Things that Can and Cannot Be Said Read Free Page B

the boundaries of radical politics. And you’re sacked if you disobey . . . sacked, unfunded, whatever. And then there’s always the game of pitting the “funded” against the “unfunded,” in which the funder takes center stage. So, I mean, I’m not against people being funded—because we’re running out of options—but we have to understand—are you walking the dog or is the dog walking you? Or who’s the dog and who is you?
    JC: I’m definitely the dog . . . and I’ve definitely been walked.
    AR: Everywhere—not just in America . . . repress, beat up, shoot, jail those you can, and throw money at those whom you can’t—and gradually sandpaper the edge off them. They’re in the business of creating what we in India call Paaltu Sher , which means Tamed Tigers. Like a pretend resistance . . . so you can let off steam without damaging anything.
    JC: The first time you spoke at the World Social Forum . . . when was that?
    AR: In 2003, in Porto Alegre . . . just before the US invasion of Iraq. 4
    JC: And then you went the next year in Mumbai and it was . . .
    AR: . . . totally NGO-ized. 5 So many major activists had turned into travel agents, just having to organize tickets and money, flying people up and down. The forum suddenly declared, “Only nonviolence, no armed struggles . . .” They had turned Gandhian.
    JC: So anyone involved in armed resistance . . .
    AR: All out, all out. Many of the radical struggles were out. And I thought, fuck this. My question is, if, let’s say, there are people who live in villages deep in the forest, four days’ walk from anywhere, and a thousand soldiers arrive and burn their villages and kill and rape people to scare them off their land because mining companies want it—what brand of nonviolence would the stalwarts of the establishment recommend? Nonviolence is radical political theater.
    JC: Effective only when there’s an audience . . .
    AR: Exactly. And who can pull in an audience? You need some capital, some stars, right? Gandhi was a superstar. The indigenous people in the forest don’t have that capital, that drawing power. So they have no audience. Nonviolence should be a tactic—not an ideology preached from the sidelines to victims of massive violence . . . With me, it’s been an evolution of seeing through these things.
    â€œ Gandhi was a superstar. The indigenous people in the forest don’t have that capital, that drawing power. So they have no audience. Nonviolence should be a tactic—not an ideology preached from the sidelines to victims of massive violence. ”
    JC: You begin to smell the digestive enzymes . . .
    AR: ( Laughing ) But you know, the revolution cannot be funded. It’s not the imagination of trusts and foundations that’s going to bring real change.
    JC: But what’s the bigger game that we can name?
    AR: The bigger game is keeping the world safe for the Free Market. Structural Adjustment, Privatization, Free Market fundamentalism—all masquerading as Democracy and the Rule of Law. Many corporate foundation–funded NGOs—not all, but many—become the missionaries of the “new economy.” They tinker with your imagination, with language. The idea of “human rights,” for example—sometimes it bothers me. Not in itself, but because the concept of human rights has replaced the much grander idea of justice. Human rights are fundamental rights, they are the minimum, the very least we demand. Too often, they become the goal itself. What should be the minimum becomes the maximum —all we are supposed to expect—but human rights aren’t enough. The goal is, and must always be, justice.
    JC: The term human rights is, or can be, a kind of pacifier—filling the space in the political imagination that justice deserves?
    AR: Look at the Israel-Palestine conflict, for example. If you look at a map