Following is an excerpt from Arundhati
Roy's talk at the closing rally of
the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on January 27.
The full
text will appear in her book War Talk, to be published in April
by South
End Press. --The Editors
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 Chávez is holding
on, despite the US 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 Andersen--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
eyeball to eyeball 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
its 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. In Washington
this January, a quarter of a million people marched against the
war on Iraq. Each month the protest is gathering momentum.
Before September 11, 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 US government's deep commitment
to bring democracy to Iraq. Killing people to save them from
dictatorship or ideological corruption is, of course, an old
US 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 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 US 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 US 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 reinvent 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 "Either you are 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.
