{"id":1297,"date":"2019-03-27T04:07:18","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T04:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=1297"},"modified":"2019-03-27T04:07:18","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T04:07:18","slug":"run-run-versus-tick-tock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=1297","title":{"rendered":"Run Run versus Tick-Tock"},"content":{"rendered":"

The longevity of a social movement is
\nnot so much a result of its operational, organizational, or self-reproductive
\ncapacity as its ability to mutate and keep up with the times. In this sense,
\nthe 15-M movement, captured by the ideas reflected in the manifesto Democracia
\nReal Ya<\/em> (\u2018Real Democracy Now\u2019), is a paradigmatic case, one that has brought
\nabout a cycle of mobilization with few precedents in Spain.<\/p>\n

15-M arose as the fruit of popular
\nweariness and disillusionment with a political system that turned its back on
\nthe socioeconomic problems and demands of the social majority. Taking over the squares
\nof all the big cities in Spain were the constitutive acts of this social
\nmovement, which subsequently underwent various mutations. These changes are
\nconsidered mutations not because they were planned at those encounters in the
\nstreets and squares, but because they fit in precisely with the repertoire of
\ndemands emanating from the assemblies in the square.<\/p>\n

The proliferation of so-called social
\ncentres, critical publishing houses, and the opening of centres for alternative
\nculture constituted the first phase of what later on crystallized into
\nmovements of disobedience against the thousands of evictions occurring almost
\ndaily across the country.\u00a0 Even as the
\nseparation of the social from the political remains a wholly liberal concept, the
\ntruth is that this entire movement, with its new political culture, had not yet
\nbeen translated into an option that sought to influence the institutional
\nand\/or party system.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

15-M did not ask for a political
\nparty within a political system which could only accommodate a set of
\npredetermined options. Instead, it was Podemos\u2019 chosen task to insert itself
\ninto the contours of the existing political system from its very early days.
\nThe reasons for this are simple: while it is true that 15-M demanded new institutions
\nand a new way of occupying them, it was only Podemos that was capable of
\naccommodating its organizational architecture to fulfil the demands that arose in
\nthe squares.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Cultural warfare<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Podemos, in the Gramscian terms on
\nwhich it builds, has carried out genuine cultural warfare<\/em>:\u00a0 it picked up the paradigm generated in the
\nsquares, took its key concepts, gave them new meaning, and made them relevant
\nacross the class divides. Podemos\u2019 victory in this particular war is absolutely
\nincontestable. In only one year and a few months of existence, it has
\nsuccessfully obliged all the pre-existing parties to incorporate its repertoire
\nof ideas, methods and metaphors. With greater or lesser credibility, most Spanish
\npolitical parties have planned or applied some system of internal election of
\ncandidates based on a primaries model; adopted transparency mechanisms to
\nsubmit finances to the scrutiny of the base or the electorate; and looked for new
\nmeans of developing electoral programs in more participatory ways, as well as a
\nlong list of inclusive measures to give greater sway to activists and citizens
\nin the taking of important decisions, at least on a superficial level.<\/p>\n

Assembly meeting of the Marea Atl\u00e1ntica, A Coru\u00f1a. Photo used with permission of author.<\/i><\/p>\n

A change of strategy<\/strong><\/h2>\n

This victory in the wide adoption of the
\n\u2018podemite\u2019 repertoire coincided with the months leading up to the municipal and
\nautonomic elections in May 2015. At that exact moment, Podemos decided on a
\nchange of strategy. The tick-tock<\/em> that the title of this text makes reference
\nto is only one of the slogans used by Pablo Iglesias to announce that Rajoy\u2019s
\npresidency of the government was closer to its end than ever before. The slogan
\nset out to signal the direction of a new strategy: a head on confrontation with
\nthe Partido Popular<\/em>, setting aside
\nall previous political discourse.<\/p>\n

The abandoning of the older rhetoric
\nto create a new institution coincided with the appearance of citizen platforms,
\na new phase of the movement, described as municipalist
\n<\/em>currents and organisations. It was in these platforms that hundreds of previously
\nnon-organized, non-militant people, and leftist parties, among them Podemos, managed
\nto converge with the intention of fighting together in the local elections of
\n24 May 2015.<\/p>\n

The discursive centre of these
\ninitiatives was precisely a decentralised and democratic repertoire of
\nprocedural radicalism, whose activists presented themselves as operating
\noutside of the established frameworks of competition between existing political
\nparties, hence the slogan \u2018run run\u2019. \u2018Run run\u2019 was a slogan chosen by new
\nBarcelona mayor Ada Colau for one of her campaign videos that spread like
\nwildfire on the Internet and announced the arrival of something new to the city
\nhall of Barcelona. It was something different, unclassifiable within established
\npolitical categories.<\/p>\n

Tick tock<\/strong><\/h2>\n

During those same months of
\nconsolidation of the municipalist lists for Madrid and Barcelona during March
\nand April 2015, Podemos developed a divergent path and discourse. It began to
\nintensify its contentious language, seeking continuous confrontation and began
\nto differentiate itself unintentionally from the citizen platforms of which it
\nforms a part. This is to say, it began at that point to leave the framework built
\nduring its cultural war <\/em>phase. <\/p>\n

The consequence of this was a dip in
\npopularity for its leaders and a sharpening decline in terms of voting
\nintentions for the party. <\/p>\n

The widely contrasting results
\nbetween Podemos, on the one hand, and the citizen candidates\u2019 lists, on the
\nother, clearly demonstrate the growing divergence between them. A case in point
\nare the results for the Comunidad de
\nMadrid<\/em>: the municipalist list for the government of the city of Madrid
\nobtained a wonderful result that led to its governing alone, while in the Assembly
\nfor the Comunidad de Madrid<\/em> Podemos\u2019 list
\ncame third, at quite a distance from the political force in the lead. Obviously,
\nthis is not the determining factor or, rather, the only one that explains Podemos\u2019
\nelection results or its stand in the polls. It is certain, however, that both
\nPodemos\u2019 and the municipal lists\u2019 performance are suggestive indicators regarding
\nthe state of public opinion in Spain.<\/p>\n

First we can deduce that the
\npolitical space for \u2018democratism\u2019 and \u2018neo-institutionalism\u2019 is much wider than
\nthat available for socialism, and not much smaller than the space for conservatism.
\nThus we might conclude that beyond the increase in recent mobilizations in
\nSpain, the 15-M movement and its demands live on in the collective imagination
\nof Spaniards.<\/p>\n

Secondly, we note that the
\n\u2018democratist\u2019 or \u2018neo-institutionalist\u2019 political space never operates within a
\nframework of direct confrontation; in effect, confrontation is not consistent with
\nits political or discursive repertoire.<\/p>\n

Thirdly and lastly, in the coming
\nmonths, Podemos could find itself facing strong criticism regarding the already-mentioned
\ntraps it has fallen into, just as it sets out to decide whether it is a
\npolitical force looking for real change or simply a new, but not radically different
\none. <\/p>\n

If it makes the wrong choice, considering
\nthe multiplicity of options that exist in the field of political confrontation,
\nPodemos will find itself excluded, forced to accept the role of \u2018yet another
\nparty\u2019, with all the risks that this entails in a system of parties which in
\nSpain has worked as a powerful preserve for vested interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The longevity of a social movement is not so much a result of its operational, organizational, or self-reproductive capacity as its ability to mutate and keep up with the times. In this sense, the 15-M movement, captured by the ideas reflected in the manifesto Democracia Real Ya (\u2018Real Democracy Now\u2019), is a paradigmatic case, one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}