VIRTUAL REVOLUTION IS A PETIT-BOURGEOIS ILLUSION

The number of virtual signing campaigns, protest pages, support groups, etc.is both a very good and a very sad thing. The good is very simple: it's always heart-warming to see people who care. The sad: and that's about it. The illusion that anything revolutionary or effective can happen today in our so-called democracies ("authoritarian democracies" is, in my eyes, a better definition) is a sweet petit-bourgeois dream of "political activism." The saddest irony, maybe, is that they mix, of course, the image for the real thing (as Debord so justly predicted). By signing a petition or joining a support group, you are actually doing NOTHING - even if it's about Bradley Manning or Assange - you are not risking anything - no, the NSA, the FBI and the CIA will not come crashing into your home at five o'clock in the morning - you are just signaling your support for something you agree with - which is fine. But to believe, as the media regularly claim in order to carry on the illusion, that it has any impact except on your own conscience is a serious and dangerous illusion. If you really want things to change, you have to start acting - and not acting alone. You have to stop and wonder why everything is going the way it is, and what you can do - with others- to stop it. Politically. And that, today, means to put in question the worst lie in our current democracies - voting. Stop voting, and the system will crumble. It is as simple as that. Or vote for those who want to really change things, but without trusting them a minute. Think of other democratic possibilities. Of other models.  We still think of capitalism and the market the same way as the XVIIth century philosophers thought about monarchy - a terrible thing, that has to be reformed - instead of a terrible thing that has to be replaced. So stop clicking and start thinking. The world is not virtual, but freedom and justice are becoming more and more so.