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Very interesting piece from George Monbiot, author of Captive State, in the Guardian yesterday. It begins thus:
quote:Asking the G8 leaders to decide what to do about the developing world's debt is like asking the inmates of Wormwood Scrubs to decide what to do about crime...
He then takes the bold but I think necessary step of describing the realisation he's reached since the weekend:
quote:I have simply stumbled once more upon the fundamental political reality which all those of us who lead moderately comfortable lives tend occasionally to forget: that confrontation is an essential prerequisite for change.
He then goes on to make the following qualification/distinction, which is I think quite different from the usual condemnations of all "violent protest" as either immoral or ineffective (the latter of which usually comes with implications of the former):
quote:The problem with the fighting at Genoa is not only that the confrontation was of the kind which hurts people, but also that it was not always clear what they were being hurt for.
The great Islamic activist Hamza Yusuf Hanson distinguishes between two forms of political action. He defines the Arabic word hamas as enthusiastic, but intelligent, anger. Hamoq means uncontrolled, stupid anger.
The Malays could not pronounce the Arabic H, and the British acquired the second word from them. On Friday and Saturday, while the white overalls movement practised hamas, seeking to rip down the fences around Genoa's red zone but refusing to return the blows of the police, the black block ran amok.
The important thing about hamas is that, whether or not it is popular, it is comprehensible. People can see immediately what you are doing and why you are doing it.
Hamoq, by contrast, leaves its spectators dumbfounded. Hamas may have demolished the McDonald's in Whitehall on May Day 2000, but it would have left the Portuguese restaurant and the souvenir shop beside it intact.
Hamas explains itself. It is a demonstration in both senses of the word: a protest and an exposition of the reasons for that protest. Hamoq, by contrast, seeks no public dialogue. Hamas is radical. Hamoq is reactionary.
If, like some of the black block warriors I have spoken to, you cannot accept this distinction, then look at how the police responded to these two very different species of anger.
On Friday, though they were armed to the teeth and greatly outnumbered the looters, the police stood by and watched as the black block rampaged around Brignole station, smashing every shopfront and overturning the residents' cars.
Then on Saturday night, on the pretext of looking for the people who had caused the violence, the police raided the schools in which members of the non-violent Genoa Social Forum were sleeping, and started beating them to a pulp before they could get out of their sleeping bags. The police, like almost everyone else in Genoa, knew perfectly well that the black block were, at the time, camped in a car park miles away.
It is not hard to see which faction Italy's borderline-fascist state feels threatened by, and which faction it can accept and even encourage.
It's quite shocking in some ways (by which I mean both laudable and scary) to see a journalist/author who's given at least some sort of credibility/respect in the press, advocating any kind of calculated property damage, the forcible dismantling of corporate headquarters, etc, but Monbiot makes his case in an admirably irrefutable manner:
quote:Almost everyone agrees that the world would be a better place without the companies which are lobbying against action on climate change, building Bush's missile defence system, producing fragmentation grenades, demanding control over health and education services, privatising water in third world cities then selling it back to their people at inflated prices, ripping up virgin forests, designing plants with sterile seeds.
The state was once empowered to destroy such menaces: in the 18th century, for example, the British government could dismantle any commercial enterprise "tending to the common grievance, prejudice and inconvenience of His Majesty's subjects". Now the state has renounced this power and refuses, whatever its people may say, to demolish the dens from which the thieves of the public realm raid our lives. Hamas insists that we pull them down ourselves.
Those who will be most horrified by this suggestion were doubtless also delighted to see the public demolition of the Berlin wall.
It is surely obvious that the excesses of corporate power are no more likely to be reversed voluntarily by the states which it has captured than that the Berlin wall would have been pulled down by the governments which built it.
And I suspect that, in private, most British people would be as happy to see the headquarters of, say, Balfour Beatty or Monsanto dismantled by non-violent direct action as they were to see Lord Archer go to prison.
These things can be done, as peaceful protesters have demonstrated in fields of GM maize, nuclear laboratories and military aircraft hangars all over the country, without hurting anyone. In deed, when actions are clearly focused, then violence towards human beings is far less likely to take place, as it's harder to forget what we are seeking to achieve.
Monbiot's conclusion (which is as notable for its honesty as its insight, I think), is this:
quote:But, though I am scared to say it, it's now clear to me that we cannot win without raising the temperature. The disorienting, profoundly disturbing lesson from Genoa is also the oldest lesson in politics: words alone are not enough.
Go and read the whole thing here - I've ended up reproducing most of it just because I think it warrants it - and then respond. |
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