The Gilet Jaunes remind me of nothing more strongly than Occupy: a leaderless, anarchic uprising against systemic power that ultimately got dismantled by its own incoherence. Leaderlessness can be an advantage, making it difficult to coopt or decapitate a movement, but it's simultaneously a critical weakness due to the directionlessness …
The Gilet Jaunes remind me of nothing more strongly than Occupy: a leaderless, anarchic uprising against systemic power that ultimately got dismantled by its own incoherence. Leaderlessness can be an advantage, making it difficult to coopt or decapitate a movement, but it's simultaneously a critical weakness due to the directionlessness it leads to.
However, it's notable that Macron's response was to blunt their anger with pocketbook concessions, rather than distract everyone with identity politics.
If seen not merely as another occurrence of French rioting (a valid perspective of course), but as part of the an unfolding pattern of swarm uprisings - with Occupy and the Trucker Convoy being part of the same pattern - the GJ are notable for their staying power, and for representing something of a tactical escalation.
Uprisings like this test the system but they also signal a deep-seated desperation for a resolution to chronic grievances that have been left unaddressed. In time that signal will prompt a suitable party to come forward. Each wave of swarm uprisings brings us closer to that moment. Leadership will likely come from an expected source (the military or the Deep State) or not, but it will emerge.
The key will be the ability to direct the swarm, without seeming to lead it. Swarms have a tendency to be allergic to direct leadership, but to be very amenable to indirect influence. There's an art to this that hasn't quite been mastered yet, but I suspect that is coming soon.
It is not for nothing that a certain billionaire influencer took over the primary discourse factory in which most of the swarms have been born over the past decade or so, and has subsequently made himself very popular there. There's a fundamentally new kind of politics Musk is up to that bears watching.
The current swarms will be analysed thoroughly. Musk's patrons/masters or friends/allies doubtless plan on unleashing their own, possibly in the election year itself. So long as it results in providing us with relief from the blue-haired hordes I will not complain.
I see no proof of Musk being up to something in particular. Musk has made public the metric shit-tons of swarm-directing which had been carried out via Twitter by US agencies over the past decade. It's there for anyone who cares to read. But claims that he's acting anti-left are unfounded. Musk's twitter still harbours limitless amounts of deranged leftists, just go and look. It has them all: deranged left, sane left, sane right and deranged right.
It may be a cultural shock to those habituated to a pre-Musk twitter (where the sane right was half-purged and the deranged right was near-totally expunged, while the deranged left was festering) but this rebalancing has not "killed" twitter, it just made it all the more interesting.
However, significantly, the rebalancing REDUCED twitter's potential to be a swarm-directing playground. There's no "fundamentally new politics that bear watching" here; the interesting stuff is (largely) behind us, and can be watched at leisure in the "Twitter Files". Musk himself does not appear to have an agenda, beyond occasionally indulging in the autistic joys of shitposting.
The Gilet Jaunes remind me of nothing more strongly than Occupy: a leaderless, anarchic uprising against systemic power that ultimately got dismantled by its own incoherence. Leaderlessness can be an advantage, making it difficult to coopt or decapitate a movement, but it's simultaneously a critical weakness due to the directionlessness it leads to.
However, it's notable that Macron's response was to blunt their anger with pocketbook concessions, rather than distract everyone with identity politics.
If seen not merely as another occurrence of French rioting (a valid perspective of course), but as part of the an unfolding pattern of swarm uprisings - with Occupy and the Trucker Convoy being part of the same pattern - the GJ are notable for their staying power, and for representing something of a tactical escalation.
Uprisings like this test the system but they also signal a deep-seated desperation for a resolution to chronic grievances that have been left unaddressed. In time that signal will prompt a suitable party to come forward. Each wave of swarm uprisings brings us closer to that moment. Leadership will likely come from an expected source (the military or the Deep State) or not, but it will emerge.
The key will be the ability to direct the swarm, without seeming to lead it. Swarms have a tendency to be allergic to direct leadership, but to be very amenable to indirect influence. There's an art to this that hasn't quite been mastered yet, but I suspect that is coming soon.
It is not for nothing that a certain billionaire influencer took over the primary discourse factory in which most of the swarms have been born over the past decade or so, and has subsequently made himself very popular there. There's a fundamentally new kind of politics Musk is up to that bears watching.
The current swarms will be analysed thoroughly. Musk's patrons/masters or friends/allies doubtless plan on unleashing their own, possibly in the election year itself. So long as it results in providing us with relief from the blue-haired hordes I will not complain.
And what is this swarm, its nature? John Robb follows the swarm for at least 2 decades.
May I suggest having a look at the internet forms (technically) to see how the human swarm functions?
I see no proof of Musk being up to something in particular. Musk has made public the metric shit-tons of swarm-directing which had been carried out via Twitter by US agencies over the past decade. It's there for anyone who cares to read. But claims that he's acting anti-left are unfounded. Musk's twitter still harbours limitless amounts of deranged leftists, just go and look. It has them all: deranged left, sane left, sane right and deranged right.
It may be a cultural shock to those habituated to a pre-Musk twitter (where the sane right was half-purged and the deranged right was near-totally expunged, while the deranged left was festering) but this rebalancing has not "killed" twitter, it just made it all the more interesting.
However, significantly, the rebalancing REDUCED twitter's potential to be a swarm-directing playground. There's no "fundamentally new politics that bear watching" here; the interesting stuff is (largely) behind us, and can be watched at leisure in the "Twitter Files". Musk himself does not appear to have an agenda, beyond occasionally indulging in the autistic joys of shitposting.