hacktivismo

[Wouter Kusters]

Van: bob scheetz <rscheetz@cboss.com>

>     no question the am-brit oil/white-mans'-burden  imperialism component
>is nothing new,  nor the fascist zionist race state component; but what of
>the hntington clash of civ's where EU/US (ie, we're all gessellschaft now)
>side signifying post subjectivist "states", compulsively crusading to
>destroy (militarily as well as economically) all states founded in
>traditional cultures in order to integrate the new world order ie, Empire?
>Maybe not so enlightened, but throrughly rationalized along same structural
>axes, no?

Poooh. 

1) When we would listen to Huntington (which implies first reading his books), we would advice western states like the US and Western European states to not interfere in East- Asian or Islamic affairs. The crux of Huntington's essay is that there is no universal super-national, or super-civilisational common ground from where to implement imperialist or imperial actions. In a sense, Huntington would neither support megalomaniac american wars in the middle east, nor police action-styled interferences a la Empire. In fact, Huntington is unexpectedly more like Hardt & Negri in supposing some undefined and undefinable core between different people. 

2) On the other hand, the argument in Hardt & Negri is that the idea of Empire is developed from the american constitution, Wilsonian politics, and later western-influenced UN-organiosations. This leads at least to the suspicion that Empire is somewhat more western, than eastern, and western power is more probably implementing Empire than others. However, Hardt & Negri themselves deny this: they argue against regionally defined divisions of the world a la Wallerstein, and argue that after the 80s/90s there is no longer any division between the so-called first and third world. In fact, they argue that the third world now is found within the heart of the first world, and the other way round.
Of course, they argue about a lot more, for more details, see that inspiring and interesting book!

Wouter K.