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Hermès Burning // 272 · PlasticPills Critical Theory & Philosophy

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I found a story i wanted to share with you
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: guys okay reflecting on symbolic violence gerard cannibalism uh there's
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: here's the british version of the story first well real.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Quick british version i like it.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: A christian man a good-hearted christian missionary goes to fiji
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: to spread the gospel of love and forgiveness to the Fijians. Okay.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: The Fijians, as the barbaric savages that they are, of course,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: they kill him and eat him.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: Ah.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: But if we fill in some of the details, some
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: of the symbolic details that Levi Strauss and even Girard
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: would be interested in hearing, the longer story is that
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: a British missionary went to a village in Fiji. This is,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: it can be relevant to the current sacrifice of private
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: property in Paris. But he was doing multiple trips, I
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: think between Australia and Fiji, trying to convert the Fiji natives.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: And there's a tribe on the island who already doesn't
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: like him. His name is Baker, Thomas Baker, I believe.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: And they already don't like him because he's like converting
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: their members and he's setting up a mission. where their
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: loyalties are shifting from their traditional villages to the new
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Christian village. And they have a special token in Fijian
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: society all the way to today, which is the whale's tooth.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: It's called a tabua. It gets really interesting to me
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: because it's not valuable in the way that money is valuable.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Money is valuable as like a universal exchange, but the
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: whale's tooth has value because it's got it's got political
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: power attached to it. And the village that doesn't like
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: this Christian missionary, Baker, the chief of the village who
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: doesn't like him sends out the whale's tooth as a prize.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: He says, whoever kills this fucker, whoever kills this guy
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: is going to get the whale's tooth. But nobody does it.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: So contrary to the savage cannibals eat this guy, no
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: one does it. It's a free kill. He's homo sacer
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: or whatever the equivalent is in indigenous Fijian terminology. And
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: no one does it. So I tried to find out
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: what this thing means. There's quite a bit of information
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: on it. But we as moderns, of course, see it
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: as a general exchange. It's like $ 1, 000. But it's more
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: like a a quid pro quo token. So you exchange
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: it during like, uh, times where you're creating allegiances with
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: other tribes, chiefs, chiefs only trade it. So chiefs can
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: give it, you know, like on the occasion of my
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: daughter's wedding.
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: They'll give it to the other chief as like a token.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: And then the other chief can offer it back when
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: they need something. So however, this first guy, however, the
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: guy who hates the Christian missionary got the whale's tooth.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: He says, whoever kills this guy gets the next whale tooth.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I guess you're allowed to deny it because no one
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: took him up on it. But the guy goes further in,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: and this is where the story gets confusing. He goes
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: up into the highlands of Fiji, and he's trying to
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: convert yet another village. And he gives the chief a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: comb and says, Asks him, okay, would you like to
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: convert to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? And the
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: guy says, no. The chief says, no, I don't want it.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: And then the guy goes, well, then give me my
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: comb back. So demonstrating some Christian charity here. Well, if
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: you're not going to convert, I want the comb back.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: but apparently this is, this is where it's unclear. Some sort,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: something happens, some sort of scuffle, or he snatches it
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: out of his hand. Um, but he touches the guy's head.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Now in, in this sign system, the chief, as in
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: many science systems, the chief is the microcosm of the society.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: And you're not allowed, no, no normal person, the low
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: can't touch the high. That's I think, uh, Levi Strauss's
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: terms for it. So no one normal is allowed to
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: touch the chief's head because that symbolizes something like you're
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: rising above your station or you're trying to usurp authority.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: This guy has a bounty on his head. The guy
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: has the whale's tooth bounty. Now he defies the norms.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: So they go, well, this guy's here and he just
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: touched the chief's head. So they kill him. They ritually
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: kill him and they eat him.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: Restores order.
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Now we know what all this means, right? He defied order.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: The low does not become high. The low becomes high.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: But now we get to do two things. Now we
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: get to claim the whale's tooth bounty and we get
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: to eat this guy.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Double indemnity.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: The tribes are in chaos with each other because there's
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: this invading force and he's stealing their people, converting them
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: to this foreign religion. So the sacrifice, the scapegoat, is
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: incorporated into the system by the ritual cannibalism, and it
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: brings unity, temporary unity, catharsis, we might say, to the island.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: This is all in the 1850s or so, but the
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: story doesn't end there. Fast forward to 2003, so modern times.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: 2003 is peak woke, of course. A little early for that,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I think. It anticipated pre-woke because this tribe now wants
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: to apologize for the genetic trauma that they have inflicted.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: And this is not a joke. There's photos of it.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Well, okay. They're not traumatizing because they're liberals and they
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: feel guilty. They're apologizing because they think that eating this
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: guy brought a curse onto their village because vegetables don't
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: grow close to the village and the chief... His sons
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: died in mysterious circumstances after they ate this guy. But
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: all the way up until 2003, everything bad happens in
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: the village. People go, oh, it's because we fucking ate
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: that guy.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: They trace it back to that moment.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: So they invite. They still have the comb. I don't
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: know if it's the same comb. I don't know if
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: anyone knows if it's the same comb. But they have
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: the comb that caused the guy to touch the chief's head.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: So they sent out the invitation. He's got like a
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: bunch of living descendants. And they all come from Australia
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: or Britain or wherever. And they come to the island
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and do a whole tearful ceremony that's photographed by the
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Guardian and a bunch of people. They return the whale's
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: tooth tokens and the comb to... the guy's descendants, thereby
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: hopefully lifting the curse that they brought on themselves 150
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: years ago. We have this tainted artifact, and they can't
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: just throw it in the ocean to get rid of it.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: They have to return it for the blood debt that
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: they've brought on their own heads.
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: So that's like the symbolic economy of the gift exchange.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: In 2003, it's all still here. Persisting.
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the generational curse.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: And then it's happily lifted in the end, hopefully.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Well, it's weird that they would think that that was
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: the cause of the curse, because Thomas Baker was in
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: the wrong here. A, he broke the laws of the
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: gift exchange, because he tried to take the gift back
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: after he gave it. And then B, he broke the
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: laws of this particular culture by touching the guy's head.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: It could be that breaking the laws of the gift
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: exchange is worse than touching the guy's head because he
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: gave a gift and then took it back. And then
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: far from being savage, eating someone is a way of
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: forgiving them because they get to be part of the
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: group again. So I don't know what they did wrong here.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Ah, that's funny.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: If you look at it, not knowing what the symbolism
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: of each of the items in the story is, then
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: it looks like a bunch of irrationalist mumbo jumbo. Similarly,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: if you look from the outside to the inside of
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: a symbolic event, like a riot, say, you can get
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: away with saying, this is irrational. It's harmful to the cause.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: It's not going to have the outcomes you desire. So
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: why are you even doing it? How do we interpret
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: when an event looks like it makes no sense?
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: I guess the deliberative part is the rational part Because
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: we read something on protests and riots and the question
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: of can riots represent. At the opportune moment when all
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: of Europe seems to be completely swallowed up in protests
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: that are turning violent, which are often called then riots.
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: As we just witnessed this weekend over October 17th and 18th,
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: I think it was. where there were some pretty shocking
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: scenes from the protests in France and Italy, I believe
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: as well, and other places. And so this article is
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: talking about well that the disruptive nature the visual disruptive
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: nature whether they can be affirmative or not I mean
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: riots are often labeled as senseless violence but can they
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: actually be positive and affirmative of some demands or are
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: they always irrational and then the representational dimension, you know,
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: sort of saying I'm here, I'm suffering and the political
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: process is not representing me.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Which we called when we started the violence series, we
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: said as fall begins, as Persephone descends into the underworld,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: that's when the violence starts.
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: And in France, what's the reason as far as you
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: guys know of like why this is breaking up?
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Should we talk about that? A, they're French.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Well, that's part of it for sure.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's part of it's.
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: In the cultural DNA going back to May 68, that
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: famous moment that we all worship still when we read
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: our Derrida and our Deleuze.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Wait, wait, wait, wait. What do you mean going back
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: to 68? May 1968?
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: 1968, the famous riots of May.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. I know. But he's saying that it's,
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: that this is, this, this predates that even, I mean,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: the French says.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Bro says it's in their DNA. Remember 1968? No. When
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: you say, remember it's in their DNA. It's 1789.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: I guess.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. French revolution, I guess.
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah. It goes even deeper.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: Remember, remember.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: Well, the immediate cause of this one was students protesting
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: over dilapidated classrooms and teacher shortages. And something I never
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: knew about France, but I don't, is that their school
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: days are extremely long. I feel like 9 a.m.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: To 6 p.m.
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: Sometimes.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Crazy. It feels long too. It feels like, I didn't
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: exchange there in high school, so I got to experience it.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: The days feel long, but it's a little misleading because
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: they have like one class on Wednesday. So all your
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: homework you can do on Wednesday if you're a nerd
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: or just go to the movies in the middle of
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: the day on Wednesday. And oh, also their lunch break
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: is like two hours.
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: So yeah, apparently they have fewer days than many other
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: school systems, but much longer days. But I think just
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: because the education has been completely underfunded, And, you know,
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: the macro story is, yeah, neoliberalism and governments not spending
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: money on public sectors like education and all of that.
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: And the, but that was just the spark of the
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: French protests was these students starting to like protest learning
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: conditions at school and they were joined by parents. And
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: by teachers and it sort of snowballed there into more general,
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: I mean, I guess we just consider these all to
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: be kind of austerity protests that all start in different
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: ways and have their own specific demands. But I think
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: largely a lot of them in France and in, even
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: in places like, uh, Albania and Greece and Germany and Belgium.
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: I think that they all really do have to do
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: with the cost of living.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: And I think part, I heard that, I don't know,
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: the French debt is like really high. It's like, I
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: was reading that it's even worse than, than what it
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: looked like in Greece. Like, you know, when Greece had
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: that crisis, like in the financial crisis with like their
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: like debt to GDP ratio, like whatever, apparently France's is
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: even worse right now than Greece's was.
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah. It's over a hundred percent of their GDP. I saw,
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: which I'm not sure exactly what it means.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: They keep trying to do, all right, well, we'll raise
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the retirement age then. We'll get people working for a
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: few more years. And then they're like, fuck you. Fuck off.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's actually an interesting feature about it because their
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: retirement age, I would say, is pretty young. 62?
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd be holding on to that too.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they want to raise it.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: But that's not that crazy.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's crazy by North American standards.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: What is North American standards? Is it like 68?
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: 68, I think, yeah.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Lots of people work longer than that.
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I thought it was closer to 65 here. I
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: can't remember, but yeah.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I thought there was like early and late. And if
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: you start late, you get more shit.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, actually.
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: And I think that does have to do with extending
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: the number of laborers that you can have in a country, right?
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: About overall productivity in the labor pool. Keeping that open
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: for longer.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: It is 65. Yeah. It is 65. You can, you
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: can get benefits, but it's also like varies. Like, so
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: you can, you could even take it as early as 60,
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: but you just get like less of a pension, but
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: generally it's 65, but a lot of people push it
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: to 70. So like you can, there's not like a
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: mandatory retirement age. I'm not sure if in France it's
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: like mandatory retirements. Like at 62, you just have to retire.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I wish we had mandatory retirement age
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: on professors.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, but there would, there, there, it should
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: be probably like 70. I mean, I think for professors,
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: it could be a bit older.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: You know, some of those old fuckers, they either way,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: you know, these.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of professors hanging around until 80 though.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: They need to be gone for sure.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: 80 and beyond are still holding on.
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: But these, these protests that are happening in France and
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: elsewhere tend to be over, you know, high housing costs,
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: low job prospects, cost of education versus.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: Like the payoff of education.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: I mean, frankly, a lot of things like we need
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: them here in North America, too. We need these protests
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: here because we have all the same bullshit. We have really,
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: really ridiculous cost of living, including housing. We have an
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: education system that doesn't lead to stable employment anymore. Even
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: though you do all the right things, you go to school,
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: you get your degrees. And then afterwards, what are you doing?
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: You're working a general labor job. That you really didn't
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: even need to go to school for and pushing the
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: retirement age is just like adding insult to injury. It's like, okay, now,
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: now you don't get benefits until older because, you know,
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: there's too many boomers running through the retirement system and
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: the head medical system now that we need to make,
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: we need to put a freeze on retirement. So like, again,
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: another fuck you to the whole generation.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, 65 seems reasonable. They should probably raise it
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: to 65. I mean, given the reality of their fiscal
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: situation that they're facing, let's be reasonable here.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Hey, you be reasonable. For the politics guy, there is
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: no politics in this argument. If the government's going to
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: take away an entitlement, you can say, I better get
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: something worth it out of this deal. You don't just
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: get to erode my entitlements without offering me something in return.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: That's how politics is supposed to work. I'll give up
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: my entitlements, but you better make it worth my while
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: in the back end.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: It's interesting. I think there's a broad consensus in France
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: between the left and even Marine Le Pen. They all
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: agree that they don't want to raise the retirement age.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: It's like a very French commitment.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Well, it's extracting concessions. They understand what politics is. We
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: have never had that consciousness a single minute of my
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: life in this country. We don't have politics. And we
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: even have French people. Sort of.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: But it's interesting to think back to Greece though. I,
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: you know, I, the D the details of it aren't
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: that fresh, but like, I like, you know, like when
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: do you like, like in, in so far as we
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: are existing in this context where like fiscal conditions matter,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: you know, like how do you like, you know, you can,
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: you can continue asking for more and more. I mean,
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: in some of those Latin American company countries, they just
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: kept raising the minimum wage and then, it just created
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: massive inflation and money started becoming worth nothing it's like.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Which latin american country.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Well argentina for sure at one point had like a
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: crazy inflation like over 100 inflation.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: You think increases in the minimum wage cost caused 100
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: inflation in argentina Chile, actually.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Allende, I think, at one point when he kept raising
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: the minimum wage, inflation was getting pretty out of control.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: You don't think a United States-led embargo had something to
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: do with that?
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying it's the main cause of inflation, but
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: it's like if you keep raising wages too high, you're
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: just going to face a certain economic reality.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: So your hypothesis is that France's minimum wage is too high?
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying that that's what's happening in France. I'm
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: just using that as an example that like... You know,
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: if you just want to ask for more things, it's
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: like there is a reality on the other end about
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: like what's possible. Like, you know, when in Greece, when
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: that left wing party won, they like promised to not
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: implement this austerity. They got into power and they looked
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: at the fiscal situation. They're like, shit, I guess we
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: do have to implement austerity. Like and now Greece is
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: doing a lot better, by the way.
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: Well, I remember when there was the fight for 15
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: kind of minimum wage thing here in Canada, 15 bucks
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: an hour, because. again, cost of living was going up
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: so much that people who were working for minimum wage,
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: which is a huge chunk of the population, needed more money.
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: And so it's kind of reasonable to ask for enough
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: money to survive. Now it's something like By the.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Way, don't misunderstand me as saying that like, these things
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: should never be fought for. I'm just saying there has
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: to be a balance. It's like, let's look at what
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: is the reality of the situation we're in, right? And
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: it's like, if you just say like, no, we're not
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: even willing to raise the retirement age, but we're in
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: like a grave financial situation. It's like, well, you have
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: to do something. You can't just keep asking for more
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: and do nothing.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: You literally can't. That's what politics... I'm not supposed to
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: figure out financial policy, but I can break a window
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: if I get things taken away from me.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, sure. That's a nice idea. It's a nice idea,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: but what is the reality on the ground?
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Why the fuck would you care about the reality on
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: the ground? If they're going to take something from you,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: the least you can do is make it cost something
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: for them. They're not going to the rich people because
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: they know it costs too much.
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: You're often demanding things that the government doesn't want to do.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: That's the whole point.
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: And you're often demanding things like the cost of living
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: is not any one country's fault. We obviously have this
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: complex global economy with wars and things going on. And
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: when people are upset about the cost of living, well,
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: they're not really thinking about what's causing this and what
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: can realistically be done. They're just saying this is what
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: we demand.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: We demand this.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: And then obviously the government, like the students, again, and
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: back to France, the students are saying put more money
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: in education. And the French government, rightly or not, is saying, well,
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: that's not realistic. We can't do that. We have no money.
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: France is in enormous amounts of debt. And because we're
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: part of the Eurozone, we don't have our own central bank.
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: So we can't just print money without the consequences and constraints.
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: So there is no money. So then you say, OK, well,
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: then we're going to protest this situation until something's done
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: about it. I guess that's the problem. Realistic constraints hit
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: what people consider to be a livable and fair life,
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: and you're up against it. Then that spiraled into what
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: we're going to talk about, which is really, I think,
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: the rioting and the shocking images that you get on
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: the news now. Also the interesting way that the, that
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: the far right is capitalizing on the European protests as well.
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: Offering the law and order approach when, you know, when
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: France goes to the polls in six months, you know,
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: where our party is there to restore order and stop
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: all of this. And Fox news and other right-wing American
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: outlets are using the same sort of messaging for Trump, right?
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: Look what's happening to Europe. The Democrats want to do
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: that here. You've got to vote for us because we're
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: the party of law and order.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, everyone's going to be trying to use
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: the situation to their advantage. The protesters should be doing
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: that too, though. But when it comes to... I mean,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: it would be silly to say that there are not
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: extraneous factors. And it would be silly to say, you know,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: there is an interconnected global economic system, so you can't just...
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: You can't just break things because people demand that they break.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: I'll concede that. Leftists will say, for example, tax the
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: rich more. Now, tax the rich would go a long way.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: France doesn't have a particularly low top marginal tax rate.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I think it's one of the higher ones in the EU,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: but that could be raised. They don't have a wealth tax.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: It could raise money that way. But like a lot of,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of the reason that there's way less money
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: for public funding is that when the public funding, the
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: public welfare was set up, the cost of borrowing was
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: much lower. And that's just not the reality right now.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: So you can't, the government can't now fund those things
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: with debt like they could 50 years ago. Um, another thing,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: I think the part of the reason that this one
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: kicked off was the, uh, fuel prices because fuel prices,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: unlike minimum wage, uh, Maybe in some cases, minimum wage
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: contributes to inflation, but it's far more often something like
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: the cost of energy. So the energy shock, the Iran war,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: is part of the reason this kicked off. From my understanding,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: I just read that.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: I don't... Yes, that makes sense.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: But that is to say, there's no silver bullet, but
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: the protesters don't need an economics degree in order to protest.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Protesters need to make demands from their representatives, and their representatives...
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: In France and here and everywhere else, they don't represent
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: the people as much as they do represent the wealthy.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: So maybe the end result is that people do accept, okay,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: we'll raise the retirement age three years because it works.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Other places, you know, we could survive that. But you
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: don't got to give up anything without a fight. You
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: don't got to take anything without compromise because then, The
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: next time they need something, they just take the next
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: thing off the table that you're entitled to at the moment.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: And then the next thing goes off the table. So
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to sit here and scold people for
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: not facing up to the economic realities of the world
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: because that's not their position in this structure.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the taxes thing is a good– like
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: my only point was that– and of course I'm not
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: expecting like ordinary– I mean most ordinary citizens don't understand.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: I mean I don't even understand that much about fiscal– economics.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: But I'm just saying there has to be trade-offs, right?
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: And you pointed out to one that's good. It's like, yeah,
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: if you want to keep things, you need to find
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: a new source of revenue. And yeah, maybe raising taxes,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: but maybe there's other reasons why you can't do that.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: So it's very complicated. But you have to face up
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: to trade-offs, I guess, is kind of the point here, right?
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: You can't just have it all. What are you going
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: to trade off? What are you going to do? Okay, yeah,
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: raise taxes on the rich. I mean, that seems like
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: a good.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds good in theory, but it's It's
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: like raising the taxes on someone in their own house.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: They know how to move it around. They know all
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: the hiding spots. They got the lawyers.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: They got the banks. So much leverage in other ways.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: They got the politicians that are supposed to be doing
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: the raising of the taxes. So, you know, it has
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: its own set of issues. But the first thing, if
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: you do represent people, if you are their representatives, as
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: this theory presents, then... The first thing to do when
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: they start protesting would be to say, I understand that
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: you have a problem. But that isn't what they did.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: When these protests, peaceful protests from high school students started
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: in September, what was the response? Was it? A concession?
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Was it even I understand what you're saying? No, it
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: was sick the cops on them.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the first response.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: We've been talking about for weeks violence as communication. And
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: we established in one of the previous episodes, violence is
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: never a greeting. Violence is never, ever the first thing
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: that happens. There's always a hello. Then maybe it's hello,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: and then we kill you and eat you. But there's
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: always the hello comes first. But if you read the
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: reporting on this, the reporting on this is insane. And
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: I don't just mean Bret Stephens. Bret Stephens is a
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: repugnant troll. But all of the reporting is like there
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: were crowds and it descended into violence. It's just the
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: violence descends like a cloud anytime there's a crowd, which
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: is completely biased because the cops started the violence three
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: weeks ago, not this week. And most of the people
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: in the streets now, or I should say on the 17th,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: on the weekend, were because all these high school students
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: were getting arrested and hit with clubs and tear gas.
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's one of the major criticisms I've seen of
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: how France handled it, was that immediately sick the police
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: on them, combined with not budging an inch on the
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: substantive demands of the students, which was basically just to
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: put a bit more money in the education system, hire
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: some more teachers and fix up these dilapidated classrooms, instead
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: of budging at all on that, which would have probably
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: had quite the appeasing effect. They just went, nope, police
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: restore order. And I mean, I don't know about the
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: initial clashes, but lately, like as of today, you know,
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: once one, like all these miners, one of them has had,
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: had their hand blown off by a stun grenade. They've
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: been blinded by rubber bullets and hospitalized. needing stitches because
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: they've been smashed with billy clubs over the head and
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: the list goes on of injuries to minors from the
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: police containment tactics another another interesting tactic the police have
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: been using which is unique to france but i guess
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: it's elsewhere it's called kettling when when a protest happens
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: and they're going to march somewhere the police completely surround
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: them and lock them in to where they are. And
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: I think Amnesty International was on that one because it
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: seems like a human rights violation. It forcibly restricts people's movement.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: And it also resulted in people passing out, having panic attacks.
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: So it's a pretty intense crowd management strategy. It just
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: goes to show you, the French police, the French response
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: has been very authoritarian. And it's partly because of, I think,
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: the longer term cause is probably neoliberalism and the European Union,
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: but also the structure of their police, their accountability structure,
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: and their structure of how they're The authority goes straight
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: to the national government. They don't have local police and
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: community oversight and stuff like that, like the Anglo-American. But anyway, yeah,
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: like all of that, those are details in the weeds.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Really, you.
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: Know, we're arguing about, you know, the retirement age, education
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: system collapsing, inflation, and lack of political representation.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: Like all these things were like.
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: The proverbial frogs in the kettle or in the water, right?
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: And the temperature is slowly going up. And eventually the
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: water is going to start boiling because we're making concession
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: after concession.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: Like you can.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: Take whatever angle you want. How much did a house
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: cost in the 70s relative to what people made on average?
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: Way less than that is now today. Houses are completely
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: unaffordable today. in many places, based on the average salaries.
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: I mean, that's just one dimension of it, of the
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: political and economic failures that these protests are probably a
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: timely response to. And they're probably going to get, from
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: the sound of it, they're going to get worse before
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: they get better.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Should we talk about the article we read a little bit?
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: Because we read a I thought a fairly interesting article, actually.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: I was surprised it was published in the American Journal
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: of Political Science called Can Riots Represent?
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: And Democratic Theory. So we're firmly in the realm of
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Victor territory. But the guy was saying things that I
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: thought you might disagree with.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, a little bit. I think that he makes
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: some plausible arguments. And I think the journal.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: The reason it surprised me is because I've always– I mean, well,
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: it is generally not a political theory journal, although they
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: do publish some political theory. It's mostly like political science,
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: and it's a pretty high status. I mean, I know
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: you guys aren't in political science, but like American Journal
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: of Political Science, it's probably not the most prestigious, but
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: it's probably in like the top five. It's like an
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: important journal. So it's kind of cool that they published
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: this actually in a way because I think like they're
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: definitely considered like one of the elite establishment political science journals.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: So it kind of shows that they're open to publishing
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: maybe like more diverse stuff. I mean, they talk about
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Ron Sierra in here and Zizek. And yeah, so I mean,
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: I think he makes like a couple of defenses. I mean,
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: he talks about how riots can function as like a
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: visual shock, right? You like see the burning cars.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Do you want to say what the thing was arguing first?
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Is this like a thesis statement?
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, let me see. I don't actually have that
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: written down.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Wasn't it just that riots are part of democratic representation? Yes.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: They express democratic... Yes, yes, yes.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: So he is defending an account that it's... Yeah, it's
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: like a form of democratic representation.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting to see this being made in a,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I guess, esteemed journal, because it's a very... The elite position,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: judging by every single news article, except for Al Jazeera,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: is what are these people doing? How could they imagine
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: this would help their country? They're burning down monuments. Can
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: you believe this? Every single one is that. Not a
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: single one pays attention to what we've been talking about
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: for weeks, which is maybe this is not completely irrational explosion.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Maybe this is communicative It seems like this has never
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: occurred to most people that violence could be communicating something.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, I would have never, I mean, I feel like,
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: I don't know that. I don't know that I would
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: articulate that concern in that way. I don't know that
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: it's about irrationality as much as ineffectiveness.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Senseless.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: People often, they do use the word senseless when, when
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: violence comes up counterproductive for sure.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Like surging, relentless, uh, opportunistic like these are all irrational
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: verbs i mean i think they're spasms of violence they're
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: all like organic metaphors.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: I think most people i think most people even the
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: most the people who are the most critical of riots
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: if you just like ask like ask them what but
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: don't you think there's some like, rationality behind it. I mean,
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: most people would say, yeah, like, it's understandable. I mean,
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: maybe not everyone. I mean, certainly that's my position. I
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: think it's understandable why people riot. Like, it makes sense
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: in the context, usually. Although it's interesting, he does kind of, like,
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: kind of demonstrate some sort of non-partisanship because he talks
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: about the Minneapolis protests and the January 6th riots on
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Capitol Hill. And he's like, yeah, these are both riots
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: that are expressing something, right? So he's not He's not
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: just being like a peer, which I appreciate. I mean,
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: that's very much what Victor would love, like loves it
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: when people.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: You mean horseshoe theory?
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. No, when people just show that they're like, they're
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: being consistent, they're being intellectually consistent. And it's like, yeah,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: this is going to be our account of purpose.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: We've been huge fans of January 6th since January 7th.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: I don't think we've ever said a bad word about it.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, you got to look at what the riot
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: is sort of representing.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: Like the January 6th stuff is obviously like representing quite
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: different demands and a different set of grievances from a
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: different sort of political perspective than the current sort of
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: riots are.
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: But they both have that. That's what's interesting.
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: They both have that destructive visual shock, right? Like there's
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: images here in the article under the disruption part. I mean,
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: some of the shocking scenes, you know, seeing the rioters
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: on the Senate floor on January 6th. And like, I
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: remember those images were playing through the news over and over. Like,
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: look at these like plain clothes, people doing stuff in
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: the Senate. Like it presents this, I guess it is
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: a good visual shock, this like asymmetry between what you
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: expect to see on the Senate floor. Versus like these
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: guys in sweaters with army backpacks on. And then there's
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: other pictures too, of like what you might like code
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: as more like left wing rioting.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: George Floyd stuff.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: So like stuff that might get coded as leftist. I mean,
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: just on a, just on a, on a basic level,
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: it makes sense to me because like peaceful protests can
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: get ignored. And the media responds to these kinds of
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: sensational images. So rioting, the destructive visual quality of rioting
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: does have a strategic purpose because peaceful protests can simply
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: be ignored, especially if they're not on this like massive
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: scale and have some kind of leverage behind them.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: We have to also remember that the cops also want
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: the visual shock.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: The cops also want the escalation. We saw that in
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: my last riot, the cops, they leave unattended cars so
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: that they get set on fire. So that there's photographs
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: of people standing on a cop car, jumping on it,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: setting it on fire, so that it's burning.
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: And why are they doing that? To manufacture a pretext?
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, then you have justification for escalation. If society
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: is falling apart because police cars are being burned in
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: the street, that's like a very visceral symbol to people
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: who are not there that are like, okay, well, we've
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: just gone too far. Also leaving pallets of bricks around.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: I've heard tale of it happening. I haven't seen it happening.
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: And the sort of undercover rioters and agitators, right?
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: Like someone.
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: But yeah, and then that brings up the question then, well, yeah,
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: riots create this image that brings attention, but then there's
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: all these considerations. Not least of them are, are the
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: people doing the rioting, are they aligned with the broader
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: demands of the protest?
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Because there's usually.
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: going to be many, many more people who are just
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: peacefully demonstrating. So are the rioters, you know, they're often called,
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: especially when the coverage is promoting a negative view, they're
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: called like opportunists and radicals. And they're just there to
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: cause chaos. There's your irrational violence, right? They're just there
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: to sort of revel in the destruction of I mean,
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: as Fox News puts it with these ones, like they're
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: there against Western civilization. They're trying to bring down Western civilization.
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: They hate America. They hate Europe. They hate democracy.
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: They're there just for that.
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: When, and, and you can just get a clear contrast, uh, in,
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: in Iran, when there were protests against the government, they
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: were celebrated in the Western media. Like, look at these
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: brave people facing up to this evil regime, right? Oh
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: my God, they're, Like there's some violence. We got to
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: get the guns in there. Like the US was practically
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: dropping guns into the country to try to cause more
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: violence and protesting. But suddenly now these ones in Europe, no, no, those.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: Ones are anti-Western civilization.
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: Like, you know, there's that problem of does the violence
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: align with the broader demands and how is it being presented?
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: I do wonder, you know, one of one of the
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: interesting parts of the article, I thought, which was a
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: bit of a concession on the author's part, because for him,
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: this this democratic theory of rioting requires an audience.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: And he does say, like, well, in almost every case,
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: like the people who are meant to be the audience, i.e.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: like the people in power, like police supposed to disrupt,
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: you know, their view of things. They usually dismiss it
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: in all the ways that Pills just talked about. It
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: gets absorbed and turned into like more reason for for
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: clamp down. And the author kind of says, yeah, so
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: in most cases, the audience isn't actually amenable at all.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: And he calls that an empirical limit. But he does
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: go on to say that it can still serve as
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: kind of a starting point for a conversation. And I
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: do think that that then connects to what Eric was
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: just talking about. That it's like, I do feel like,
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: and I don't know, I want to be careful with
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: how I say this, that maybe some of the riots
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: that have emerged out of recent left-wing protests are I
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: feel like they were protesting for things. While I think
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: that they're like real, like relevant concerns, they were like
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: maybe a bit, uh, a bit narrow to like, to,
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: to get a kind of broad based, Oh, like we
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: need to look at this differently. Like, I don't know
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: if like, I would have like, imagine if, if like
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: occupy would have turned into riots, I feel like maybe
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: I would have been like, um, I think more people
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: would have been sympathetic. in a way, because it's like,
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: it affects more people. It's like, this is like a
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: fundamental flaw and issue with our like financial system. This
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: is like a real, a real issue that nobody can, can,
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: can quibble with, right? Like nobody can really quibble with that.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: So I guess my point is, is like, I just wonder, like,
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: because as the author of this article admits, getting the
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: audience to absorb it and to internalize it in a
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: way that actually shifts the their perception to see things
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: differently is like very rare because all the mechanisms are
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: in play for it to be rejected and for it
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: to like not do not, not actually receive an amenable audience,
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: which is the reason why in most cases, uh, like
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: writing is extremely counterproductive because, because the audience is just
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: not there for it. Right. That's so that, that element
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: of the democratic theory of writing is just not there. So, but,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: but then I just think like the audience is going
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: to be there or it's going to be more likely
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: to be there. depending on the issue that you pick
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: is kind of what I'm saying.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: If we got, I like to think of a riot
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: as like a sign machine, just trying to pump out signs.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: And the, the sign that's in my head of the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: BLM are the Wendy's on fire and the police station
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: on fire. But my memory, my sign memory of the,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: of the occupy wall street is a bunch of people
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: going like this. Yeah.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: If they would have rioted, I think more people would
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: have been sympathetic to them than to these other more
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: recent riots. Because it's like, okay, they're actually rioting about
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: something that is uncontestable, that is affecting almost everybody. That's
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: a huge issue. They just came out of the financial crisis.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: That would have been a good opportunity to riot, based
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: on this democratic theory of rioting, at least.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: You know what? Whoever was in charge of the police management,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: and I don't mean police like the literal... cops here,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: but police in the sense of the system, as Ranciere describes.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: So the system management of Occupy was a masterclass in
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: how to manage a protest because it burnt itself out.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: It got too cold. It looked unserious. Nobody took it seriously.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: And that is everybody's memory of it is what a
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: useless protest that was. Even though it was like you say,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: it was for a pretty universal cause, a universal problem,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: bailing out the banks, the 99%. And we remember it
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: as something silly and infantile.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: And I really want to be clear. I'm really not
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: trying to be dismissive at all of BLM concerns. It's
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: just kind of a point about how big is your
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: audience to make this particular theory of rioting work? And
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: I guess my point is if you pick an issue like,
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: like uh like occupy that just like affects everyone it's
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: like billionaires like it's just like and it's also uncontestable
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: right it doesn't it doesn't depend on like a particular
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: like elitist kind of academic concept of structural racism that
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: like you know a lot of normies are just going
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: to instinctively dismiss right i i accept it i'm just
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: saying that like a lot of people out there don't
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: but it's like the like this concern with like all
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: these like, capitalists owning everything. Like, that's just uncontestable. That
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: is what's happening, right?
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: That was a parallel with the other thing we read,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: the systems theory of violence, is that violence is done
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: to a second party, but it's always for a third party.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: A third party, even if it's just completely made up
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: in your head, but the third party is saying, yes,
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: this violence is justified. So it's not necessarily that people
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: are watching their TV and agreeing with it, but be
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: the idea is that when violence is done, that society
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: is looking on it approvingly or more often disapprovingly.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: Or there's, there's that conversation that then happens.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: Like the third, the observer, whatever the media in a
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: lot of cases, the media, what, what gets people talking
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: about it then has those discussions. Is this legitimate violence?
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: Is this not legitimate violence?
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: And the media is just going, won't someone please think
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: of the private property? What about Louis Vuitton? Well, yeah,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: there is that aspect.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: Think about Western civilization.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: That's kind of one of his arguments about why rioting
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: is expressing something unique. It's supposed to show the vulnerability
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: of state power, that there are actually things that could
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: be out of the control, which is something that nonviolent
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: protests could never really show. It's because it actually shows that, oh,
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: people can mobilize, and the powers that be, like the
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: police and government, They can lose control. And the fact
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: that it reveals that they can lose control is valuable
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: in itself for this political theory of riding.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a communicative act too. And we see this
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: today is Macron banned, quote unquote, illegitimate protests.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, illegitimate protests.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: I see that.
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: And I think on the weekend, Italy put a curfew
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: in place as well. Because that is the law and
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: order approach. They are trying to just quell and control everything.
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: but without acceding to any of the political or economic demands,
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: which seems like a recipe for complete failure to me.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Or escalation.
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, like failure, escalation, ongoing. But I guess there's
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: that other strategic consideration is if you keep these going
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: for long enough, people are going to get sick of it,
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: and you're going to have this broad sort of middle
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: class response, then.
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: I was thinking back to the May 1968 riots that
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: changed French culture forever. But by the end of it,
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: by the time that the protests and the riots themselves
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: were over, people were completely sick of them. I think
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: I saw something like a number like 800,000 middle class
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: and conservative members of French society were marching down the
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: streets to get these things to stop. Even despite that,
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: there were huge ongoing cultural transformations that happened after the
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: May 1968 protests. But I really don't see there being
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: room for those kinds of cultural shifts.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know that people consider 68 a success. It
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: was more like they bought off, they split the protesters.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: They bought off the workers, and then the students were
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: left looking... looking like imbeciles, still protesting without the workers
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: who got bought off. That was the big contention of
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: the outcome there. But Macron should be taking some notes
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: from there. If you come at a force with violence,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: they'll assemble into a single subject. If you witness violence
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: done on behalf of your group, suddenly you turn into
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: a unit instead of a bunch of individuals or a
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: bunch of factions. But buying off Half of the protesters
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: now suddenly are left with only half the enemy to
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: deal with. But it seems like full frontal violence is
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: like always the worst decision for managing these sorts of things.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: And that's what they went with.
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, there's your path to quelling the protests and
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: the riots without the powers that be having to make
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: any concession.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: Whatsoever.
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: I'm just saying in the 68 riots, there was a
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: massive cultural shift that occurred afterwards. And the French government
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: tended to actually, you know, there was massive minimum wage rises.
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: There were huge concessions that the government gave to the
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: demands of the protesters and And there were massive ongoing
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: cultural transformations that basically created French theory and post-structuralism and
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: post-modernism in the intellectual sphere alone.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: I don't understand. You're saying that it was a success
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: because of academic stuff that happened afterwards? That's not really...
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: It wasn't really overall a success. The workers gained concessions,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: quit rioting instead of overthrowing de Gaulle. And then all
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: of those gains were wiped out in the next 15
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: years anyway.
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: I'm just saying it's transformative.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: Failure, success is relative, I guess. But it was transformative.
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: French culture, European culture, academia, and social culture.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: Well, I was curious what you guys think about this.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: It occurs to me that I feel like many riots
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: are now getting absorbed into the police order. So they're
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: not actually... Politics often like because they just get absorbed
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: like there's they're not actually like if they fail To
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: root to like actually disrupt, but I feel like they
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: become such a background condition in the media that I
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: don't even know if they successfully live up to the
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: thresholds of politics unless they Like I don't know Unless
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: they do something dramatic like there are obviously in other
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: countries like Like, for example, in Chile, you know, when
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: they started destroying all the subways, it led to like
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: a constitutional convention, which ended up failing. But it actually
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: did sort of reconfigure things.
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: But then, I don't know, you think about January 6th,
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: you think about like the BLM protest. Did they really
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: do anything to like disrupt the police order? You know,
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: like they're just kind of part of the background. I
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: feel like they're kind of incorporated in the routine of
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: our hyperpolarized police order.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a way in which riots are so, uh,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: I don't, uh, I think you, what's the word for it?
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: It's like so accounted for like, okay, we're going to,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: we're going to have, we're going to have a riot.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Here's the strategies.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Here's the route. We're going to block off these streets.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Like there's, there's a script and everybody knows their role
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: in the police order. And the police order is, you know,
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: the maintenance of the status quo. So we know what
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: the media is going to say. The media is going
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: to say, whoa, no, dark, dark scenes from France tonight.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: We know that Brett Stevens is going to write his
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: bullshit about, oh, this signifies the death of Western civilization.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Now America is the last hope. We know what the
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: police are going to do. We know that the streets
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: are going to be organized in this way. We know, like,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: so much of it is accounted for as if it's
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: just a simulation, as if it's just like a computer game.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: All the variables... We know them from enough times. We
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: got fucking data science on riots. So that spontaneity is impossible.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: So that like change is impossible. This used to be
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: the model for the 20th century. This was like the
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: model is the people are in the streets. Now it's
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: like that, except we know every step and we know
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: the outcome and the outcome is nothing. The whole thing
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: has been reincorporated before it even happens.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly what I mean. Yeah. Exactly.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: There was a difference with the French ones in that
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: the prime minister, I think the prime minister said... President, actually. No,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: their prime minister said, we weren't ready for this. We
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: didn't know this was going to happen. So they didn't
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: have all available units. Like, we'll see what happens this weekend.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: I guess French people just like to protest only on Saturdays.
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: That was a thing, supposedly. They weren't ready for it.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: Do they have a prime minister also? I always thought
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: France was a presidential republic.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Macron's the president, but they have a prime minister
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: as well.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, they also have a prime minister. Okay.
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: They got one of each.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: I think he's appointed. But anyway, he said, this caught
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: us off guard. We weren't ready for it to get
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: so big so fast, but we'll be ready next week
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: because they're going to get extra units. But the thing is,
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: if it's part of a routine, if it's planned, it's
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: like a theater production and everybody has their roles, then
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: there's no way to catch the government off guard because
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: you can't really say the protest is against... the government,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: unless it gets out of hand, unless it escalates beyond
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: their control. But while they're in control, then it's like
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: they're just one of the actors on the stage for
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: this little bit.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly my point.
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: Or it'll be like a climate march and the route
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: is planned and the cops are leading it, basically, and
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: sort of surrounding it and guiding it.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: And even when you're burning cars, it's like, well, like
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: we were talking about earlier, the cops put them there
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: on purpose because they want them to get burned. They want, like,
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: it's like, there's nothing unexpected. There's nothing actually disruptive in
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: this Ron Syrian sense.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: They put the bricks in front of the Hermes store
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: and Hermes has purchased insurance beforehand. So there's going to
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: be no like lasting damage.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. There's no real politics here in the Ron
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: Sierra sense.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: When it's incorporated into the plan, into the code, then
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: you can't do anything with a riot.
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: I think this actually borders on something really, really interesting.
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: and not just a kind of conspiratorial angle, although it's
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: kind of cool, but what about the same thing with
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: state economic planning?
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: We've learned from the.
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: 1929 market collapse. We learned from the 1970s oil shock.
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: We learned from the 2008 housing crisis.
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: We learned that.
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: Capitalism can be shocked to hell by these crises and
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: they are planned for and all those mechanisms you know
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: raising and lowering the interest rates and being the main
• 55:34
  Speaker 4: one and putting more money or less money into the
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: economy raising taxes lowering taxes all these are are often
• 55:42
  Speaker 4: mechanisms built to stop those shocks from happening or attenuate
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: their impact and yet they still keep happening And that's,
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: I think that's kind of it. Like, of course the
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: police have loads of experience with riots. Of course they
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: have tactical squads and playbooks and everything planned out what
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: to do.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: They go to Israel for six months of training with
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: the IDF. Yeah.
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: With the help of, with the help of the, uh, IDF.
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: And, and then there's the, of course there's the media
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: narratives that are pre prepared, ready to go.
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: Oh, there's a riot run tape a.
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: It's like they don't even need someone to write the
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: stories anymore because they've all been written already. They just
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: need to fill in the names and places.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: And also the repetition of all these riots, the way
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: that they're talked about the same way every time, also
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: means that ordinary citizens, when they hear about them, they
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: just shrug their shoulders like, oh, like a riot. It's
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: not doing anything to our psyche. It's just like, oh,
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: how about that? Okay.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: But reality guys, hyperreality is the weird word we are
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: looking for here where, where reality pre conforms to its model. Yes.
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: It's like, it's like when the, when, when everything's happening
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: within the Overton window, it's like, fine. We just know, okay,
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: that's the left perspective. That's the right perspective. This is
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: the edges of what is possible. But then when something
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: crazy happens that like shifts the conversation, moves the window.
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: I mean, that's, I guess that's the hope, right?
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: That it moves the frame. It doesn't just, it's something
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: happens that can't just be neatly captured by police tactics
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: and media narratives. Like it has to sort of break
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: the mold. And I guess if you have this sort
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: of heating up situation where you have increasing inflation, increasing
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: cost of living, decreasing job prospects, a whole generation that
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: feels like.
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: Politics is failing them.
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: And then the next generation feels like politics is failing
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: them even worse than the previous generation. You just have
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: this constant heating up effect and you still have all
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: the narratives and tactics ready to go to contain the
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: discontent from that. The hope still is that you're going
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: to break that sort of cycle. And finally, I don't know,
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: I guess, Break through and reach people.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: It sounds kind of idealistic like that, but I think
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: that's maybe one way to put it. The mainstream discourse
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: sometimes frames involvement in riots as egoistic, opportunistic, and criminal,
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: while the other side is, no, let's conceptualize it. So
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: that's the sort of question. Can it be affirmative like that?
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: When you see those images of fires and looting and
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: burning cars, is that is that positive collective affirmation or
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: not it seems a bit it yeah i mean it's
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: not crazy.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: And it kind of captures this sort of solidarity i
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: feel like element of collective so he called talks about
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: collective subjectivize subjectivation.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: Subjectivation that's a that's a theory term and we've read
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: it in the last year i just forget the theorist.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it combines this kind of antagonistic affirmation, right?
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: The police are the common enemy. But then also the dissent,
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: dissentual subject deviation, disruption of the visual regime. So it's like,
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: that's the part where you're revealing how the powers that
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: be are actually vulnerable to disruption.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: The question is if it's, if it's democratic, then who
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: does the riot represent? And I think there's quite a,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: an interesting answer here that, unifies a lot of the
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: different readings that we've done. So with Sherard, the purpose of,
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: of scapegoating or the purpose of finding a target of violence,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: a city hall, say private property, say Hermes, say the,
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: the purpose in finding this third to burn together or
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: to at least not stand in the way of someone
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: else burning it. Like what is it? What does it
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: take to get you to not protect someone's private property
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: is that there's a sort of cathartic element to it.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: So the crowd, the riot, the riot mob is a
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: group of individuals, but it functions as more than a
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: sum of its parts, which we're not used to dealing
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: with in any sense of our society. We deal with individuals,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: we deal with individual psyches, individual goals, uh, individual punishment.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: So we're not used to seeing collective subjectivation, as you
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: see in a riot. But he goes over these different
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: examples of riots where the rioters describe what it was like,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: and they say, good, or liberating, or exciting, or empowering.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: Or another one, quote, people are scared and definitely angry,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: but most of all, they're really empowered. That's what keeps
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: people coming out every night on the streets, the empowerment
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: of the crowd of everyone chanting together and fighting for
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: one cause. That's the overall feeling of everyone I know
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: right now. That was a BLM reporter. So there's the
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: sense of catharsis, group unity, that you almost never experience
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: in our culture in everyday life. But this guy goes
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: so far to say is, yeah, the mob represents something real,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: but it's not It's a group unity that can't be maintained.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: It's a group unity that you get a feeling of it,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: but it disappears as soon as the riot's over. So
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: it's common also, I think he says, it's common also
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: to feel ashamed after the riot's over for being part
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: of it or feeling like you're caught up in it
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: and then regretting your actions afterwards. There's reports of that.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: That's because the crowd itself becomes a real... political subject.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: It just becomes difficult to interpret this political subject as
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: a unity because it disappears. So then you ask, what
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: does it want? And that's kind of a complicated question
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: when you have a group made up of individuals that's
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: acting as one.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: I mean, the question of do riots represent is, on
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: the one hand, can they move beyond just sort of
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: expression of anger and that those expressive qualities in the
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: disruption and the violence and the, and all that towards
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 4: making a claim. That's one of the things, is there
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: a claim in rioting? It says here, so can it
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: put forth a kind of subject who represents some disenfranchised groups,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: some objects, some broader element of society. And can it
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: then say something?
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: Is it capable?
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: Is, Is rioting capable of making a claim on behalf
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: of some constituency that it represents? And in the sense of, yeah,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: like political, can it bring political representation to a group
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: of people and articulate an issue in a way that
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: can become part of, I guess, deliberation? can be accepted
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: or denied or modified and debated. I think that's, I
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: guess that's one of the basic questions. Can rioting represent
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: in that sense? And then, and then I guess that
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: then the question then would follow.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: So if it can represent, if it can make claims
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: on behalf of people that can be put forward in
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: like a deliberative sort of way, then what can it,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: what does it represent? What can they, what can the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: content of those claims be? I guess in certain cases like,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: I don't know, yeah, like Occupy Wall Street, what were
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: the claims? Can something out, it was often said about
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: Occupy Wall Street that it fell apart because it started
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: to fragment and that there wasn't a clear overall sort
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: of message to it that everyone seemed to be saying
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: something different or they're making different demands and there is
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: no coherence. So maybe that's part of the question as well.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: Can they make a substantive demand like we need to?
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: I think it's more obvious, though, that it was like, yeah,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: there's too much economic inequality. The small group of people
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: has way, way too much, and we need better distribution
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: of material wealth. But anyway, yeah, there's like, what can
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: it claim?
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: And when you, this is the problem, when you try
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: to turn a riot's, actions into a claim, it's just
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: going to sound corny because it has to be a
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: sort of common denominator thing. But you can say, because
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: it's like students and young people mainly, they're saying, give
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: us a future. We want a future in this country
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: that's worth living for. We don't have it. And if
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: you don't give it to us, we have no problem
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: breaking shit because we don't have any investment into this system.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: So give us a future can be taken as a claim. Now,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: if someone says, give us a future, and you send
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: the cops to go beat them, then you can't be
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: surprised when the response is, give us a fucking future,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: damn it. Now we're going to burn down City Hall.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: Now we're going to have fuck the police written on
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: every street corner.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: We're going to loot the Louvre. Can you imagine the
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: photos if they loot the Louvre?
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: Oh, my God. Just, just Mona Lisa disappearing into a crowd.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: Teenagers in black sweatsuits carrying out a mummy.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: Or burn Notre Dame again. Yeah.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: They probably, they're probably not even done fixing it.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And the claim part is where being specific comes,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 4: like not just painting Europe with.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: This big, broad brush, right?
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: Like, uh, in the Guardian, Alberto Alamano is a, is
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: a political scientist. And he writes about, you know, in Belgium,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 4: The students were challenging tuition fee increases in the French-speaking
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: regions and demanding additional teaching hours. He says the Greek
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: students were mobilizing over housing costs and access to accommodation.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: The Germans, actually, apparently in Germany, there's some possibility of
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: compulsory military service being reintroduced. So that was more specific
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: to their demand. In Albania, besides what I heard, there's
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: a Trump family resort being built there, and that was
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: causing a lot of people to protest too. But also,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: he says here as well, student unrest was built on
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: pre-existing anti-government mobilization, not just a standalone youth revolt. I mean,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: the list goes on. Serbia, peaceful protests following this railway
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: station disaster. that sort of dovetailed into the current sort
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: of wave of protest. Like, so yeah, I mean, the
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: claims then, I think to see what the claims are,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 4: you have to be way more specific than the media
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: tends to be, which is just to sort of paint it.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 3: All with a big broad brush. And we kind of did.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: The same too, saying, yeah, like these are all austerity protests.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 4: These are all cost of living protests. But if you
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: do dig in, there are these more specifically things going
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: on and demands being made. And ultimately these things do
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: have to be settled within a national framework because for
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: better or for worse nation states are the way we
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: divide up the world and respond.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: To these things.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: I want to push back on you actually a little bit,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: because I think you can't, the problem with interpreting the
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: crowd violence, the riot violence as language is that it's unspecific.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: But we confuse unspecific with, oh, well, then nothing's being said,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: then it's irrational. And then we apply all these like animal,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: out of control metaphors to the right as if it's
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: thus saying nothing, because what it's saying is unspecific and
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: hard to interpret. And that's just by virtue of having
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: so many different causes kind of align into one. One
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: group is angry about violence. One group is angry about
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: cost of living. One group is angry that their school sucks.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: One group is angry about their pensions. So it becomes
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: easy for the police state to just say, well, they're
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: not saying anything. We can't do anything about this. And
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: they throw up their hands and go, this is an
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: irrational monster mob that we can't speak to. But you
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: can interpret a message. You can interpret different kinds of messages,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: or at least families of messages, right? If not something
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: very specific, not something propositional. but you can have a
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: difference between the current protests in these places that you
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: mentioned and the sort of protest that says, we want
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: to overthrow the government. Because these are not, we want
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: to overthrow the government messages yet. It's like, hey, give
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: us Something to give us a piece.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: Make me a stakeholder.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: Make me a stakeholder. But if they refuse to capitulate
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: on anything, then you are going to have a type of, well,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: we should overturn the system type protest.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 4: And you're going to get the disenfranchisement anger, and it's
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 4: just going to be pure rage.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: Le Pen's, I hate to say it, she's probably going
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: to be the winner of this.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: Visual contest she will she also wants to lower she
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: also wants to lower the retiring age to 60.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: Based which is like substantive.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah and she also wants to wants to stop uh
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: eliminate welfare for immigrants that's one of her ways of
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: saving money.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: And the right-wing response is blaming it on immigrants and communists.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: That brings to mind uh One of the most insightful
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: takes on this situation I have seen, quote, Western liberals
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: imported the third world into France in the name of
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: diversity and compassion. They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: They were told it would lead to this and they
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: didn't listen, unquote. That's from the esteemed mental powerhouse J.D. Vance,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: who doesn't seem to realize, moron that he is, doesn't
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: seem to realize that the most The way to be
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: most assimilatory and compatible in French society is to riot
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: against the government.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no remorse.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: All right, well, it's a fluid situation, so I guess
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: it remains to be seen. Maybe we have some more
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: images to dissect.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: Yes. A bientôt.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: All right.