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Anarchism - Protests - Upbringing: Anarchistic implications in student protests and upbringing

I believe that this book will provoke various reactions, especially because some of the „strategists“ of anarchism and protests will recognize themselves and find themselves singled out for the controversy. I wish that the opposed views do not end up with defamation or criticism. The book came off the press in July 2011, in Croatia, and this is the second edition, in English language, without any modifications except for minor additions in (this) introductory part of the book. We live in times of different “isms”. Our century has been marked with cold rationalism, manipulative consumerism and hedonism, extreme relativism and anarchism, religious indifferentism and aggressive secularism. All those “isms” represent themselves in the name of man, but, actually, they destroy him. Today the biggest threats for the (survival) of man are imposed by the universal crisis of capitalism and world corporatists on one side, and radical moral relativism and anarchism on the other. The threats come out of, today “rehabilitated”, deliberations of the representatives of anarchistic doctrine: Mihail Bakunjin and his dominant life rule: “The passion for destruction is a creative passion too!” and P. Joseph Proudon “Our principle is: atheism in religion, anarchy in politics, no property in the economic sphere.” Dostoyevsky (that) condition describes in a sentence: “If there is no God, everything is allowed”. In the book I point out the challenges of the time in front of “rehabilitated” anarchistic paradigm which has its adherents not only among the protesters but also in the educational system. The one who accepts that paradigm is on the side of antipedagogy and is, actually an antipedagogist. Anarchists offer a concept of abandoning the state and authority in general, which has (today) far reaching socio-pedagogic implications. In the book I do not indicate the consequences of the economic recession, as (additional) mover of the riots ; I leave that to the economic analysts. By revealing anarchistic implications in the protests and in the upbringing I also reveal the connections with the strategy of the directed chaos. The book published in English language, in 2007, under the title “The rising rebellion” is, actually, an anarchistic manifesto and it invokes violent actions throughout Europe (about that I write in the second chapter of the book). In the fourth chapter of the book “Documents, course and basic characteristics of student protests” I describe, in details, how are, (via social networks) students rebellions in Europe in 2008, organized and how, when and where the young anarchists invoke “the days of chaos”. In the last scheduled peaceful protest, not by anarchists, the youth has been organized as a part of the global movement “Democracia Real Ya” (conceived in Spain), on 28th August they have summoned on protests which will be held on the 15th October 2011 (Source:http://www.redconvergenciasocial.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=81). The gathering is planned as a global protest against numerous world governments (from Chile, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Norway to Indonesia and Croatia), under the slogan “We are not commodities in the hands of politicians and bankers”. Indicative is what David Icke clearly says to the youth: “Don’t riot- that’s what strategists of chaos want” .Special emphasis in the book I put on the last student protests in the world, and especially in Europe and Croatia. In Croatia, there has been no violence, at least not by students. Scepticism of the youth in the mid 1960s and at the beginning of 2000 preceded students’ protests, so the diagnosis of scepticism is a certain sign of the arrival of rebellions and protests of the young generation. General crisis of capitalism, school atrophy in upbringing, paternalism of the community and parents, permissive upbringing, indifferent parents and decades of neglected needs, problems and preferences of children and youth created a “boomerang generation” out of the sceptical one. We, adults, have rejected children (as an only national and family “capital”) and now they strike back. Today’s “boomerang generation” that takes part actively in the protests, violence... (in)directly accepts anarchistic paradigm of the society without hierarchy, norms, rules and respect for authorities. “Boomerang generation” has a message (for us): “You have tricked us. We do not trust anyone anymore!” Czech writer Milan Kundera, in his novel “The Joke”, describes the characteristics of the youth which are very current today: “Youth is terrible: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and a variety of costumes mouthing speeches they've memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand…” That is “a playground for the easily roused mobs of children whose simulated passions and simplistic poses suddenly metamorphose into a catastrophically real reality.” (M. Kundera, The Joke, 1984). With detailed analysis of the organization, symbols, goals and methods used in the last student protests I indicate that students’ protests are in connection with today’s expanding anarchist movements. On the other hand, those same anarchists, in the protests, fight against the large capital, powerful multinational corporations and financial organizations which stand behind the “directed chaos”. In the book, the directed chaos is detected by the connections between anarchists and corporatists when it comes to riots and the collapse of family as a basic cell of the society. I analyze the last revolutions in North Africa by referring to the arguments of the ex Chief Economist of the World Bank, Joseph Eugen Stiglitz, professor at the Columbia University, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences and Clinton’s advisor, who, in 2001, referred to the strategy of the corporatists with “four steps to damnation” for “small nations”. Disappointed by the behaviour of the World Bank and IMF he pointed out that those organizations have a goal to “colonize small nations” especially those from the area of Southeast Europe and North Africa. One of those steps is encouragement of riots, violence or “the directed chaos”. Stiglitz reveals that after a staged capital flight, IMF will ask the government of the county-victim to drastically increase interest rates, all to attract great world speculators to return drained country’s capital. An example for that is an objection which the American diplomats in Zagreb had on the work of Croatian Government in 2009 and 2010. As we discover from the dispatch which was published by WikiLeaks in 2011 (which were sent to State Department during the last two years) the US ambassador concluded that the Government of the Republic of Croatia is “aware of the necessity of the economical reforms, but there is no political will to carry them out”. The fact is that the Croatian ex Minister of Finance Šuker left before the end of mandate of The Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, most probably because of his statement to the American ambassador: “We do not need IMF to tell us what to do”. About the conception of the directed chaos and creation of euro poltroonery for “little nations” I discuss, in details, in the second chapter of the book. The European Union is a political project based on the principle of subordination by the more powerful. Contrary to its proclamations, EU, with an economic pressure, deliberately oppresses stumbled nations with an engineered project from an economic collapse to revolutions, wars and riots, achieving (in that way) neo-colonialistic aspirations of the world’s corporatists. When “big players” satisfy their “appetites” with stumbled countries (in transition) they will find an excuse that (then) that super-state, called EU does not suit them. European Union and USA have, by 2011, before dethroning of Gaddafi’s regime, owed to the Libyan state more than 200 billion dollars for the delivered oil. Muammar Gaddafi asked for debt repayment and threatened that he will, otherwise, conclude other interstate contracts. Because of this, the great destruction of Libya and dethroning of Gaddafi, who did not bother “the big ones” for decades before, followed. Under the leadership of the “tyrant”, as he is called by the „great forces” during the shelling, Libya has become the richest African country. So, the problem is not that Gaddafi is a proved dictator, but “the big ones” have a problem with his disregard of IMF and The World Bank. Knowing that USA is on the edge of bankruptcy, President Barack Obama, recipient of the Nobel peace prize, has summoned, also, the EU countries to “free” Libya from the “tyrant”. Additionally, on 21st September 2011, Barrack Obama addressed delegates of UN General Assembly in New York. His speech was a whirl of empty words about peace, democracy and freedom. In fact, USA had (also) kept the president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, the second “dictator”, in power and lavishly financed him, for three decades. Obama’s armed “peace” intervention in Syria, Libya and Egypt was just an “empty phrase” for most delegates of the Assembly. All of this confirms Stiglitz’s argumentation about the directed chaos. According to Lisbon treaty from 1st December 2009, European Union adopts elements of a federal state in which member countries lose important parts of its state sovereignty within European super-state. On the other hand, how to explain the fact that Germany, a country that first came out of the recession, started a media campaign for rising national consciousness called Du bist Deutschland! (You are Germany!), and German chancellor admitted that “multiculturalism is dead”. In Europe where interculturalism has died away, now, the Lisbon treaty talks about the politics of immigration: “The Union ensures that individuals are not controlled while crossing the Union’s inner borders and it creates common politics of asylum, immigration and surveillance of outlying borders.” This is the evidence that these proclamations are, actually, shackles for “small nations” in the conception of directed chaos at causing frustration, conflicts and riots... Students’ protests are seen, also, through the prism of “directed chaos”, as they also, just like numerous anarchistic movements, significantly contribute to the creation of riots in which big players accomplish their goals. Rulers of chaos play a game with gay prides too: “no matter on what side you are, you are harnessed to their coach. You do not need to fool yourselves ; there is no right or wrong side here. If you are for those who stone gay pride – you work for the Elite because you create riots and situations they use. If you are a participant of a gay pride- you also work for the Elite unconsciously playing your role in some bigger plan, say by enabling “advertising” of their agenda...all those people are only means.” That is how Krešimir Mišak explains it, on his blog, aware of the fact that the concept of strategists of the directed chaos is to create a problem with opposing sides. Still, the tricked generation of the youth had to answer with protests, but articulated in a different way, with different goals and methods. Today’s boomerang generation of the youth lives in the surroundings of virtual dictatorship of sophisticated technology which (in the long-term) contributes, especially with children, to the loss of orientation, alienation and hopelessness. That is why the scepticism of the youth was in the past, and is today, a “trigger” for protests of, that same, tricked generation. Current economic crisis, collapse of the authorities, school’s atrophy in upbringing, crisis of state institutions, family dramas...contribute to the processes of “losing statehood of the state”. That is the spirit of the times we live in, and that affects the young generation the most. In the book, I draw attention to the examples of disastrous symbiosis of anarchistic ideas and ideologists in upbringing and students’ protests. I point out, by numerous examples, that the conceptions of radical moral relativism and anarchistic penetration in upbringing have long-term negative consequences on the consciousness and behaviour of the young generation. Students’ slogan in the protests that “knowledge is not merchandise” comes from those who yell about disastrousness of capital and capitalism because that phrase has become means for recruiting the masses, behind it is just an ideological phrase with an aim of conquering fashionable position of the critic of everything that exists and/or utopianism, while in the reality realistic projections of a “healthy society” (E. Fromm) or development of the university community are not offered. Considering that important goals of numerous protests are not accomplished and that the position of chaos suits powerful organizations, in the book I introduce an assumption that the protest will develop into a long term anarcho-syndicalist movement. I assume that the new syndicate in higher education Akademska solidarnost (Academic solidarity) will be the one which will have those features. That can be seen from a letter sent to the public on 15th July 2011, from which it can be seen that the current fight against enacting the law about scientific activities, higher education and university is just a motive for broader actions, which are yet come. Bank is only confirming Stiglitz’s argumentation that the powerful encourage or are suited by, revolutions, riots and social unrest. Contemporary world is sitting on a “powder barrel” where (from more than one side) fuse has already been fired. The last protests in New York from 1st October, and in Boston and Los Angeles in USA are protest, of mostly young people, against the greed of Wall Street. It has all started in July 2011 when a group from New York called “General Assembly”, inspired by protests in Madrid and Arab spring, started to organise protests via internet, which resulted with the first bigger gathering (in the centre of business world) on Wall Street, on 17th September this year. Banner of the protesters “The banks got bailed out, we got sold out” has become their recognizable slogan. With the help of internet, organisation group had an action “Occupy Wall Street”. (About internet as means of protests I discuss in chapter 4.1.2.). The youth, who has nothing to lose, (and then) goes out in the streets, and in the last October protests in USA, more than thousand of them has been detained. Protesters talk about social injustices, rise in unemployment, discrimination, greed of the rich, and according to the plan of organisers, it will spread to Canada, reports National Post (on 2nd October 2011). They negotiate their actions via direct democracy ; they have no leader/s, or precise goals. That is why they stand no chance of success with vague strategy to fight against “giants”- corporatists, who even encourage disturbances, free education and neoliberal capitalism. What binds them together is that they know what they don’t want: greed of the rich and layering of society. Without clearly articulated goals and missed organisation via direct democracy (without leader), in the long term, they will accomplish nothing. Tyranny of critics of everything that exists continues. Jean Paul Sartre, in his novel “Nausea” has an understanding for “Nothingness” of existential drama of a group of dissatisfied people who become (eventually) socially subversive, but, ultimately, “superfluous, that is to say, amorphous, vague, and sad”. In the largest global protest on 15th October 2011 it was protested from 951 cities in 82 countries. The most massive protests were in Madrid, and the most radical ones in Rome. About ten thousand people came out (again) into the streets of New York. Violent protesters in Rome threw Molotov cocktails on the police, broke bank windows and robbed stores. On 16th October 2011 violators also demolished the parish of St. Marcelino and Peter, reported La Stampa. The last protests raised the question- has the wave of global changes begun? Protesters do not offer alternatives ; they do not trust anyone, especially not politicians and corporations. Riots are a consequence of deep economic and political, and mostly authority crisis, about which I write in the second chapter of the book. The movement has become global, without leaders and unitary ideology. Protesters are especially dissatisfied with the distribution of wealth and increasing social stratification. The originators of the last, New York protest are also anarchists, claims Canadian leftist activist, Kalle Lasn (in the interview for weekly newspaper Globus on 11th October 2011), about which I discuss in the seventh chapter of the book. The largest groups of protesters are formed from the unemployed and students and activists of numerous groups – from extreme political left and right to groups for minority rights- are together with them. The world is shaken by radical protests. They are unstoppable. My satisfaction is that I predicted them as early as 2005.

Anarchistic implications; values; media manipulation; student protests

ISBN-10: 3846544671 (Print in the USA, UK). Board of Director: Thorsten Ohm (CEO), Dr. Wolfgang Müller, Esther von Krosigk Reviewers: Doc. dr. sc. Ante Periša ; Prof. dr. sc. Duško Lozina and Dr. sc. Zlatko Begonja