NM's blog

On unbendingly holding the line On November 23, 1964, during a layover on his way back from Africa to the USA, Malcolm X spoke to and took questions from an audience at the Salle de la Mutualité in Paris. Among many other interventions and questions, an audience member presented a challenge to Malcolm: Mr. Malcolm, you want to form a movement which is extremist, and you have said that there must be a movement of Afro-Americans towards Africa—a philosophical, psychological and cultural return—but that struggle must take place in the United States. Consequently, in the event where the Afro-Americans’ demands are not satisfied, what means do they think of using to make an eventual return to Africa? After asking where the audience member was from and determining he was from the Senegal, Malcolm responds: Number one, if we are extremists we’re not ashamed of it. In fact, the conditions that our people suffer are extreme and an extreme illness cannot be cured with moderate medicine. We’re no...

Total war and cold war have brainwashed us into accepting barbarity. Even worse: they have made barbarity seem unimportant, compared to more important matters like making money. —Eric Hobsbawm

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.”  ― Arundhati Roy ,  War Talk