include. We do not even seem to be empirically interested in what action actually takes place, what regard it is linked to WSF or other similar initiatives, and to what extend is it ignoring or excluding the WSF.

What actually takes place

I do not have the privileged position to have enough knowledge about these things, but I do have some fragmented pieces of information from my own region and the world. What I found out when studying different initiatives and social movements globally was that empirical efforts had a tendency to disappear. Social movement networks and Social movement directory both ended with contributions on their respective web pages in 2004. The Social movement networks last contribution came from Via Campesina authors critical towards WSF. At the same time, many were emphasising that the WSF used Via Campesina as a strong argument for legitimising WSF as it is. There has been a tendency to use social movement like MST and Via Campesina to state how good WSF is, and at the same time be uninterested in what Via campesina actually state about the WSF or what they do. In Mumbai many Via Campesina participated in the Mumbai resistance, or both WSF and MR. The meetings with Via Campesina and likeminded movements, like Friends of the Earth, World March of Women, or trade unions might be more important to them than WSF (an to the perspective Reitan propose). But it is hard to get an account on what actually takes place, not in its occassional self-admiration of the WSF events, but in the actual political cooperation between those forces that is stated to be the most important among the WSF actors.

Often stated is the importance WSF has had for mass mobilisations, especially against the Iraqi war. But how come this cannot be repeated? Or is it repeated, but in bad ways? It has been claimed that more mobilisation is now taking place (2005) than in the period between last year and the antiwar demonstration. But what in this is linked to WSF, and what is not? One strategic issue that seems to be to used is the millennium goals and the G8 meeting as a world wide campaign against poverty. If this was a central WSF idea, how come there was a lack of self-reflection on the role the WSF had in campaigning. Or is it only when calls from meetings at WFS are successful that they should be accounted for and not when the result is problematic?

Here in Scandinavia, only the Norwegians were able to step out of this NGO millennium lobbying and instead criticised the whole millennium goals. They made a totally different kind of campaign linking local and national antiprivatisation golas with the demands against global institutions by alter globalisers hand in hand with trade unions and parties contributed to an election victory of the center-left coalition. There is criticism against the millennium campaign, many see it as legitimising the present world order, or that very few results came out from it, but more than that it gave the impression that everybody now is equally concerned, from pop artists to politicians, about poverty. But what was the role of WSF in legitimizing the millennium campaigning, and its evaluation? Is the present focus of left political party politics and the state a reaction not an outspoken perspective of the civil society/NGO on the millennium campaigning?

Mass mobilisation starting inside or outside WSF?

More disturbing is the question of mass mobilisation. At Mumbai Arundhati Roy challenged WSF participants to start a boycott against American companies to protest against the occupation of Iraq. There have been no results reported. The dream from Mumbai has now been executed by the masses in the South. Hundreds of million of people boycott Danish products; meanwhile, the parties in Denmark actively confront the non-moderate Muslims in their own country, blaming them for the outrage against Denmark.

Mike Davis claims that the slums in the South have huge populations that are left as non-existent. The forces that are active among them are Pentecostal and Islamists according to Davis. When I visited Asia Social Forum in Hyderabad 2003, the most wanted among the speakers by the local population was not the well known leftists, but a Hindu expert on the Koran and Hindu texts who was asked to speak against Hindu nationalism to hundreds of people. The left used the same energy at this social forum to speak badly about traditional Hindu dressed participants. One wonders what the world looks like outside of left parties, and well funded transnational movements and their campaigning. But such knowledge is hard to get.

Karachi next

Finally this year’s last polycentric WSF will be held in Karachi. What has WSF to offer, and more importantly what social movements participating in WSF have to offer on the issue of Danish racism and freedom of speech. The Danish population is much in favour of bombing, they were the most extreme in Western Europe and North America regarding Serbia and also Iraq. Denmark is the test country for right wing xenophobian parties that are becoming mainstream, and their discourse is used more and more by the other parties. Their terrorist laws have now convicted Greenpeace, and new trials wait ahead against people collecting money to PFLP and FARC. Denmark made huge profit from both WWI and WWII, and have survived well by adjusting itself to the great powers at each stage in history. During WWII there were more Danish SS soldiers than participants in the armed struggle against the German occupants, a struggle that for a long time also was a civil war against the own government. Now Denmark is a model country for a racist welfare state successfully competing in the neoliberal world market while its underprivileged working class are labelled Muslims, and some of the Muslims react by becoming Islamists. A difference from other Nordic countries is that, in Denmark, supporting the violent liberation struggle in the South never became a mainstream concern. For example the Swedish state funded only ANC with 100 million euro, and in Finland and Norway it had both the popular and substantial state support. In Denmark the right of oppressed people to defend themselves violently was never accepted, and today it is a more and more xenophobian country. What does a political initiative in this conflict look like? And what about WSF relation to the right to use violence against oppressors, or is that a non issue of the old century? Or is it amidst the problems of tomorrow?

Simultanously, ideological campaigning started by the Swedish conservative spokesperson in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for European People's party to condemn communist crimes and rewrite history books etc. The majority voted yes to his proposal. His own opinion, going somewhat further than the adopted resolution, is that communism is evil, the French revolution horrible, and that the Paris Commune must be the birth place of evilness as he claims that in 1871 communism started here. Lots of efforts are laid out in Europe on demonising alla system criticism as being totalitarian and resulting in genocide, while at the same time excluding the liberal world order from any guilt. Besides the kind of perspective put forward in the Bandung Appeal, or in other documents from WSF meetings what are the views on Danish political development towards xenophobia, or the general trend towards putting a terrorist ban on system criticism is something to address. Maybe before Karachi? Maybe the two issues of Danish/Western xenophobia and demonising system criticism are linked? And is the NIGD seminar in Karachi on these issues possible to make - demonising protests against the system in Denmark and globally - what can popular movements do?

Yours

Tord Björk

tord.bjork@mjvs.e