To Build a Movement for Democracy, We Have to Win the Internet

                     Political rights are human rights and the worldwide movement for democracy, human rights, justice, political inclusion, and my candidacy is becoming stronger each day. Since 2020 I've also a YouTube channel  https://www.youtube.com/@lucianofietto4773 and like have been happening with this blog, for some unknown reason to me, they don't show us the real number of visualizations. This post is a summary of the article with the title above, published in July 2023 at https://convergencemag.com/articles/to-build-a-movement-for-democracy-we-have-to-win-the-internet/

                   Looking towards the 2024 election, we must face the real possibility that we may be headed into an electoral autocracy. For those committed to building a real democracy, we must grapple with how deeply technological innovation and internet in particular has played a fundamental role. And to win on our vision for justice sustained by a resilient democracy, we need to take seriously that the internet must be at the core of any sustained global democracy movement. We must face the fact that authoritarianism and the move towards minority rule has advanced in part because decisions that affect our lives happen in two realms simultaneously: both within nations states and on the internet. As pro-democracy movements, we work hard to govern, but we have yet to reckon with or truly acknowledge the need to govern the digital realm. We can't win the fight against authoritarianism if we, as a movement, don't also have a theory of governance of the internet. In the digital world we have a legal regime, albeit a broken one, that governs he physical world and we have land borders that delineate the boundaries of a country. But the terrain on which our movements are often fighting is not in the physical world. The terrain on which we are fighting for justice and the governance that can help us get there is largely online. A democratic internet was never going to manifest itself because, contrary to what techno-optimists claim, the internet does not create a neutral playing field. Many people who seek to regulate the internet focus on disinformation as the problem. But disinformation is the canary in the coalmine of a much bigger problem. Seasoned organizers know that focusing on "truth vs. lies" doesn't actually work as a part of an organizing strategy. What works is to focus on building relationships that help us unlock the fears that underlie belief systems. When combating disinformation that spreads online, we need to understand why fear travels faster on the internet than the principles of collective care. When our concern about how the internet distorts democracy focuses on disinformation as the loci of the problem, it's like we have decided to address the wound instead of the infection. In this case the infection is the for-profit motive. Tech companies amass huge profits from the world views espoused, as algorithms (and the advertising) draw more people into online spaces and polarizing content drives those individuals into hotbeds. Authoritarianism benefits, which allows the strategy of "flooding the zone with shit," as Steve Bannon put it, however inaccurate, toxic and manipulative it is. We have the ability to fight back and to advance our democracy. Here are three insights that can shape near-term strategy:  1) We can begin by acknowledging that the internet is not just a tool that we wield but a world and place that we should occupy.  2) We can draw connections between advancements in tech, A.I. and the profit-driven nature of the internet with issues like surveillance, climate change and the gutting of our voting rights. By doing this, we can set tech companies in our sight as targets as we take on a battle for our democracy. Targeting tech companies for any kind of surveillance would create another path forward in the battle for justice and could have implications for others ways that data tracking is used to police our communities.  3) We can take the terrain of the fight online, not just by sharing news or getting better at social media, but by investing in bringing approaches of deep relational and place-based organizing to the digital realm. During the 2020 election some power building organizations to develop followings on platforms like TIkTok, Facebook, and Instagram. The purpose of this type of organizing was to broaden their base and scale the reach of member leaders to share messages and push back against disinformation. Organizations in Minnesota, Michigan, and Arizona did this as a way to protect against efforts to steal elections, mobilize voters, and scale membership bases. As we imagine not just stemming the authoritarian, but seeding a more bright future, we should see the fight for the internet as core to building that world. We are having the opportunity to build a pro-democracy movement to coalesce around strategies. Together, we can imagine what full-scale governance of the internet would look like and feel like, and set the roadmap to get there. It won't happen overnight, but it can happen. It is key to truly realizing a democratic society.

11th Anniversary of the Protests of June of 2013

                      This month of June one of the biggest protests in Brazil history completes eleven years. The reason why this protest is so much studied with so many publications  and others are not, it was its character totally spontaneous, unexpected, democratic and non-partisan. We all in Brazil watched on TV and internet, millions of protesters went to the streets to protest against corruption, injustice, any kind of violence, bad use of public money, etc. Hundreds of protesters wearing Guy Fawkes mask. Thousands of protesters with posters asking for more investment in education, political inclusion, and governmental transparency and accountability. In my opinion, it was one of the most important and meaningful moments of the Brazilian history and a powerful demonstration of solidarity, empathy, independence, and political commitment of its people. Those protests called by some as "June Revolution," and by others as "June Journeys" must be always remembered. And it is good also to remember what the protesters were asking for and what has changed after so many years. If you want to read more about those protests, access the posts of this blog during the month of June, I have been doing summaries about these protests since 2017. I've also, since 2020 a YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@lucianofietto4773. Educative/cultural activism for a stronger democracy, a fairer justice, a broader human rights and governmental transparency. This post is a summary of the article with the title of, "Social movements, cultural production and protests."  It was published in October 2015 at https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/681927#

                     In June 2013, a series of large demonstrations throughout Brazil shook its cities and political landscape. They perplexed politicians and analysts, many of whom found themselves without solid references to interpret the novelty of these demonstrations, and many have oscillated between silence and old discourses. The protests also have a global lineage, and they followed closely ones in Istanbul in the previous month. Analyses of protests have already features to the existence of a new type of public mobilization. They include a symbiotic relationship with the internet and social media; the spontaneous diffusion around networks; the capacity to attract thousands of participants in a short period of time; the heterogeneity of the participants, who may or may not form coalitions; the handmade quality of posters and banners. The demonstrations also disregard established political institutions such as political parties and unions and clearly indicate a shift in the way in which political languages are produced, circulate, and guide practices. One of the main features of the demonstrations was the proliferation of handmade posters with imaginative phrases in which individuals expressed their frustations, their take on what was going on, and their demands. many posters in June 2013 communicated ideas that have been circulating in several genres of cultural production, in the social media, and in blogs for quite a while. Moreover, from the streets, participants fed back social media, describing, documenting, interpreting, and thus amplifying the events. The internet has been functioning for long time as the space to express and spread the feelings of irritation. Anyone who follows Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis knows that people use their cell phones to post messages of frustrations. The tension expressed on the streets and in social media became palpable. An image that went viral, a young man held a poster with the words "The people woke up". They knew, the the others were the one now discovering and being surprised. Those who did not realize what was going on were the political parties that have not listened to them. the governments that have disrespected them continuously, and the middle class that arrived late in the streets to join in the indignation. Thus, in the same way that the spontaneity of the demonstrations indicate a break in authorities and modes of political organizations, the cultural production and its circulation via internet has been breaking monopolies in the production of representations and interpretations and displacing authorships and authorities.  After the demonstrations exploded, all manner of simmering irritations and anger from across all social groups found expression on the streets, most notably exasperation with politicians and their corruption, frustation with governments at all levels, the sense of absurdity of the expense of megaevents such as World Cup contrasted with the disregard of basic social rights such as education and public health. (we want "FIFA standard" schools and hospitals, said the posters); annoyance with political parties; perplexity with the attempt of some in Congress to undermine LGBT rights; and the revolt at continuous police violence. This proliferation of protests on the streets, preceded by exchanges on the Internet and years of cultural production indicate the incapacity of organizations and institutions to maintain a hegemony in the production of interpretations and practices. This can be very positive and liberating, opening new paths, breaking old monopolies, and revealing new articulations. But it also indicates risks and the need for a new democratic articulation that goes beyond posters, hashtags, and inscriptions on walls, an articulation able to contain authoritarian and violent impulses and create political spaces without sacrificing the novelties. How this articulation may be obtained is an open and challenging question. When the urban social movements emerged in the peripheries of São Paulo in the mid-1970s, they were a big surprise, but no one had predicted that the movements that would be fundamental to democratizing Brazil would come either from the peripheries or from the Catholic churches and that they would be articulated through demands for rights. Moreover, no one could predict the influence they would have in shaping Brazilian democracy in the decades that followed. It is clear that old interpretive frameworks will not help to understand them. These protests have not been preceded by years of political organization and have no clear leaders or organizations associated with them. However, it is clear that the political interventions that now carry the promise of innovation and pushing the limits of established and unequal social arrangements are not coming from predictable places, and they reveal how much cities and its polity have changed in the last few decades. In spite of recent improvements, São Paulo continues to be almost as unequal as it has always been, but the nature of poverty, the urban environment, and the citizens' engagement have changed a great deal. Poverty has different signifiers in a city of better infrastructure, better mass communication, democracy,  and less violence. Any new democratic articulation will have to consider these peripherical groups, their inventiveness, and the challenges they present for the creation of a more democratic and less unequal society.

300th Birthday of Immanuel Kant - Part II

                          The counter of this blog never worked and the same is happening with my YouTube channel since I created in 2020. I really don't know why I've been so harmed in many different ways and for so long, but now all the world is demanding justice. I've heard for many years that people doesn't care about injustice, now all the world knows that it is a lie. If you want to watch my YouTube channel this is the link  https://www.youtube.com/@lucianofietto4773/videos This post is a summary of three articles. The first was published at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-social-political/. The secons was published at  https://acjol.org/index.php/njps/article/download/3345/3283. The third was published at https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/rights/

                            Kant wrote his social and political philosophy in order to champion the Enlightenment and the idea of freedom in particular. His work came within both the natural law and social contract traditions. His writings on political philosophy consist of one book and several shorter works. "There is only one innate right," says Kant, "freedom (independence from being constrained by another's choice), insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with a universal law. Kant rejects any other basis for the state. He argues that a state can't legitimate impose any particular conception of happiness upon its citizens. To do so would be to treat citizens as children, assuming that they are unable to understand what is useful or harmful to themselves. His concern in political philosophy is not with laws of nature determining a human being's choice but by other human beings determining a human being's choice, hence the kind of freedom Kant is concerned with in political philosophy is individual freedom of action. Kant assumes that a human being's use of chice (at least when it is guided by reason) is free in the transcendental sense. And this freedom of choice is to be respected and promoted. Freedom is not the only basis for principles underlying the state. In "Theory and Practice" Kant makes freedom the first of three principles: 1) The freedom of every member of the state as a human being.  2) The equality of each with every other as a subject.  3) The independence of every member of a commonwealth as a citizen.  Freedom as discussed in "Theory and Practice" stresses the autonomous right of all individuals to conceive of happiness in their own way. Interference with another's freedom is understood as coercing the other. Kant's view is similar to the social contract theory of Hobbes in a few important respects. The social contract is not a historical document and does not involve a historical act. The social contract is a rational justification for state power, not a result of actual deal-making among individuals. Kant was a central figure of the Enlightenment. One of his popular essays, "What is Enlightenment?" discusses  Enlightenment in terms of the use of an individual's own reason. To be Enlightened is to emerge to a mature ability to think for oneself. "Social philosophy," can be taken to mean the relationship of persons to institutions, and to each other via these institutions, that are not part of the state. Family is a clear example of a social institution that transcends the individual but has some elements that are not controlled by the state.                                                                                                                                                                  It is the dignity of human life that led to the formation and declaration of the universal human rights. In other words, human dignity is the basis of the fundamental human rights. Unfortunately, our human predicament is such that we usually forget our own dignity and rights of our fellow humans. In our contemporary society, human dignity and human rights have been continuously undermined and violated. This lack of respect for human dignity as well as the violation of the fundamental human rights of individuals has led to series of problems that have threatened peaceful co-existence in our society. Immanuel Kant, reminds and re-awakens our slumbering spirit to the reality and importance of human rights, when he enjoins us to: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, always at the same time as an end and never as a means".                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 What is a right? A right is a justified claim on others. The "justification" of a claim is dependent on some standard acknowledge and accepted not just by the claimant, but also by society in general. The standard can be as concrete as the constitution, which guarantees the rights that assures every citizen. One of the most important and influential interpretations of moral rights is based on the work of Immanuel Kant. Kant maintained that each of us has a dignity that must be respected. This dignity makes it wrong for others to abuse us or touse us against our will.                                           

300th Birthday of Immanuel Kant

                   This post is a summary of three articles. The first was published at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant. The second was published at https://www.follesdal.net/ms/Follesdal-2014-Maliks-kant-hr.pdf. The third was published at https://www.researchgate.net/publi/337940285_Human_Rights_by_Virtue_of_Reaso_Kant's_latent_contribution_to_the_Declaration_of_Human_Rights

                        Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy, being called the "father of modern ethics", and for bringing together rationalism and empiricism earned the title of "father of modern philosophy". Kant was born 1724 into a Prussian family of Lutheran faith in Konisberg, East Prussia. He was the fourth of nine children (six of whom reached adulthood). The Kant household stressed the pietist values of religious devotion, and humility. He never married but seems to have had a rewarding social life, he was a popular teacher as well as a successful author, even before starting on his major philosophical works. Kant showed a great aptitude for study at an early age. In 1740, aged 16, he enrolled at the University of Konisberg, where he would later remain for the rest of his professional life. Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines. Kant developed his ethics, or moral philosophy, in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Kant' political thought can be summarized as republican government and international organization Kant's political philosophy, being essentially a legal doutrine, rejects by definition the opposition between moral education and the play of passions as alternate foundations for social life. The Doctrine of Right, published in 1797, contains Kant's most mature and systematic contribution to political philosophy. It addresses duties according to law, which are "concerned only with protecting the freedom of individuals. Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound. Kant is credited with having innovated the way philosophical inquiry has been carried on at least up to the early 19th century.                                                                                                                                                                         Human rights and the tribunals that protect them are increasingly part of our moral, legal and political circumstances. Commonly understood as inalienable rights that persons are entitled to by their humanity. These international human rights and the various judicial bodies make up th contemporary human rights regime. These treaties thereby provide a justification for international monitoring and other form of intervention against states that transgress them. The former professor of moral philosophy at the Uniersity of Oxford, James Griffin considers human rights as a way of protecting the supreme value of moral personhood, which he takes from Kant's writings on ethics. The German philosopher Jurgen Habermas employs Kant's egalitarian and universalist concept of dignity to explain the legal status of rights. This use of the Enlightenment thinker is not surprising, considering Kant's prominence in the universalism and egalitarianism, which is the foundation of almost all he wrote. The turn to Kant is also understandable, considering his pioneering international and cosmopolitan theory, based on the view that nations are connected in a community where "a violation of right on one place of the earth is felt in all". The Kantian perspective is sensitive to the historical origins of legal order, whilst seeking to present law from a universalistic standpoint. For kant, human rights are a priori rights, those rights which play a unique discursive functionas the constitutive conditions of any claim of right. A human right is direct requirement of a person's original right to independence.                                                                                                                                                                                                                 The concepts of human dignity and human rights are of fundamental value to the legal systems of modern societies. By human dignity, we stipulate that all people are to be treated with respect and must not be seen as a means to an end. Furthermore, it assumes equality in principle of all humans. These two premises lay the foundation of human rights. Immanuel Kant's edifice of ideas plays a crucial role in the advancement of human rights as it paved the way for a rational law doctrine, with its insistence on reason as the sole faculty to gauge moral actions. Not only the idea that equal dignity is inherent to all people is attributed to Kant. His entire intellectual endeavour is devoted to the core objective of the Enlightenment. Kant suggest the legal necessity to secure human dignity and rights as a normative demand of the practical reason.