Virtual Politics, Real Guns: On Cloud Community, Violence, and Human Rights

Abstract

My contribution does not intend not to defeat Orgad’s vision, but to outline significant worries about how we might make that vision real. Orgad does not want voluntary forms of transnational institution to take the place of states, but insists upon their validity and power as ‘state-like entities.’ It is this latter point with which I take issue. If these institutions are to become genuinely state-like, they must have some part in doing what it is that states do; and we must understand how they could do that sort of thing, and how we could move from where we are to where we might be. If, in contrast, these institutions are merely places for debate and for the creation of solidarity, then we have had them for a very long time indeed. It is then not clear what these tools provide us with except for scale and ease. Either way, I suggest, we have some work to do. Orgad’s vision is profoundly hopeful, while my own is not, and I genuinely hope I can be proven wrong.