ferlini heroic flaw law
‘a quintessential illuministic flaw: heroic intellectuals of good will who sacrifice themselves to do the good of the people, but do not think that the people can do their own good on their own‘ – simona ferlini
any form of people telling other people what to do
_________
from:
via simona fb comment via this fb share – Game-Over Theory: What Drove the Defeat of a European Radical Movement by Arturo Desimone 28 May 2023 – [https://www.sublationmag.com/post/game-over-theory-diem25]:
One clarification: I did not resign “after the revelation of spousal privilege”: from the Italian National Collective, I resigned to denounce the situation you describe – lack of internal democracy, crucial decisions entrusted to unchecked plenipotentiaries – which was already in place back then (2018), but seemed reversible, and to ask for a change of course.
I run and was elected to the CC elections precisely in the hope to bring this most needed change, fought very hard for it, and gave up in February 2021, when “The Office” managed to get rid of one of our most promising activists, Brice Montagne, and it became clear that a change of course was not possible.
This time, though, unlike three years earlier, I did so quietly, partly because I was exhausted (fighting an enemy is exciting, but having to fight and being fought by comrades is simply painful), partly because I did not want to do DiEM25 more damage than Γιάνης and The Office were already doing (to my opinion, without understanding they were), and mostly because it was clear to me that the situation was beyond repair, and there was no point in discussing it.
so resonating
I felt, it is true, that I owed you members an explanation, but I also thought that the situation was already very clear for everybody, and I was just the one who had kept hoping and struggling the longest, like a japanese kamikaze.
Overall, I agree with your analysis, and I’d have many points to add along the lines of it (I might do so, one of this days). On one point, though, I disagree with it: it’s not about nepotism, it’s about a control-freak attitude that endows a very small number of people with blind trust (“blind trust” is the internal CC mantra), and distrusts the rest of the world. Being in the CC felt like being in a besieged citadel: the besiegers were all those stupid members who wanted to contribute, and I was openly treated (not by Yanis) as one doing an inside job for the besiegers. There is no personal nepotism on the side of Yanis, who is a good and honest man, but what results in nepotism is a logical consequence of DiEM25’s and Yanis’ fundamental flaw, call it illuminism or call it not understanding that “if you are the smartest in the room, you are in the wrong room”.
I retrieved the same attitude in the Maoist guerrilla described in Alpa Shah’s Nightmarch, and I think this is a quintessential illuministic flaw: heroic intellectuals of good will who sacrifice themselves to do the good of the people, but do not think that the people can do their own good on their own. At least, yet, Indian maoist have very good reasons to work on a very small circle trust basis.
huge huge
Therefore, Yanis’ tweet saddened me for the lack of a proper political analysis and of a most needed assessment of what could have been done better, but didn’t surprise me at all. He has a recipe to save the world, and any rational human being, as soon as they understand it, should follow him and help cooking. If they don’t, it can only be because they are misguided or deluded.
yeah.. i don’t know if he’s going deep enough for it to ..
As a matter of fact, his is the quintessential leftist attitude, or at least the quintessential leftist coordinator class (as in Michael Albert) attitude, and shows all the weaknesses of it.
_________
________
________
_________
_________
_______
be you. 