-------------------------------------------------------- From: "RightsAction" <•••@••.•••> To: <•••@••.•••> Subject: ARTICLE by Arundhati Roy -- On elections, global power, empire, lies and resistance Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 22:44:39 -0500 FYI, we forward this interview with Arundhati Roy on elections, global power, empire, lies and resistance ... === From an interview for the International Socialist Review Issue 38, November-December 2004 with David Barsamian. http://www.isreview.org/issues/38/Arundhati_roy.shtml DB: I'D LIKE to start with a quote from a recent interview I did with you, published in the July-August issue of the International Socialist Review. You said, "It's that we're up against an economic system that is suffocating the majority of the people in this world. What are we going to do about it? How are we going to address it?" So I thought that would be a really easy way to begin. What are we going to do about it, and how are we going to address it? AR: I'VE ONLY been in the United States for three days now, and I obviously have felt the electricity in the air about the coming election. Just in May, we had a very important election in India. I think one of the dangers that we face is that politics becomes a discussion only about personalities, and we forget that the system is in place, and it doesn’t matter all that much who is piloting the machine. So as I said in my talk at the American Sociological Association in San Francisco, this whole fierce debate about the Democrats and the Republicans and whether Bush or Kerry is better is like being asked to choose a detergent. Whether you choose Tide or Ivory Snow, they're both owned by Procter & Gamble. [Clip] But here, in the United States, they don't even do you the dignity of that. The Democrats are not even pretending that they're against the war or against the occupation of Iraq. And that, I think, is very important, because the antiwar movement in America has been so phenomenal a service not just to people here, but also to all of us in the world. And you can't allow them to hijack your beliefs and put your weight behind somebody who is openly saying that he believes in the occupation, that he would have attacked Iraq even if he had known there were no weapons of mass destruction, that he will actually get UN cover for the occupation, that he will try and get Indian and Pakistani soldiers to go and die in Iraq instead, and that the Germans and the French and the Russians might be able to share in the spoils of the occupation. Is that better or worse for somebody who lives in the subject nations of empire? [Clip] DB: I THINK a lot of people here have on their minds the November 2 election and what to do, who to vote for. Tariq Ali, who is very critical of Kerry, recently said, "If the American population were to vote Bush out of office, it would have a tremendous impact on world opinion. Our option at the moment is limited. Do we defeat a warmonger government or not?" What do you think of Ali's perspective? AR: LOOK, IT'S a very complicated and difficult debate, in which I think there are two things you can do: you can act expediently, if you like, but you must speak on principle. I cannot sit here with any kind of honesty and say to you that I support Kerry. I cannot do that. I'll tell you a small example. In India, you may or may not be aware of the levels of violence and jingoism and fascism that we've faced over the last five years. In Gujarat, rampaging mobs murdered, raped, gang-raped, burnt alive 2,000 Muslims on the streets, drove 150,000 out of their homes. And you have this kind of plague of Hindu fascism spreading. And you had a central government that was supported by the BJP. A lot of the people who I work with and know work in the state of Madhya Pradesh, in central India, where there was a Congress state government for ten years. This government had overseen the building of many dams in the Narmada valley. It had overseen the privatization of electricity, of water, the driving out from their homes and lands of hundreds of thousands of people, the disconnection of single-point electricity connections because they signed these huge contracts for privatization with the Asian Development Bank. The activists in these areas knew that a lot of the reason that Congress was also so boldly doing these things was they were saying, "What option do you have? Do you want to get the BJP? Are you going to campaign for the BJP? Are you going to open yourself up not just to being physically beaten but maybe even killed?" But I want to tell you that they didn't campaign for the Congress. They didn't. They just said, "We do not believe in this, and we are going to continue to do our work outside." It was just a horrendous situation, because the BJP was pretending to be anti-"reform," saying, "We'll stop this, we'll change that." They did come to power, the BJP, and within ten days they were on the dam site saying, "We are going to build the dam." So people are waiting for their houses to get submerged. This was the dilemma. The point is, then, you have to say, "Look, can you actually campaign for a man [John Kerry] who is saying that I'm going to send more troops to Iraq?" How? So I think it's very important for us to remain principled. Let me tell you that during the Indian elections, people used to keep asking me, "Aren't you campaigning for the Congress?" Because, of course, I had spent the last five years denouncing the BJP. I said, "How can I campaign for the Congress that also oversaw the carnage of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984, that opened the markets to neoliberalism in the early 1990s?" And every time, you're put under this pressure. I said, "I feel sometimes when I'm asked this question like I imagine that a gay person must feel when they're watching straight sex: I'm sort of interested but not involved." I think it's very important for us to understand that we are people of principle and we are soldiers who are fighting a different battle, and we cannot be co-opted into this. So you've got to refuse the terms of this debate; otherwise you're co-opted. I'm not going to say who you should vote for. I'm not going to sit here and tell you to vote for this one or vote for that one, because all of us here are people of influence and power, and we can't allow our power to be co-opted by those people. We cannot. [Clip] I've grown up in India, and I've lived all my life there. I've never spent any large amounts of time in the West. So you come here and you listen to people like Ignatieff, and you think, even our fascists are not saying that. I've often been asked to come and debate imperialism, and I think it's like asking me about the pros and cons of child abuse. Is it a subject that I should debate? Every little bylane that we walk down in India, are people saying, "Bring the British back. We miss colonialism so badly"? So it's a kind of new racism. And it isn't even all that new. We can't even give them points for originality on this. These debates have taken place in the colonial time in almost exactly the same words: "civilizing the savages," and so on. So that isn't even something I think is worth the dignity of a debate. It is just an aspect of power. It is what power always will say. And we can't even allow it to deflect our attention for six seconds. [Clip] Like Old Imperialism, New Imperialism relies for its success on a network of agents - corrupt local elites who service Empire. We all know the sordid story of Enron in India. The then-Maharashtra government signed a power purchase agreement that gave Enron profits that amounted to 60 percent of India's entire rural development budget. A single American company was guaranteed a profit equivalent to funds for infrastructural development for about 500 million people! Unlike in the old days, the New Imperialist doesn't need to trudge around the tropics risking malaria or diarrhea or early death. New Imperialism can be conducted on e-mail. The vulgar, hands-on racism of Old Imperialism is outdated. The cornerstone of New Imperialism is New Racism. The best allegory for New Racism is the tradition of "turkey pardoning" in the United States. Every year since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has presented the US President with a turkey for Thanksgiving. Every year, in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the President spares that particular bird (and eats another one). After receiving the presidential pardon, the Chosen One is sent to Frying Pan Park in Virginia to live out its natural life. The rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving are slaughtered and eaten on Thanksgiving Day. ConAgra Foods, the company that has won the Presidential Turkey contract, says it trains the lucky birds to be sociable, to interact with dignitaries, school children and the press. (Soon they'll even speak English!) That's how New Racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred turkeys - the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself) - are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park. The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut, and die of AIDS. Basically they're for the pot. But the Fortunate Fowls in Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the IMF and the WTO - so who can accuse those organizations of being antiturkey? Some serve as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee - so who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who can say the poor are anti-corporate globalization? There's a stampede to get into Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way? As part of the project of New Racism we also have New Genocide. New Genocide in this new era of economic interdependence can be facilitated by economic sanctions. New Genocide means creating conditions that lead to mass death without actually going out and killing people. Denis Halliday, who was the UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq between 1997 and 1998 (after which he resigned in disgust), used the term genocide to describe the sanctions in Iraq. In Iraq the sanctions outdid Saddam Hussein's best efforts by claiming more than half a million children's lives. In the new era, apartheid as formal policy is antiquated and unnecessary. International instruments of trade and finance oversee a complex system of multilateral trade laws and financial agreements that keep the poor in their bantustans anyway. Its whole purpose is to institutionalize inequity. Why else would it be that the US taxes a garment made by a Bangladeshi manufacturer twenty times more than a garment made in Britain? Why else would it be that countries that grow cocoa beans, like the Ivory Coast and Ghana, are taxed out of the market if they try to turn it into chocolate? Why else would it be that countries that grow 90 percent of the world's cocoa beans produce only 5 percent of the world's chocolate? Why else would it be that rich countries that spend over a billion dollars a day on subsidies to farmers demand that poor countries like India withdraw all agricultural subsidies, including subsidized electricity? Why else would it be that after having been plundered by colonizing regimes for more than half a century, former colonies are steeped in debt to those same regimes and repay them some $382 billion a year? [Clip] There is so much going on, so many places to look for information. But also I think there is a kind of ad busting to be done, which is you read the mainstream media, but what you gather from it is not what they want to tell you. You have to learn to decode it, to understand it for the boardroom bulletin that it is. And therefore, you use its power against itself. And I think that's very important to do, because many of us make the mistake of thinking that the corporate media supports the neoliberal project. It doesn't. It is the neoliberal project. [Clip] DB: THE GLOBAL demonstrations against the Iraq war on February 15, 2003, turned out at least ten million people and by some accounts up to fifteen million people. You've called that one of the greatest affirmations of the human spirit and morality. But then the war started and many people went home. AR: THIS IS something we have to ask ourselves about, because the first part of this question is that you did have this incredible display of public morality. In no European country was the support for a unilateral war more than 11 percent. Hundreds of thousands marched on the streets here. And still these supposedly democratic countries went to war. So the questions are, A: Is democracy still democratic? B: Are governments accountable to the people who elected them? And, C: Are people responsible in democratic countries for the actions of their governments? It's a very serious crisis that is facing democracies today. And if you get caught in this Ivory Snow vs. Tide debate, if you get caught in having to choose between a detergent with oxy-boosters or gentle cleansers, we're finished. The point is, how do you keep power on a short leash? How do you make it accountable? And the fact is that we can't also only feel good about what we do. What we have done has been fantastic, but we must realize that it's not enough. And one of the problems is that symbolic resistance has unmoored itself from real civil disobedience. And that is very dangerous, because governments have learned how to wait these things out. And they think we're like children with rattles in a crib. Just let them get on with their weekend demonstration, and we'll just carry on with what we have to do. Public opinion is so fickle, and so on. The symbolic aspect of resistance is very important. The theater is very important. But not at the cost of real civil disobedience. So we have to find ways of implementing what we're saying seriously. And you look at what's happening today. I feel that the Iraqi resistance is fighting on the front lines of empire. We know that it's a motley group of former Baathists and fed-up collaborationists and all kinds of people. But no resistance movement is pristine. And if we are going to only invest our purity in pristine movements, we may as well forget it. The point is, this is our resistance, and we have to support it. [Clip] DB: POTA, the Prevention of Terrorism Act - or, as you and others have called it, the Production of Terrorism Act - has its counterpart in the United States in the PATRIOT Act, which has greatly enhanced the ability of the state to surveil and imprison its citizens. AR: Fundamentally the thing about these acts that we have to understand is that they are not meant for the terrorists, because the terrorists are just shot or taken, in the case of America, to Guantanamo Bay, or suspected terrorists. Those acts are meant to terrorize you. So basically all of us stand accused. It prepares the ground for the government to make all of us culprits and then pick off whichever one of us it wants to. And once we give up these freedoms, will we we ever get them back? In India, at least when the Congress Party was campaigning, it said it was going to withdraw POTA. It probably will, but not before it puts into legislation other kinds of legislation that approximate it. So it won't be POTA, it will be MOTA or whatever. But here, are they even saying that they will repeal the PATRIOT Act? It's an insult to you that they don't even think they have to say it. Is it populist to say that we are going to deal in sterner ways with terror and we are going to make America stronger and safer and have more oxy-boosters? It's a crazy situation that they don't even lie. I know a lot of people say that, "Oh, you know, Kerry is saying this, but when he comes to power, he will be different." But nobody moves to the left after they come to power; they move only to the right. [Clip] DB: IN ONE of your essays in your book War Talk, you conclude with a paraphrase of Shelley's poem "Mask of Anarchy": "You be many, they be few." Talk about that. AR: THAT IS what is happening. It is in the nature of capitalism, isn't it? The more profit you make, the more you plow back into the machine, the more profit you make. And so now you have a situation in which, like I said, 500 billionaires have more money than the GDP of 135 countries. And that rift is widening. I think today's paper said that the rift between the rich and the poor of the United States is widening even more. Everywhere that's happening. And the fact is that I believe that wars must be waged from positions of strength. So the poor must fight from their position of strength, which is on the streets and the mountains and the valleys of the world, not in boardrooms and parliaments and courts. I think we are on the side of the millions, and that is our strength. And we must recognize it and work with it. DB: THERE IS an alternative to terrorism. What is it? AR: JUSTICE. DB: HOW DO we get there? AR: THE POINT is that terrorism has been isolated and made to look like some kind of thing that has no past and has no future and is just some aberration of maniacs. It isn't. Of course, sometimes it is. But if you look at it, the logic that underlies terrorism and the logic that underlies the war on terror is the same: Both hold ordinary people responsible for the actions of governments. And the fact is that Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda, in their attacks on September 11, took the lives of many ordinary people. And in the attacks in Afghanistan and on Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans paid for the actions of the Taliban or for the actions of Saddam Hussein. The difference is that the Afghans didn't elect the Taliban, the Iraqis didn't elect Saddam Hussein. So how do we justify these kinds of wars? I really think that terrorism is the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free marketeers of war. They are the ones who say that they don't believe that legitimate violence is only the monopoly of the state. So we can't condemn terrorism unless we condemn the war on terror. And no government that does not show itself to be open to change by nonviolent dissent can actually condemn terrorism. Because if every avenue of nonviolent dissent is closed or mocked or bought off or broken, then by default you privilege violence. When all your respect and admiration and research and media coverage and the whole economy is based on war and violence, when violence is deified, on what grounds are you going to condemn terrorism? Whatever people lack in wealth and power they make up with stealth and strategy. So we can't just every time we're asked to say something, say, "Oh, terrorism is a terrible thing," without talking about repression, without talking about justice, without talking about occupation, without talking about privatization, without talking about the fact that this country has its army strung across the globe. And then, of course, even language has been co-opted. If you say "democracy," actually it means neoliberalism. If you say "reforms," it actually means repression. Everything has been turned into something else. So we also have to reclaim language now. -- ============================================================ If you find this material useful, you might want to check out our website (http://cyberjournal.org) or try out our low-traffic, moderated email list by sending a message to: •••@••.••• You are encouraged to forward any material from the lists or the website, provided it is for non-commercial use and you include the source and this disclaimer. Richard Moore (rkm) Wexford, Ireland "Global Transformation: Whey We Need It And How We Can Achieve It", current draft: http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/rkmGlblTrans.html _____________________________ "...the Patriot Act followed 9-11 as smoothly as the suspension of the Weimar constitution followed the Reichstag fire." - Srdja Trifkovic There is not a problem with the system. The system is the problem. Faith in ourselves - not gods, ideologies, leaders, or programs. _____________________________ "Zen of Global Transformation" home page: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ QuayLargo discussion forum: http://www.QuayLargo.com/Transformation/ShowChat/?ScreenName=ShowThreads cj list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=cj newslog list archives: http://cyberjournal.org/cj/show_archives/?lists=newslog _____________________________ Informative links: http://www.indymedia.org/ http://www.globalresearch.ca/ http://www.MiddleEast.org http://www.rachel.org http://www.truthout.org http://www.williambowles.info/monthly_index/ http://www.zmag.org http://www.co-intelligence.org ============================================================