{"id":9419,"date":"2012-05-03T09:01:41","date_gmt":"2012-05-03T16:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=9419"},"modified":"2012-05-03T09:01:41","modified_gmt":"2012-05-03T16:01:41","slug":"occupys-meme-warrior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=9419","title":{"rendered":"Occupy\u2019s Meme Warrior"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occupy\u2019s Meme Warrior<\/strong>
\nAdbusters\u2019 Kalle Lasn on Occupy and a resurgent Left<\/em>
\n2 May, 2012 – BY Joel Bleifuss<\/p>\n

A power struggle is going on in the movement, between the old vertical type of a Left and a new young Left that isn’t so enamored with the old wolf pack mentality. <\/p>\n

Last July, Adbusters sent out this invitation addressed to those \u201cready for a Tahrir moment\u201d: \u201cOn Sept. 17, flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street.\u201d And thus, the Vancouver-based nonprofit magazine published by self-described \u201cculture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power and the way meaning is produced in our society\u201d sparked a movement.<\/p>\n

Estonian-born documentary filmmaker Kalle Lasn co-founded Adbusters in 1989. Lasn, 70-years-young (\u201cold,\u201d as in \u201cold Left,\u201d is an adjective he eschews), draws his inspiration from the Situationists, avant-garde European revolutionaries who believed corporate capitalism perverted the human spirit. The Situationists reached their zenith in 1968 Paris and disbanded in 1972, but their efforts to affirm what it means to be free live on in Adbusters.<\/p>\n

In These Times spoke with Lasn in March to see what \u201cthe man behind the curtain\u201d had to say for himself and the movement he helped ignite.<\/p>\n

What challenges does the Occupy movement face?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is a replay of what happened in 1968 when an insurrection in the Latin Quarter of Paris exploded onto campuses and cities around the world. For a few brief moments it looked like the first global revolution. Occupy is round two of 1968. Young people around the world have this sinking feeling that the next 30, 40 or 50 years of their lives will be one big black hole of ecological and political and financial and personal crisis. And if you are facing that sort of prospect you realize that unless you stand up and fight for a different kind of future, you don\u2019t have a future. Unlike 1968, it is going to have legs.<\/p>\n

We on the Left have become an ineffective, whiny, complaining, finger-pointing kind of movement that hasn\u2019t had a new out-of-the-box idea for a couple of generations. Everything we\u2019ve tried, including the Battle of Seattle and all sorts of anti-globalization movements, has fizzled out.<\/p>\n

A power struggle is going on in the movement, between the old vertical type of a Left and a new young Left that has social media at its finger tips and isn\u2019t so enamored with the old wolf pack mentality but is ready to do things in a much more horizontal way without leaders \u2013 sometimes even without demands. The question is: In this tussle between the old Left and the new Left, who will win? And if temporarily the old Left triumphs then we\u2019re in for a hard year this year and possibly even next, but bit by bit this movement does herald a new Left. This movement has made the Left cool again. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Occupy\u2019s Meme Warrior Adbusters\u2019 Kalle Lasn on Occupy and a resurgent Left 2 May, 2012 – BY Joel Bleifuss A power struggle is going on in the movement, between the old vertical type of a Left and a new young Left that isn’t so enamored with the old wolf pack mentality. Last July, Adbusters sent more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2943],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9419"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9419"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9421,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9419\/revisions\/9421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}