The editor of this book, David Berry, has been my mentor since I was an Erasmus student at Southampton Solent University in 2006. I found his journalism course inspirational because it went beyond standard understandings and drew on philosophy. I learnt that dialectics can surely be applied to the study of media and communication, and that criticism isn’t an empty catchword ritually introduced into a syllabus but a genuine tool for radical transformation.
Ever since then, I’ve thought that journalism students should minor in philosophy, or at least sociology, to have a more comprehensive view of how both the world and journalism work. And to be able to critically reflect on the ethical implications and consequences of their work.
Rethinking media, culture, and communication
Humanist Marxism has always been David Berry’s favourite tool to provide accurate diagnostics of the most pressing problems facing humankind, and envision alternatives based on existing practices of radical dissent. I view this book as the culmination of such endeavours.
His 2006 co-edited volume with John Theobald, Radical Mass Media Criticism: A Cultural Genealogy offered one of the most important compendiums on theoretical tools for rethinking media, culture, and communication from a critical perspective. These were further developed in his works on the Frankfurt School (2011) and British Marxism (2016), applied to a variety of case studies in Cultural Politics in an Age of Austerity (2017). And now he has brought together a variety of theoretically informed and empirically based contributions that allow us to learn about some of the most inspiring struggles for radical transformation taking place worldwide.
The Internet and Radical Voices of Dissent comes at a time when cyber-utopian promises of the technological revolution have faded away and are being replaced by cyber-dystopian discourses. This recent approach has the virtue of warning against the technological possibilities of the internet to broadly foster authoritarianism and dehumanisation.
One can surely observe online-offline phenomena that resemble the dystopia of the series Black Mirror. However, it is one-sided and fails to consider technologically mediated practices of emancipation in the context of authoritarian corporate and state structures.
Agents of history
In contrast, this book brings to the fore the dignity of human agents in the making and remaking of history. People resist and attempt to exert control over their lives even in the most oppressive conditions, by making use of the communicative and non-communicative means available to them.
When more powerless communities mobilise, they have the opportunity to challenge passive revolutions and become political agents of history. In the lengthy process of transformation there are setbacks, but the moral economy of the crowd allows the working class to make itself. This book takes us through global experiences of radical dissent that testify to people’s will to have better lives.
Latin America has always provided and still provides the most inspiring examples of radical dissent and resistance. There are the activists who successfully confronted and defeated drug cartels, corrupt police, and local politicians in Cherán, Michoacán, Mexico. They confronted illegal logging and the decimation of their natural environment and are currently in charge of their own destiny, including the restoration of their land by planting new pine tree seedlings around their municipality.
Like in Cherán, there’s resistance to illegal logging and land-grabbing by four indigenous groups in the Brazilian Amazon, having used modern technology, the internet, and social media to achieve their objectives. It’s an inspirational story of resistance to protect and preserve nature, land rights, and distinct cultures.
There are also important examples of the use of art and communication for female empowerment and liberation in both Iran and India. David Berry interviews the Iranian artist Roshi Rouzbehani, with a focus on eight illustrations of her work. These are powerful forms of representation that celebrate the bravery of Iranian women while sending a direct message of resistance towards the Iranian regime.
The Welsh and the Mapuche
The issue of female empowerment in India comes via an all-female news collective called Khabar Lahariya (KL). Women from all castes and levels of Indian society within KL use modern technology to mediate news that often represents the poorest communities in India. It’s a truly inspirational story considering that some of the women journalists involved had no contact with mobile phones or laptops whatsoever and were trained to use them by KL.
Readers in Wales will be particularly interested in chapter nine of this collection, titled ‘In Search of a Nation-State: The Welsh and Mapuche: A dialogue between Franco Ramos Gutierrez & David Berry.’ This is the first time a comparison has been made between the Welsh and the Mapuche of Chile in their respective pursuit of independence and the creation of a nation-state.
The chapter includes two interviews. The first, conducted by Franco Ramos, is with Reynaldo Mariqueo, a Mapuche who was forced to flee to the UK during the fascist Pinochet regime in Chile. Reynaldo is a key member of the Mapuche International Link, a UK-based organisation with links to two resistance groups in Chile. The second interview, conducted by David Berry, is with Phyl Griffiths from YesCymru, a group campaigning for Welsh independence, with a focus on nationhood and culture.
The chapter reveals the similarities and differences between the Welsh and Mapuche in their respective struggles. Both suffered from colonial rule and the subsequent negative effects that had on culture and language. While in Wales there’s been a significant recovery in the numbers of people speaking Welsh, this isn’t the case in Chile. Mapudungun, the language of the Mapuche, receives no significant support from the Chilean state, and the majority of Mapuche in urban centres speak Spanish.
Solidarity for social justice
The journey on which this book takes the reader proves an excellent example of communicative justice. The populations and groups putting their bodies on the line and risking their lives in the struggle for social and environmental justice are given priority. This is particularly important in communication contexts in which mainstream media make invisible the sufferings, hopes, successes, and humanity of exploited and oppressed populations who, nevertheless, organise and use their collective intelligence to share practices of solidarity.
One of the book’s main merits is that it allows us to distinguish between mild or even superficial conflicts, and deep contradictions which might lead to substantive transformation. The media often stages controversies or conflicts to appear to be pluralistic, but do so within dominant frameworks, without challenging established structures.
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
Noam Chomsky, The Common Good, 1998
The book is highly recommended for anyone, living anywhere, who is interested in social justice. As the West drowns into a sense of defeat and hopelessness, the experiences featured in the volume can give a renewed hope in humanity’s capacity to confront the multiple challenges of today.
The international(ist), non-ethnocentric approach serves as a remedy to challenge prevailing pessimism by showing that, in exceedingly difficult but diverse contexts, people’s history is on the move. The accounts of thoughtful and brave experiences demonstrate that solidarity is the most effective tool against all forms of alienation.
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