[governance] JNC perspective on making Internet governance democratic (was Re: URGENT: Last call...)

[michael gurstein]

Hmmm... Speaking of despicable personal attacks...

My point to Anriette (and everyone) is that there is a fundamental contradiction between an alignment with the WEF which is well known as a central facilitator for the 1% as for example, through participation/legitimation of the NMI and the pursuit of social justice.

I fully recognize and have had long experience and admiration from a community informatics perspective with the social justice roots of APC hence my questioning and disappointment at seeing however conflicted, the pro NMI (WEF) position that was advocated by Anriette although I'm not as yet sure whether or not this is the final position from APC as a whole.

M

-----Original Message-----
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Jeremy Malcolm
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2014 9:47 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: Re: [governance] JNC perspective on making Internet governance democratic (was Re: URGENT: Last call...)

On 21/11/2014 5:22 am, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> JNC certainly has every intention of working hard to convince many of 
> those who are currently unconvinced of the importance and feasibility 
> of making Internet governance democratic. Greetings, Norbert

Whilst such evangelical zeal is - I suppose - admirable, do you really think that is going to be productive, rather than just compounding the discord you have already caused?  As you know full well, none of those whom you are addressing accept for a moment that their ideal of multi-stakeholder Internet governance is undemocratic, as JNC insists it is.

Neither are they naïve babes in the wood who haven't fully thought through their positions, over in some cases a decade or longer.  I can assure you that there will not be some sudden transformation, as along the road to Damascus, where the scales fall from our eyes and we convert to the JNC ideology, if only you berate us about our sins for long enough.

I am not saying that there is no value in you developing a socialist critique of emerging multi-stakeholder global governance norms for which others are advocating. But recognise that your audience for that critique is always going to be limited, and you are not going to win over hearts and minds with these continued personal attacks - you are only going to continue to alienate people.

The rather quite despicable slur that Michael levied against Anriette and APC about not being concerned with social justice is a paradigm example of this - I'm not claiming that it alienated Anriette and I certainly don't expect that it will silence her, but it may certainly alienate and silence others who respect her and APC's many years of selfless service.

As Ian alluded to in a recent mail, what you are doing is simply driving people away, either completely out of the conversation, or at least into a stated of cowed silence where they afraid to voice their opinions. If ever you seem to have "won" the debate, it will only be because they are frightened to contribute to it for fear of retribution, or because they have moved their discussions to closed lists where you are not present (indeed this is already happening).

JNC needs to have a long, hard think about whether this is what you really want.

--
Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Global Policy Analyst
Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://eff.org
jmalcolm at eff.org

Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161

:: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World ::




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