Resistance and freedom – Odd News

Attacks that strengthen. A reflection on the words Pompeyo Audivert about autonomy, self-management and unity. Editorial of “El Círculo Rojo”, a program on La Izquierda Diario that is broadcast every Thursday from 10pm to 12pm on Radio Con Vos 89.9.

“Milei’s attack on culture strengthens us” said Pompeyo Audivert in the Pase lo que Pasa last Wednesday (yesterday), here on Radio Con Vos. Pompeyo is an actor, theater director, teacher and in the context of the conversation about his play “Macbeth Room” he made that statement when asked about the current situation and specifically about Milei’s attacks on the world of culture.

It sounded like a statement dissonant with a certain common sense that has predominated in public discourse since this political process began last December. In fact, Reynaldo Sietecase, a little surprised, says “he sees it (the attack) as something positive” and Audivert reaffirms that it does because “it excites our unity and our power” and because “it trembles that more independent, autonomous and self-managed condition” that is important for art and for cultural activity in general and which considers that it should move to other social scales, be replicated in society as a whole. He believes that this spirit must be recovered and that this adverse context, to a certain extent, offers an opportunity.

I was immediately reminded of a statement made by Sartre (the prominent French left-wing intellectual) who opened a text titled “The Republic of Silence” with the following statement: “We were never as free as under the German occupation.” You will remember: France was occupied between 1940 and 1944 by Nazi Germany, within that framework the resistance developed until the end of the Second War, etc.

They were much more tragic conditions than the current ones, but it seems to me that it describes a certain grammar that is common to all forms of resistance and that needs to be rescued. Because Sartre writes: “We had lost all our rights and in the first place the right to speak; They insulted us to our faces every day and it was necessary to remain silent; They deported us en masse, as workers, as Jews, as political prisoners, etc.” “Everywhere,” Sartre continues, “on the walls, in the newspapers, on the screens we found that filthy face that our oppressors wanted to give us of ourselves: because of all that we were free.” And he concludes: “Because each thought was, precisely, a conquest; because an all-powerful police tried to force us to silence, each word became essential as a declaration of principles; Because we were persecuted, each of our gestures had the weight of a commitment.”

I believe that Pompey Audivert and Sartre share a certain spirit, which is that of productivity that can reside in resistance, in the awakening of certain dormant consciousnesses, now shaken by a profound attack that shows how stark power can be in a society like capitalist society.

Let’s see, it’s not about that caricature that is often made about the famous “the worse, the better.” I consider both Sartre and Pompey Audivert much more intelligent to adhere to that chicanery that, in general, is uttered by people who always want to avoid conflict, for whom they never give “the relationship of forces” and then to those who say that You have to fight, they respond with that caricature: “You because you believe that ‘the worse, the better’.” Well, no. It seems to me that what they want to say is deeper: given that these are the inevitable circumstances of our present (the German occupation in the case of France, the Mileist “occupation” in the case of Argentina) let us not dedicate ourselves only to denouncing the attacks and the damage caused by adversaries or enemies or, to put it more simply, let us not just devote ourselves to crying or lamenting about what happens. Let’s try to see why we got here, let’s try to draw the necessary political conclusions (what Audivert says about autonomy or self-management, in this sense is very important), and let’s look for what can be rescued from previous experiences and what new possibilities exist. in the resistance.

Because during all this time they wanted to convince us that the bulk of society (the workers and the popular majorities) were defeated, even worse than defeated, they were demoralized to the point that they had given their conscious support to a political project that He promised to destroy it.

Precisely to avoid this demoralization it is important to balance the balance of what happened and the contradictory characteristics of that political turn that ended with Milei in the Government. A process that was much more contradictory than is generally thought.

However, in the human tide that occupied the streets in the first university march and that will probably be repeated in the next mobilization called for October 2, there were many possibilities that were attempted to be contained (each one negotiating their interests separately); the persistent marches of the retirees and the repressions that caused even the Pope to make strong statements against the Government (in fact in the last mobilization they took out the gas) or in an event that happened this week that comes from a long experience: the Legislature of The province of Buenos Aires gave half a sanction to the expropriation of the MadyGraf cooperative so that it remains definitively in the hands of its workers.

In all these events, which are combined with a drop in the image and support for the Government, it begins to be shown that the idea that everyone had become neoliberal, individualistic, meritocratic, non-solidarity, anti-collectivist was false. That is to say, Milei’s reactionary utopia of a society of isolated individuals, of all against all, had already been realized.

Nor is this a praise of resistance for resistance’s sake, but because in each of these experiences lies in germ the possibility of a new sociability, of a different society.

Of course, for this it is important to draw political conclusions, in the words of Pompeyo Audivert, to recover autonomy and self-management and to think about how pernicious paternalism and statecraft were for the popular experience, that is, to think that we should not fall asleep hoping that everything come from above and elevate leaders who replace the necessary activity that corresponds to each and every one. Among other things, because that passive location, together with the management of misery (via adjustment) that those same leaders did out of conservatism, is what facilitated the triumph of the current right.

In short, it is appropriate to continue denouncing each and every one of the brutalities that this Government is carrying out against everyone, but it is also necessary to be aware that the attack can make us stronger.

Politics / Neoliberalism / Retirees / National University March / Javier Milei

Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com