Tide Or Ivory Snow?

Transcript of full speech by Arundhati Roy in San Francisco, California on August 16th, 2004. 

I’ve been asked to speak about "Public Power in the Age of Empire." I’m not used to doing as I’mtold, but by happy coincidence, it’s exactly what I’d like to speak about tonight.

In India, the word public is now a Hindi word. It means people. In Hindi, we have sarkarand public, the government and the people. Inherent in this use is the underlying assumption that thegovernment is quite separate from "the people." This distinction has to do with the fact that India’sfreedom struggle, though magnificent, was by no means revolutionary. The Indian elite stepped easily andelegantly into the shoes of the British imperialists. A deeply impoverished, essentially feudal society becamea modern, independent nation state. Even today, fifty seven years on to the day, the truly vanquished stilllook upon the government as mai-baap, the parent and provider. The somewhat more radical, those whostill have fire in their bellies, see it as chor, the thief, the snatcher-away of all things.

Either way, for most Indians, sarkar is very separate from public. However, as you make yourway up India’s social ladder, the distinction between sarkar and public gets blurred. TheIndian elite, like the elite anywhere in the world, finds it hard to separate itself from the state. It seeslike the state, it thinks like the state, it speaks like the state.

In the United States, on the other hand, the blurring of the distinction between sarkar and publichas penetrated far deeper into society. This could be a sign of a robust democracy, but unfortunately, it’sa little more complicated and less pretty than that. Among other things, it has to do with the elaborate webof paranoia generated by the U.S. sarkar and spun out by the corporate media and Hollywood. OrdinaryAmericans have been manipulated into imagining they are a people under siege whose sole refuge and protectoris their government. If it isn’t the Communists, it’s al-Qaeda. If it isn’t Cuba. it’s Nicaragua. As aresult, this, the most powerful nation in the world - with its unmatchable arsenal of weapons, its history ofhaving waged and sponsored endless wars, and the only nation in history to have actually used nuclear bombs -is peopled by a terrified citizenry, jumping at shadows. A people bonded to the state not by social services,or public health care, or employment guarantees, but by fear.

This synthetically manufactured fear is used to gain public sanction for further acts of aggression. And soit goes, building into a spiral of self-fulfilling hysteria, now formally calibrated by the U.S government’sAmazing Technicolored Terror Alerts: fuchsia, turquoise, salmon pink.

To outside observers, this merging of sarkar and public in the United States sometimes makesit hard to separate the actions of the U.S. government from the American people. It is this confusion thatfuels anti-Americanism in the world. Anti-Americanism is then seized upon and amplified by the U.S. governmentand its faithful media outlets. You know the routine: "Why do they hate us? They hate our freedoms" . . .etc. . . . etc. This enhances the sense of isolation among American people and makes the embrace between sarkarand public even more intimate. Like Red Riding Hood looking for a cuddle in the wolf’s bed.

Using the threat of an external enemy to rally people behind you is a tired old horse, which politicianshave ridden into power for centuries. But could it be that ordinary people are fed up of that poor old horseand are looking for something different? There’s an old Hindi film song that goes yeh public hai, yeh sabjaanti hai (the public, she knows it all). Wouldn’t it be lovely if the song were right and thepoliticians wrong?

Before Washington’s illegal invasion of Iraq, a Gallup International poll showed that in no Europeancountry was the support for a unilateral war higher than 11 percent. On February 15, 2003, weeks before theinvasion, more than ten million people marched against the war on different continents, including NorthAmerica. And yet the governments of many supposedly democratic countries still went to war.

The question is: is "democracy" still democratic?

Are democratic governments accountable to the people who elected them? And, critically, is the publicin democratic countries responsible for the actions of its sarkar?

If you think about it, the logic that underlies the war on terrorism and the logicthat underlies terrorism is exactly the same. Both make ordinary citizens pay for the actions of theirgovernment. Al-Qaeda made the people of the United States pay with their lives for the actions of theirgovernment in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The U.S government has made the people ofAfghanistan pay in their thousands for the actions of the Taliban and the people of Iraq pay in their hundredsof thousands for the actions of Saddam Hussein.

The crucial difference is that nobody really elected al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or Saddam Hussein. But thepresident of the United States was elected (well … in a manner of speaking).

The prime ministers of Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom were elected. Could it then be argued thatcitizens of these countries are more responsible for the actions of their government than Iraqis are for theactions of Saddam Hussein or Afghans for the Taliban?

Whose God decides which is a "just war" and which isn’t? George Bush senior once said: "I willnever apologize for the United States. I don’t care what the facts are." When the president of the mostpowerful country in the world doesn’t need to care what the facts are, then we can at least be surewe have entered the Age of Empire.

So what does public power mean in the Age of Empire? Does it mean anything at all? Does it actually exist?

In these allegedly democratic times, conventional political thought holds that public power is exercisedthrough the ballot. Scores of countries in the world will go to the polls this year. Most (not all) of themwill get the governments they vote for. But will they get the governments they want?

In India this year, we voted the Hindu nationalists out of office. But even as wecelebrated, we knew that on nuclear bombs, neo-liberalism, privatization, censorship, big dams - on everymajor issue other than overt Hindu nationalism - the Congress and the BJP have no major ideologicaldifferences. We know that it is the fifty-year legacy of the Congress Party that prepared the groundculturally and politically for the far right. It was also the Congress Party that first opened India’smarkets to corporate globalization.

In its election campaign, the Congress Party indicated that it was prepared to rethink some of its earliereconomic policies. Millions of India’s poorest people came out in strength to vote in the elections. Thespectacle of the great Indian democracy was telecast live - the poor farmers, the old and infirm, the veiledwomen with their beautiful silver jewelry, making quaint journeys to election booths on elephants and camelsand bullock carts. Contrary to the predictions of all India’s experts and pollsters, Congress won more votesthan any other party. India’s communist parties won the largest share of the vote in their history. India’spoor had clearly voted against neo-liberalism’s economic "reforms" and growing fascism. As soon as thevotes were counted, the corporate media dispatched them like badly paid extras on a film set. Televisionchannels featured split screens. Half the screen showed the chaos outside the home of Sonia Gandhi, the leaderof the Congress Party, as the coalition government was cobbled together. The other half showed frenziedstockbrokers outside the Bombay Stock Exchange, panicking at the thought that the Congress Party mightactually honor its promises and implement its electoral mandate. We saw the Sensex stock index move up anddown and sideways. The media, whose own publicly listed stocks were plummeting, reported the stock marketcrash as though Pakistan had launched ICBMs on New Delhi.

Even before the new government was formally sworn in, senior Congress politicians made public statementsreassuring investors and the media that privatization of public utilities would continue. Meanwhile the BJP,now in opposition, has cynically, and comically, begun to oppose foreign direct investment and the furtheropening of Indian markets.

This is the spurious, evolving dialectic of electoral democracy.

As for the Indian poor, once they’ve provided the votes, they are expected to bugger off home. Policywill be decided despite them.

It’s true that if John Kerry becomes president, some of the oil tycoons and Christian fundamentalists inthe White House will change. Few will be sorry to see the back of Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld or JohnAshcroft and their blatant thuggery. But the real concern is that in the new administration their policieswill continue. That we will have Bushism without Bush.

Those positions of real power - the bankers, the CEOs - are not vulnerable to the vote (. . . and in anycase, they fund both sides).

Unfortunately the importance of the U.S elections has deteriorated into a sort of personality contest. Asquabble over who would do a better job of overseeing empire. John Kerry believes in the idea of empire asfervently as George Bush does.

The U.S. political system has been carefully crafted to ensure that no one who questions the naturalgoodness of the military-industrial-corporate power structure will be allowed through the portals of power.

Given this, it’s no surprise that in this election you have two Yale University graduates, both membersof Skull and Bones, the same secret society, both millionaires, both playing at soldier-soldier, both talkingup war, and arguing almost childishly about who will lead the war on terror more effectively.

Like President Bill Clinton before him, Kerry will continue the expansion of U.S. economic and militarypenetration into the world. He says he would have voted to authorize Bush to go to war in Iraq even if he hadknown that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. He promises to commit more troops to Iraq. He saidrecently that he supports Bush’s policies toward Israel and Ariel Sharon 100 percent. He says he’ll retain98% of Bush’s tax cuts.

So, underneath the shrill exchange of insults, there is almost absolute consensus. It looks as though evenif Americans vote for Kerry, they’ll still get Bush. President John Kerbush or President George Berry.

It’s not a real choice. It’s an apparent choice. Like choosing a brand of detergent. Whether youbuy Ivory Snow or Tide, they’re both owned by Proctor & Gamble.

This doesn’t mean that one takes a position that is without nuance, that the Congress and the BJP, NewLabor and the Tories, the Democrats and Republicans are the same. Of course, they’re not. Neither are Tideand Ivory Snow. Tide has oxy-boosting and Ivory Snow is a gentle cleanser.

In India, there is a difference between an overtly fascist party (the BJP) and a party that slyly pits onecommunity against another (Congress), and sows the seeds of communalism that are then so ably harvested by theBJP.

There are differences in the I.Q.s and levels of ruthlessness between this year’s U.S. presidentialcandidates. The anti-war movement in the United States has done a phenomenal job of exposing the lies andvenality that led to the invasion of Iraq, despite the propaganda and intimidation it faced. This was aservice not just to people here, but to the whole world. But now, if the anti-war movement openly campaignsfor Kerry, the rest of the world will think that it approves of his policies of "sensitive" imperialism.Is U.S. imperialism preferable if it is supported by the United Nations and European countries? Is itpreferable if UN asks Indian and Pakistani soldiers to do the killing and dying in Iraq instead of U.S.soldiers? Is the only change that Iraqis can hope for that French, German, and Russian companies will share inthe spoils of the occupation of their country?

Is this actually better or worse for those of us who live in subject nations? Is it better for the world tohave a smarter emperor in power or a stupider one? Is that our only choice?

I’m sorry, I know that these are uncomfortable, even brutal questions, but they must be asked.

The fact is that electoral democracy has become a process of cynical manipulation. It offers us a veryreduced political space today. To believe that this space constitutes real choice would be naïve.

The crisis in modern democracy is a profound one.

All this goes under the fluttering banner of "reform."

As a consequence of this reform, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, thousands of small enterprises andindustries have closed down, millions of workers and farmers have lost their jobs and land.

The Spectator newspaper in London assures us that "[w]e live in the happiest, healthiest and mostpeaceful era in human history."

Billions wonder: who’s "we"? Where does he live? What’s his Christian name?

The thing to understand is that modern democracy is safely premised on an almost religious acceptance ofthe nation state. But corporate globalization is not. Liquid capital is not. So, even though capital needs thecoercive powers of the nation state to put down revolts in the servants’ quarters, this set up ensures thatno individual nation can oppose corporate globalization on its own.

Radical change cannot and will not be negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by people. By the public.A public who can link hands across national borders.

So when we speak of "Public Power in the Age of Empire," I hope it’s not presumptuous to assume thatthe only thing that is worth discussing seriously is the power of a dissenting public. A public which disagreeswith the very concept of empire. A public which has set itself against incumbent power - international,national, regional, or provincial governments and institutions that support and service empire.

What are the avenues of protest available to people who wish to resist empire? By resist I don’t meanonly to express dissent, but to effectively force change.

Empire has a range of calling cards. It uses different weapons to break open different markets.

For poor people in many countries, Empire does not always appear in the form of cruise missiles and tanks,as it has in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam. It appears in their lives in very local avatars - losing theirjobs, being sent unpayable electricity bills, having their water supply cut, being evicted from their homesand uprooted from their land. All this overseen by the repressive machinery of the state, the police, thearmy, the judiciary. It is a process of relentless impoverishment with which the poor are historicallyfamiliar. What Empire does is to further entrench and exacerbate already existing inequalities.

Even until quite recently, it was sometimes difficult for people to see themselves as victims of theconquests of Empire. But now local struggles have begun to see their role with increasing clarity. Howevergrand it might sound, the fact is, they are confronting Empire in their own, very different ways.Differently in Iraq, in South Africa, in India, in Argentina, and differently, for that matter, on the streetsof Europe and the United States.

Mass resistance movements, individual activists, journalists, artists, and film makers have come togetherto strip Empire of its sheen. They have connected the dots, turned cash-flow charts and boardroom speechesinto real stories about real people and real despair. They have shown how the neo-liberal project has costpeople their homes, their land, their jobs, their liberty, their dignity. They have made the intangibletangible. The once seemingly incorporeal enemy is now corporeal.

This is a huge victory. It was forged by the coming together of disparate political groups, with a varietyof strategies. But they all recognized that the target of their anger, their activism, and their doggedness isthe same. This was the beginning of real globalization. The globalization of dissent.

Then there are those fighting formal and brutal neocolonial occupations in contested territories whoseboundaries and fault lines were often arbitrarily drawn last century by the imperialist powers. In Palestine,Tibet, Chechnya, Kashmir, and several states in India’s northeast provinces, people are waging struggles forself-determination.