Confronting Empire
27/01/2003
- Opinión
I've been asked to speak about "How to confront Empire?" It's a huge question, and
I have no easy answers.
When we speak of confronting "Empire," we need to identify what "Empire" means.
Does it mean the U.S. Government (and its European satellites), the World Bank,
the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and multinational
corporations? Or is it something more than that?
In many countries, Empire has sprouted other subsidiary heads, some dangerous
byproducts - nationalism, religious bigotry, fascism and, of course terrorism. All
these march arm in arm with the project of corporate globalization.
Let me illustrate what I mean. India - the world's biggest democracy - is
currently at the forefront of the corporate globalization project. Its "market" of
one billion people is being prized open by the WTO. Corporatization and
Privatization are being welcomed by the Government and the Indian elite.
It is not a coincidence that the Prime Minister, the Home Minister, the
Disinvestment Minister - the men who signed the deal with Enron in India, the men
who are selling the country's infrastructure to corporate multinationals, the men
who want to privatize water, electricity, oil, coal, steel, health, education and
telecommunication - are all members or admirers of the RSS. The RSS is a right
wing, ultra-nationalist Hindu guild which has openly admired Hitler and his
methods.
The dismantling of democracy is proceeding with the speed and efficiency of a
Structural Adjustment Program. While the project of corporate globalization rips
through people's lives in India, massive privatization, and labor "reforms" are
pushing people off their land and out of their jobs. Hundreds of impoverished
farmers are committing suicide by consuming pesticide. Reports of starvation
deaths are coming in from all over the country.
While the elite journeys to its imaginary destination somewhere near the top of
the world, the dispossessed are spiraling downwards into crime and chaos. This
climate of frustration and national disillusionment is the perfect breeding
ground, history tells us, for fascism.
The two arms of the Indian Government have evolved the perfect pincer action.
While one arm is busy selling India off in chunks, the other, to divert attention,
is orchestrating a howling, baying chorus of Hindu nationalism and religious
fascism. It is conducting nuclear tests, rewriting history books, burning
churches, and demolishing mosques. Censorship, surveillance, the suspension of
civil liberties and human rights, the definition of who is an Indian citizen and
who is not, particularly with regard to religious minorities, is becoming common
practice now.
Last March, in the state of Gujarat, two thousand Muslims were butchered in a
State-sponsored pogrom. Muslim women were specially targeted. They were stripped,
and gang-raped, before being burned alive. Arsonists burned and looted shops,
homes, textiles mills, and mosques.
More than a hundred and fifty thousand Muslims have been driven from their homes.
The economic base of the Muslim community has been devastated.
While Gujarat burned, the Indian Prime Minister was on MTV promoting his new
poems. In January this year, the Government that orchestrated the killing was
voted back into office with a comfortable majority. Nobody has been punished for
the genocide. Narendra Modi, architect of the pogrom, proud member of the RSS, has
embarked on his second term as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. If he were Saddam
Hussein, of course each atrocity would have been on CNN. But since he's not - and
since the Indian "market" is open to global investors - the massacre is not even
an embarrassing inconvenience.
There are more than one hundred million Muslims in India. A time bomb is ticking
in our ancient land.
All this to say that it is a myth that the free market breaks down national
barriers. The free market does not threaten national sovereignty, it undermines
democracy.
As the disparity between the rich and the poor grows, the fight to corner
resources is intensifying. To push through their "sweetheart deals," to
corporatize the crops we grow, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the
dreams we dream, corporate globalization needs an international confederation of
loyal, corrupt, authoritarian governments in poorer countries to push through
unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies.
Corporate Globalization - or shall we call it by its name? - Imperialism - needs a
press that pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice.
Meanwhile, the countries of the North harden their borders and stockpile weapons
of mass destruction. After all they have to make sure that it's only money, goods,
patents and services that are globalized. Not the free movement of people. Not a
respect for human rights. Not international treaties on racial discrimination or
chemical and nuclear weapons or greenhouse gas emissions or climate change, or -
god forbid - justice.
So this - all this - is "empire." This loyal confederation, this obscene
accumulation of power, this greatly increased distance between those who make the
decisions and those who have to suffer them.
Our fight, our goal, our vision of Another World must be to eliminate that
distance.
So how do we resist "Empire"?
The good news is that we're not doing too badly. There have been major victories.
Here in Latin America you have had so many - in Bolivia, you have Cochabamba. In
Peru, there was the uprising in Arequipa, In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez is
holding on, despite the U.S. government's best efforts.
And the world's gaze is on the people of Argentina, who are trying to refashion a
country from the ashes of the havoc wrought by the IMF.
In India the movement against corporate globalization is gathering momentum and is
poised to become the only real political force to counter religious fascism.
As for corporate globalization's glittering ambassadors - Enron, Bechtel,
WorldCom, Arthur Anderson - where were they last year, and where are they now?
And of course here in Brazil we must ask ...who was the president last year, and
who is it now?
Still ... many of us have dark moments of hopelessness and despair. We know that
under the spreading canopy of the War Against Terrorism, the men in suits are hard
at work.
While bombs rain down on us, and cruise missiles skid across the skies, we know
that contracts are being signed, patents are being registered, oil pipelines are
being laid, natural resources are being plundered, water is being privatized, and
George Bush is planning to go to war against Iraq.
If we look at this conflict as a straightforward eye-ball to eye-ball
confrontation between "Empire" and those of us who are resisting it, it might seem
that we are losing.
But there is another way of looking at it. We, all of us gathered here, have, each
in our own way, laid siege to "Empire."
We may not have stopped it in its tracks - yet - but we have stripped it down. We
have made it drop its mask. We have forced it into the open. It now stands before
us on the world's stage in all it's brutish, iniquitous nakedness.
Empire may well go to war, but it's out in the open now - too ugly to behold its
own reflection. Too ugly even to rally its own people. It won't be long before the
majority of American people become our allies.
Only a few days ago in Washington, a quarter of a million people marched against
the war on Iraq. Each month, the protest is gathering momentum.
Before September 11th 2001 America had a secret history. Secret especially from
its own people. But now America's secrets are history, and its history is public
knowledge. It's street talk.
Today, we know that every argument that is being used to escalate the war against
Iraq is a lie. The most ludicrous of them being the U.S. Government's deep
commitment to bring democracy to Iraq.
Killing people to save them from dictatorship or ideological corruption is, of
course, an old U.S. government sport. Here in Latin America, you know that better
than most.
Nobody doubts that Saddam Hussein is a ruthless dictator, a murderer (whose worst
excesses were supported by the governments of the United States and Great
Britain). There's no doubt that Iraqis would be better off without him.
But, then, the whole world would be better off without a certain Mr. Bush. In
fact, he is far more dangerous than Saddam Hussein.
So, should we bomb Bush out of the White House?
It's more than clear that Bush is determined to go to war against Iraq, regardless
of the facts - and regardless of international public opinion.
In its recruitment drive for allies, The United States is prepared to invent
facts.
The charade with weapons inspectors is the U.S. government's offensive, insulting
concession to some twisted form of international etiquette. It's like leaving the
"doggie door" open for last minute "allies" or maybe the United Nations to crawl
through.
But for all intents and purposes, the New War against Iraq has begun.
What can we do?
We can hone our memory, we can learn from our history. We can continue to build
public opinion until it becomes a deafening roar.
We can turn the war on Iraq into a fishbowl of the U.S. government's excesses.
We can expose George Bush and Tony Blair - and their allies - for the cowardly
baby killers, water poisoners, and pusillanimous long-distance bombers that they
are.
We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million different ways. In other words,
we can come up with a million ways of becoming a collective pain in the ass.
When George Bush says "you're either with us, or you are with the terrorists" we
can say "No thank you." We can let him know that the people of the world do not
need to choose between a Malevolent Mickey Mouse and the Mad Mullahs.
Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To
deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our
literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -
and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones
we're being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling -
their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of
inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear
her breathing.
*Arundhati Roy
Porto Alegre, Brazil
January 27, 2003
https://www.alainet.org/es/node/106892?language=es
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