Evil Empire 49governments do not have the responsibility to feed, clothe, house,
and educate everyone—all our talk is mere posturing. Why do these
simple things scare people so much? It is just common decency. Let’s
face it: the free market is not free, and it doesn’t give a shit about
justice or equality.as: The vexed question of violent struggle against domination has come
up at different moments in history. It has been debated in the context
of Frantz Fanon’s writing, Gandhi, Black Lives Matter, Palestine, and
the Naxalite movement, to name a few. It is a question that also comes
up in your fiction and nonfiction. What do you make of the injunction
against the use of violence in resistance from below?
ar: I am against unctuous injunctions and prescriptions from above
to resistance from below. That’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Oppressors telling
the oppressed how they would like to be resisted? Fighting people will
choose their own weapons. For me, the question of armed struggle
versus passive resistance is a tactical one, not an ideological one. For
example, how do indigenous people who live deep inside the forest
passively resist armed vigilantes and thousands of paramilitary forces
who surround their villages at night and burn them to the ground?
Passive resistance is political theater. It requires a sympathetic audi-
ence. There isn’t one inside the forest. And how do starving people
go on a hunger strike?
In certain situations, preaching nonviolence can be a kind of
violence. Also, it is the kind of terminology that dovetails beautifully
with the “human rights” discourse in which, from an exalted position
of faux neutrality, politics, morality, and justice can be airbrushed out
of the picture, all parties can be declared human rights offenders, and
the status quo can be maintained.