Just recently, several government folk met in Paris to discuss extremism in its digital form. Included in the group was Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, my home country.
My project, the one I proposed to Waterloo, is concerned with the ways in which counter-terrorist measures allow for a space wherein a 'nation' can be established as a socially productive space. I'm not concerned with the efficacy, morals or ethics of these pieces of policy, but with how these pieces of policy give us a glimpse into how nations (re)produce themselves through concerns with efficacy, the moral and the ethical. It's not whether or not things are efficient, moral or ethical, but with how these ideas are used to create a social space, or system, that the idea of the 'nation' can partake in. Concerns over morals and ethics are not strictly 'national', but these concerns can take on a national character that simultaneously reinforce and justifies the 'nation' as a social system.
The 'Christchurch Call' is a great example of how the 'nation' as a social system reproduces itself in an environment that is consistently challenging and undermining many facets of the 'nation' that it once took for granted.
Just briefly, let me say that the majority of my methods are informed by Niklas Luhmann, but that there's a significant reliance on Foucault and his idea, I believe presented in "The Subject and Power, that a great place to start a look into social institutions is to see where it gets challenged. It's when something is challenged that it begins to 'fight back'. Though how it 'fights back' is, I'm assuming, multifaceted, leaning on Luhmann and his ideas of social system evolution, 'fighting back' is a complex of resistances and adaptations.
The purpose of the 'Christchurch Call' is to create a focused effort across national governments and social media platforms to address concerns over the spread of terrorist media through means like Facebook and Twitter (do terrorists have Instagram accounts? OMG, do they have Tumblr accounts!? That's a hilarious scenario to imagine). However, there are concerns over the freedom to express oneself online. Should the live-streaming of a mass shooting fuelled by rage be treated similarly to the content that was being released by Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently? This is the kind of question that the 'Christchurch Call' is trying to skirt the line on.
A free, open and secure internet is a powerful tool to promote connectivity, enhance social inclusiveness and foster economic growth.
The internet is, however, not immune from abuse by terrorist and violent extremist actors. This was tragically highlighted by the terrorist attacks of 15 March 2019 on the Muslim community of Christchurch – terrorist attacks that were designed to go viral.
The 'Christchurch Call' presents the question, "How do we quell the spread of terrorist media, while not stepping on the toes of what are seen as inalienable, universal human right?' Not only does this summit present the question, but it's already, quite convincingly given at least one among many answers, though it's fairly latent. That it's the job of the government, as the representation of a nation, to uphold the security and moral standards of the people they represent.
This is a little to 'state-ist' for me, however. I'm not interested in the state, but the nation. I'm still struggling to imagine a reasonable place where the 'nation' and the 'state' diverge, though Gellner and Hobsbawm have come to some understandings that seem to me a good place to start.
What I really wanted to touch on here, though, is the idea of productivity and how social systems create spaces to be productive in order to adapt to newly presented challenges present in their environment. What I think is so novel about this scientific orientation is not its ability to dissect, but it's ability to bring together various facets in order to observe their interactions. Under this rubric, it's not only what the 'Christchurch Call' summit is trying to do, but, in our understanding of it, seeing how it produces a lightning rod for conversations that all will support the nation as the 'logical' apparatus for its remedying.
People will say that the nation needs to do this, or that the nations are already doing enough, or that the nations need to do that, or that the nations are extending their power. Regardless, it is the nation that will be used as the space for useful and efficient social action. We can't imagine a response to the question that the "Christchurch Call" summit presents without including the nation. I find that so fucking fascinating.
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