A digital citizen’s guide to e-war

war post truth

Disclaimer: The past 30 years has seen a lot of abuse of the term “war” as political rhetoric (war on drugs, war on terrorism, war on Christmas). Any talk of “war” must be understood within this context.

WAR DECLARED (OFFICIAL) . London, 1939. Source.

When do wars begin?

1. Traditionally, the media calls an event a “war” when a state actor has made a formal declaration of war. NYT headlines in the run up to WWII are instructive.
2. Since Germany did not issue a formal declaration of war, the NYT does not describe the invasion of Poland as an act of war. The headlines continue to talk about “averting war” even after France was occupied.
3. This was not a failure to see something that was obvious in hindsight. The media was explicitly following the lead of the State.

Lesson 1: The media framing of warfare follows the interests of the State. The media will not recognize that a war is occurring until it is in the State’s interest to do so.

What is war?

1. Wikipedia defines war as a “state of armed conflict between societies”. But typically, the majority of people in warring societies do not take up arms against each other.
2. History books tend to identify wars with a sequence of battles and diplomatic actions (declarations, alliances, treaties, and so on). These events might be widely spaced in time and geographically distant from the populations said to be at war.
3. For instance: the War in Afghanistan is the longest war in US history and continues through the present day. However, this war is almost entirely outside the daily experience for the majority of US citizens, save for its occasional coverage in the media.

Lesson 2: A society could be at war and not even know it. The lack of armed combat in our daily experience does not itself preclude the presence of war. Whether or not we are at war depends on which societies “we” belong to.

A laughing crowd in WWII Germany. Source.

When is a war a war?

1. We’ve seen images of warfare presented in the media consistently for decades. This ongoing, persistent state of war extends to the bombings and shootings in public spaces, far away from any “front lines” of war and increasingly part of the lived experience of all people.
2. Armed State-on-State aggression is increasingly rare. Resistance typically comes from non-state actors engaged in radically asymmetrical tactics. When this resistance is armed, they are called terrorists or insurgents and are terminated with extreme prejudice.
3. When a resistance is unarmed it is described as a “movement”, and combat no longer falls under the category of “war”. For instance, the Indian revolution against British rule is described by textbooks as a “movement”, not a “war”, despite several mutually armed military conflicts and hundreds of thousands of deaths. These armed conflicts were not the primary political strategy of the revolution, and they weren’t decisive in its eventual success, and so the event is framed by history as a movement, rather than a war.
4. More recently, the DAPL protests saw a militarized State police force employing nonlethal tactics against an unarmed resistance “movement”. The resulting front lines of battle were violent, traumatic, and had all the hallmarks of warfare — except, crucially, the nonviolent tactics of the resistance.

Lesson 3: The distinction between a “war” and a “movement” pertains to tactics, and does not imply a limit on scope or impact. A movement is a war by other means. The American revolution was an armed resistance movement; the Indian revolution was a war whose primary insurgents practiced nonviolence. Revolutions can succeed by both means simultaneously.

From BET’s “Love and Happiness” Farewell Event, Oct. 2016. Source.

What is e-war?

1. The term “emulation” is used today as synonymous with “imitation” — an attempt to be like someone or something else. “Emulation” also has an archaic use to denote rivalry, pointing to a presumed conflict between the emulator and the thing emulated. In software there is a rough distinction between simulation and emulation, but in sociopolitics the two must be understood in conjunction.
2. Terms like “email” or “e-cig” share a prefix of ‘electronic’, but these terms are compatible with the frame of emulation thus described. Likewise for e-war: the creation of war-like (and peace-like) conditions to project an imitation of their targets. An ever-present threat of war threatens to upset an historically unprecedented peace. These appearances float free of their underlying truth.
3. The relevant contrast is with “cyberwar”. Cyber- taken from Wiener's coin of the term “cybernetics”, from the Greek kybernētēs, “to steer”. A term meant to described systems of control. What an awkward word to describe the current state of geopolitical chaos! Today nothing is so apparent as our lack of control — no one is at the helm. Cyberwar, indeed.
4. E-war sheds all pretense of control. E-war merely seeks to emulate: to project the image of war, of power, of peace, of control, truth, love, happiness, stability, rivalry, alliance, hope, of the future, whether or not these conditions obtain. To project these images as if they are true in an effort to make them true by sheer force of will. This is not a denial of our control so much as the expression of its profound limitations.

Lesson 4: E-war is the best we can do to both prevent and maintain a state of persistent and totalizing war — and hence, the necessity of a totalizing and all-powerful State as the primary agents of history.

Henry Brooks, Nov. 2016. Source.

Anthony Gormley. Field. 1991. Source.

Whose e-war?

1. Whether you prefer violent or nonviolent resistance, e-war names a state of persistent conflict between those who believe the Militarized Corporate State legitimately acts in their interests, and those who do not. E-war exists in varying states of armed combat (including significant nonviolent actions), and with varying degrees of comprehension among the people on both sides.
2. The primary strategy in e-war, for all major players and across all tactics, is to project an emulation of both war and peace, of both victory and defeat, as it suits their narrative goals. This emulation is not in the service of some more sinister goals; the emulation is itself the goal.
3. This state of persistent emulated global warfare is enabled by the incredible international pressure against direct State-on-State armed conflict. Battles are instead fought by proxy agents in non-State or intra-State contexts, or by “coalitions” representing multi-State interests, thus diffusing the conflict and masking its principle agents and their intentions. The appearance of “rival” spheres of political and economic influence (Russia, China, etc.) underscores how these emulated conflicts serve the underlying presumption of State dominance.
4. E-war is framed within a sympathetic media to reflect favorably on the interests of the alliances they represent, and are often cast in transcendent language (“freedom fighters”, “axis of evil”, etc). These narratives presume that States typically act as democratic and good-faith stewards of their people — in other words, it presumes that States are legitimate proxy agents.
5. The very media by which the people can organize and assemble for a systematic redress of grievances is aligned with State interests in preventing such organizations from developing institutional power. These conditions make it nearly impossible to render the fundamental social conflict as between the system of militarized Corporate States and the people they claim to represent.
6. The terms “neoliberalism”, “globalism”, and “the war on terror” are all used to characterize this conflict, but largely name the methods by which the corporate State maintains its hegemony. These terms do not name the conflict itself or the revolutionary movement addressing it, or any vision of what a revolution might hope to obtain.

Lesson 5: The first hurdle in this struggle is simply to identify its existence and nature, and to appreciate its scope and scale. The second hurdle, also significant, is deciding which side of this conflict you are on, and what tactics you are willing to endorse from your representatives.

Conclusions:

1. The resistance must be named, and it must be developed within media environments that will not compromise its integrity and credibility.
2. The resistance must be framed in such a way that its audience recognize themselves in its actions and its goals, and comfortably identify with it.
3. That includes deciding on tactics in a coherent way. Whatever you say about violence, more people will find more comfort in identifying with nonviolence across cultural lines. Especially when operating at global scales, purely practical considerations suggest that nonviolence is non-negotiable.
4. But this choice of tactics should not confuse the context and ultimate goals of conflict:
5. That we exist in a state of war, one which warrants a genuinely revolutionary response.
6. In this context, merely signaling to each other that this e-war exists, establishing the central conflict at stake and taking a definite stand, can be considered a revolutionary act.

Willem De Kooning . Ganesvoort Steet, 1949. Source. The CIA promoted Abstract Expressionism during the Cold War.