Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 14:43:50 +1000
From: rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au (Rob Schaap)
Subject: M-I: Re: Uh...Folks? and Nazis


I suspect I'm one of the reiterating hobby-horse riders to whom Louis G.
refers, but I'm with him on this one - with a few noble exceptions, this
has not been a good week for MI in my view.  The Neo-Nazi (what's so 'neo'
about these bastards anyway?) net-vote post is an important one.  There was
a time when, in my innocence, I wouldn't have worried so much about this
type of thing but (a) balancing discourse from the left is at an all-time
low nowadays, and (b) as workers (and the increasing ranks of would-be
workers) hurt more, and look more actively for political succour, the
danger represented by Nazism and its ilk can only multiply.  So, please
vote!  More than most, we know 'freedom of speech' is just so much
mystifying bollocks - I'll begin to defend it when we bloody have it, and
not before.

I've just come across a nice quote - it's nine years old, but it has a home
on a list like this, and it's got something to do with the above:

'The new territorial dynamics ... tend to be organised around the
contradiction between placeless power and powerless places, the former
relying upon communication flows, the latter generating their own
communication codes on the basis of an historically specific territory.' 
(Castells and Henderson in *Global Restructuring and Territorial
Development* 1987: 7)

Another shameless effort on my part to put communication[s] on the MI agenda ...

All the best, Rob.





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