In so many ways 2002 is coming to feel like 'the period after'. But, is it really the "period after" or a continuation of what the Zapatista call the 4th World War.
In the wake of September 11th, the collapse of 'digitopia', the breaking wave of net.art version 2.0 and the anti-capitalist movement. new strategies must come from the last 50 years of struggles against neo-liberalism in the South and not from the "ground zero" in the North.
Has there been a significant change in the focus of anti-globalisation activism in the aftermath of Genoa and the attack on the World Trade Center?
Activists are still asking the same questions about neoliberalism, and they are still using the same tactics to disrupt the gatherings of the G8 and the IMF around the globe. Interaction between the NGOs and street activists is the same - one leverages the other. Everyone seems to agree that the violence of Genoa and September 11th should not derail the use of non-violent direct action.
In addition, the same critiques of the anti-globalisation movement persist: that it lacks a coherent ideology; that it does not offer any workable solutions to top-down globalisation; that it disregards the last 50 years of extremely violent struggle against neoliberalism in the South. It is important that the North seek and understand the South's political and social thought - because it offers possible solutions and reforms that can really challenge the North's neoliberal agenda and which shouldn't be ignored. We must make the cultural thought and political practices coming from Chiapas, Woomera, Porto Alegre and Kerala. The bottom-up networks that can create another type of globalization beyond the neo-liberal protocals of command and control of the glocal via stong Markets and weak States.
Activists in the North have to stop believing the media hype that represents them as the only protagonists of note in what is actually a global struggle against dehumanising policies and growing poverty. Activists in the third world have been subject to harassment, surveillance, imprisonment, torture and even disappearance for decades without receiving much attention from the North. While it may appeal to the leftist activists and netizens in the North to promote the idea that, in a post 9/11 world, they have all been deemed 'the enemy' in the same way that the entire Arab world has been designated as a target by the US military, this is simply not true. If we focus solely on what is happening to Americans and Europeans interested in social change and whether they are imperiled, we end up supporting the American position that posits 'our' victimisation as more significant than the rest of the world's.
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