The faith that another world is possible and the courage to challenge and resists are not radicalism; they are only symptoms for sanity and consciousness.
"I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent."
A. Gramsci
This article is radicalism. Nowadays every effort, however peaceful it is, to bring social and political change is labeled as radical so we will agree on this term. Let’s be radicals. But what is radicalism? Isn’t it radicalism when policemen pepperspray non-violently protesting students or when the Civil Guard crackdowns millions of protesters under the banner of “restoring the public order”. Whose public order if millions are on the streets is the question that comes to my mind? Isn’t it radicalism when almost two hundred thousand students are on the streets of Canada fighting against the rise of their tuition fees and we learn that from blogs and forums instead from the media? Or when the biggest hunger strike in history is silently and shamelessly skipped by the newspapers and televisions? Isn’t it radicalism when the profit of a few turns out to be the starvation and exploitation of millions or when the banks invest billions of our money in arms and war? Or when our soldiers kill civilians to ensure the control of whether British Petroleum or Chevron on the oil wells in Iraq? Isn’t it radicalism that we don’t have the word; we are not asked and taken into consideration? I believe it is, it is the radicalism of the controlled democracy.
We live in democracy, they preach. But the idea of democracy is narrowed down to the opportunity to obediently go to the ballot box every four years choosing a different-colored version of the same product. The idea of alternative is denied and portrayed as dangerous, leading to anarchy and destruction. It is not just denied, it hidden – it has no tribune in the mainstream media or if it appears there is usually seen through the broken mirror of the capitalist paradise they offer us on every corner. The alternative is ridiculed and described as an immature approach to “serious matters” we do not and we are not meant to understand. Politics and economics are covered with the veil of formality and tongue twisting lullabies of how they are much more complex than we see them. Robbery is always in the name of society; death and violence are always a struggle for peace and order. In this Orwellian game of words, war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength. And of course, capitalism is the fabulous end of history.
What if we don’t agree? They film our faces when we protest, cattle us like livestock, our IDs carry information for our DNA and on airports they already ask to scan our pupils as if we are all barcoded and this is how it’s meant to be. When we shout for a change they cover their ears with police shields and batons, when we raise our fists, they break our hands and the only place we are encouraged gather is the supermarket. In this controlled democracy the right to protest is stolen from us. When we protest, they build fences to surround us for a few hours before the circus is over and then we can all go home and believe we are free to choose and change the world we live in. We have the right to protest as far as we don’t change anything. When we dare, they label and divide us to the good and bad protesters – those who throw bricks and the others that are there to sing songs and wave balloons for change. The media starts chanting for the lost profits and how protesters harm the economy; politicians heartily agree, the fat cats calm down that once again they will not pay for their crimes. And thousands on the streets of London, Berlin or Washington are often a dry line in a news agency right next to the news for the new X-Factor or the 33 yachts of someone who deserves the abbreviation VIP.
“One solution – revolution” is what we chanted on the streets of London a few days ago before being crackdowned by the Metropolitan Police. Indeed, it is the only solution. Once you get home and you realize that for a whole day of mass protests and blockades in one of the world capitals no one has reported even a single line of information, you start doubting that peaceful protests are the way. Once you have seen the police knock down girls and drag them in custody, police dogs and helicopters sent against students or police threatening protesting women that they will take their children to the social services, you realize that the solution can hardly be peaceful. When democracy is a façade of the disguised fascism of the capital, that kills millions around the world, our right and obligation is to take down the mask and smash the windows of their tranquility even if they protect them with water cannons and plastic bullets. The peaceful protest is, of course, the most desirable way to change the world, but when the other side uses repression and violence to ensure its domination and control, society has the equal right to use violence to prevent dictatorship. In a situation when millions are robbed and impoverished by someone’s speculations, the sacred cows of private property and public order have to be sacrificed in the name of our future.
Yes, I believe we have the right to burn down building and destroy private property. Why? How do I dare? When someone’s property (let’s say a bank’s property) is obtained through gambling with food prices in the third world, arms trade or through multi-billion bailouts with public money, how sacred this property exactly is?
Yes, I believe we have the right to take the streets, block the economy and transport and demand till we achieve a more just world. The fat cats will complain about their lost profit. I am sorry, but we need a world where profit is not an idol worth the sacrifice of peoples’ lives, happiness, freedom, health and environment.
Yes, I believe we have the right to throw bricks at the police. But aren’t they humans just like us? Of course they are, but as far as they obey their masters’ orders and defend the dominations of the ruling economic elites, police are nothing but an instrument of repression and therefore, they shouldn’t be considered under any protection, even the opposite.
But aren’t we going too far, isn’t that too radical? Radicalism is the starvation of 1 billion people on the planet cause by the unfair distribution of the public wealth in the capitalist system. Radical is the fact that 1 million people died in the war for oil in Iraq – 1/6 holocaust, isn’t it? Radical is that our clothes, food, electronics and whatever product you can imagine, are often produced by slaves, some of whom children, working in the hidden outskirts of our “brave new world”. Radical is the idea that the current political and economic order is “the end of history” and further development of society is not welcome. Radical are the imperialistic military and economic interventions done whether by NATO or the IMF and the World Bank. Radical is the 40% growth of the number of suicides in Greece. Radical is genocide over the Palestinian people supported, funded and armed by the violent global capitalism. Radical is the idea that protests against the European central bank can be banned by the German police with the cost of hundreds probably thousands arrests. Radical is the idea that education and healthcare are products, not human rights. Radical is the uncontrolled destruction of our environment again for the profit of a small group of arrogant schizophrenics.
The faith that another world is possible and the courage to challenge and resists are not radicalism; they are only symptoms for sanity and consciousness.
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