“Another world is not only possible, she
is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing”
Confronting Empire
by Arundhati Roy
Speech at World Social Forum, Porto
Alegre, Brazil, Jan. 27, 2003
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, ultranationalist 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 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 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 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 “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.