the anti-globalization movement or the outer globalization movement yeah I chose this one because I remember reading up on it and being like oh this is interesting I wasn’t alive during this time I want to know more so as someone who I believe falls under the category of geriatric Millennial yeah um do you wish to share thanks thanks for making me feel old um with love yes this this was the movement that inspired me you know and I became part of maybe the Thailand the mid mid part of the anti-globalization movement I’ve written a whole history and we’ll cover it section by section I believe next week we’re going to do zapatistas which is many seed the beginning of the NC globalization movement or the ultra globalization movement a sort of reaction in rural Mexico to a trade deal and you like a trade deal seems so distant and stuff like that but let’s set the scene like what what where did this come from after the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of communism State socialism in Russia and the Russian Empire the USSR uh and the Eastern Bloc there was a statement made this is now the end of history and another statement made there is no alternative there is one order it’s Global liberal capitalism you know forget about China and Vietnam like just Global liberal capitalism nation states and and those nation states are going to slowly be washed away by this process of globalization and this process of globalization is going to be largely American so for someone who like myself who grew up in the 80s and 90s one of the things that was really weird about the 80s is I grew up when I was young everything was owned by Britain it was the Royal Mail like the buses were owned you know uh British Rail was nationally owned British gas British Telecom you’ll recognize these as brand names they’re not brand names we like as a nation owned everything that we needed um and we sold all of those off and that was already weird it was unusual you’d grown up with one common sense and that was change but another Common Sense started to change as well I used to travel around the country with my dad we used to work in a lot of different places and every town every village every city was wildly different because everyone had different shops everything looked different different architecture different types of people you started to see that there’d be similar shops and stuff like that now if you go anywhere everywhere looks exactly the same and that’s not me moaning as an old person it is a little bit but it just happens to be a reality like the reality is is that globalization Americanized globalization in that respect has really reached its Zenith there isn’t you can’t go like you can go to The Piazza San Marco in Venezia in Venice right like you can go and St Mark’s Place and you can go to McDonald’s or you know in Venice on the most famous Square in Italy like one of the most beautiful Renaissance hubs in the world that can ever be seen and the queues by the way for the McDonald’s are longer than the cues for the cathedral in my experience anyways when I’ve been there that’s the nature of Americanized globalization and you’re Europeans like ourselves but also pretty much everyone everywhere who had their own culture that was not link you know you might have seen one or two American shows and you knew they’re the most powerful nation in the world but you didn’t you didn’t have American stuff everywhere reacted quite bad to it so there was quite a cultural reaction it was also an economic reaction there was new trade deals there was ways of screwing over third world countries as we called them developing nations or majority World Nations that were being formalized and really bringing them into the liberal order and making sure that they remained basically banana republics who produced one or two key resources for the global economy and we’re never able to get our poverty and so these concerns ended up meshing and forming a load of different movements so that backdrop created a bunch of movements and what we’ll cover when we talk about those movements is you know ones that happen around the world but what was the British reaction and I want to talk about just now what are some of the key elements that you you when we look back on the anti-globalization movement which is kind of finished for sure I think the end point of the low point would be the Occupy Movement in UK in around about 2012 2013. and so sort of between 1991 and the end of history in 2013 you have this movement that says okay State socialism leninism has died you have the rise of Blair and Clinton and Third Way social Democrats which in now as Thatcher said to the greatest achievement was Tony Blair right there they now totally are neoliberal liberal you know essentially conservative politicians so there’s there’s no root through leninism to create World change any longer it feels like there’s no hope in that and actually the history of those movements in Britain had been failing long before the fall of the Berlin Wall there doesn’t seem to be any route through The Ballot Box to create change either to electorally and this is again across the developed world so how are we going to create change and the movements become these things where say well we’re going to focus on leaderless movements you can’t corrupt a movement where there are no leaders and they call them horizontal movements and these horizontal movements kind of have no memberships no Central committees no electoral strategy often no evolutionary strategy in that old leninist way of like we’re gonna you know launch a coup we’re going to execute the leaders you know it was a lot more about building power from Below and um getting rid of those tightly controlled centralized strategies for creating change what else did they focus on direct action was a core feature of anti-globalization movements not focusing on petitions or demonstrations but actually acting directly against the powers that were creating the system that was oppressing all of us if you saw a Target you wouldn’t go well we’re going to write a petition to the local Council or to the government or whatever we’re going to demonstrate about this you go okay we need to stop climate change we’ll like we’ll shut down Coal Power stations because they’re causing it we’re not we’re not going to we’re going A to B we’re not going a z b you know we’re not going to someone else to sort this out because they’re not going to right there’s a complete lack of faith that someone else was going to sort anything out and finally there was a global Focus you know there was a focus on we’re not going to be able to change things within our own country any longer we’re not going to be able to have a national socialist movement uh leninism and again social democracy very much focused on changing the government of a particular nation and and who was running that Nation whereas the real the feeling was that’s not going to happen we’re in a world where the world is now closely tied together things like the internet were starting to happen as well and so we’re becoming more closely tied together trade deals tied us together culturally we’re trying to get tied together and economically we are bound together and we cannot get freedom and and a better life and protect the things that we care about unless we work with everyone around the world and in fact again for the British Movement we learn more from the world we did we saw ourselves as Learners and and we’re inspired by global movements rather than what had maybe happened often previously people who were to export our ideas of what was best for the world um and that was that was definitely you know a unique feature of the anti-globalization movement so we’ve got horizontal organizing direct action and a global Focus wonderful and these are going to be recurring themes obviously as we explore these ideas and already I’m thinking to zapatistas that is and how they work and how these elements obviously are quite integral to um sabatism as well but yeah do you have anything else to add I have questions I have thoughts but I also want to save that for future episodes yeah I think you know we’ve got so much to explore when we start talking about the anti globalization movement is going to be fascinating it’s not just like appeared in history this affects every movement if you want to understand why corbinism was the way it was where there was failings where there was where there’s weaknesses there are massive weaknesses to those things I was talking about with the anti-globalization movement as well as many many victories actually as well surprising victories that we don’t celebrate enough so there’s going to be so much to learn and celebrate in zapatismo the zapatistas is a fantastic place to start and I can’t wait to hear that so yeah just like this isn’t just an exercise in history these are stories that not only are part of our lives and movements now but will also help we’re going to help remember the things that helped us win and create change and also the things that held us back and try not to repeat those mistakes absolutely absolutely because yeah that’s the starting point right like we can as you said we can work and we can talk I remember very soon he said that I start with me because like yeah we can do both we don’t just have to sit in a room and chat about how awful the world is let’s actually go out and change it and let’s learn let’s learn from the past and let’s work towards the future yeah I’d love to claim that as my own but it’s an African Province we can walk and we can talk you know like this really important thing to think about when you think about movements there’s there’s a section of movements uh academics and God bless people who want to change the world but a lot of them going to studying it quite deeply and then getting themselves stuck in a silo where um they only think about movements and observe them and then there are other people who are all action and God bless them for that sometimes you are just running at walls and you need to think about what you’re doing whilst you’re doing it and so marrying those two things of learning and doing yeah we can walk while we talk and we can talk while we walk well thank you very much for that it’s been an enjoyable first episode and I look forward to next week on zapatistas um something I will be delving into make sure to you know follow what we’re doing we’ve got web called breathe Builds on all of our social media bar Facebook which has an extra S at the end but that’s due to technical problems um you’re not annoyed about that but yeah I keep checking what we’re doing have a look at other work we’re doing a key focus of Breeze work is is again bringing in about this change that we seek to create so yeah I wish you all a wonderful wonderful week in power 11 rage from the breathe Network