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Authors: Chris Hedges
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and peaceful social evolution becomes quick, militant, and violent,” as Berkman explained. “Evolution becomes revolution.” 34
I prefer the gradual reforms of a functioning, liberal democracy. I fear the process of massive social engineering. I detest the poison of violence. I would rather live in a system in which our social institutions permit the citizenry to nonviolently dismiss those in authority and promote the common good, a system in which institutions are independent and not captive to corporate power. But we do not live in such a system. We live in a system that is incapable of reforming itself. The first step to dismantling that system is to dismantle the ideas that give it legitimacy. Once that is done, though the system may be able to cling to power through coercion and fear for years, it will have been given a mortal blow.
“Many ideas, once held to be true, have come to be regarded as wrong and evil,” Berkman wrote.
Thus the ideas of the divine right of kings, of slavery and serfdom. There was a time when the whole world believed those institutions to be right, just, and unchangeable. In the measure that those superstitions and false beliefs were fought by advanced thinkers, they became discredited and lost their hold upon the people, and finally the institutions that incorporated those ideas were abolished. Highbrows will tell you that they had “outlived their usefulness” and therefore they “died.” But how did they “outlive” their “usefulness”? To whom were they useful, and how did they “die”? We know already that they were useful only to the master class, and they were done away with by popular uprisings and revolutions. 35
IV /Conversion
Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good. 1
—T HOMAS P AINE ,
T HE R IGHTS OF M AN
R onnie Kasrils, white, middle-class, and Jewish, was working as a twenty-two-year-old scriptwriter for a South African film company called Alpha Film Studios in March 1960 when the Sharpeville Massacre took place. Sixty-nine unarmed blacks who had been protesting the apartheid regime’s restrictive pass laws were gunned down by white South African police, with 180 seriously wounded. 2 Many were shot in the back as they fled. 3
He approached some black workers at the studio to commiserate. They told him: “This is South Africa.
Amapoyisa yi’zinja
. [The police are dogs].” Groups of white English and Afrikaans were also gathering in separate groups. The massacre, everyone knew, signaled the start of a new phase in blacks’ battle for liberation in apartheid South Africa. One of the white men told Kasrils: “
Moe’nie
[Don’t] worry, mate, you’ll be in the trenches with the rest of us.
Ons wit ous
[us white guys] have to sink or swim together.” 4
But his white coworkers were wrong. Something snapped in Kasrils. He underwent a conversion—the rite of passage of all revolutionaries. During the next few days, he argued passionately with family and friends about the gross injustice that had taken place, but found that “outside my immediate circle, few whites showed any sensitivity—the general view being: ‘we should machinegun the lot of them.’ ” 5
He watched enraged blacks burn their passbooks in defiance and get arrested. The apartheid government declared a state of emergency. It outlawed the African National Congress (ANC) and its rival, the Pan African Congress (PAC). British-made Saracen armored cars, with their mounted .30 caliber machine guns, rumbled down the streets of the Alexandra Township, where most of the black workers at the film studio lived. Kasrils was no longer able to be a passive accomplice in a system of such gross injustice. He took time off from his job and went to Durban, where he met Rowley Arenstein, a radical lawyer who was being hunted by the police. Arenstein urged Kasrils to join what he called
I prefer the gradual reforms of a functioning, liberal democracy. I fear the process of massive social engineering. I detest the poison of violence. I would rather live in a system in which our social institutions permit the citizenry to nonviolently dismiss those in authority and promote the common good, a system in which institutions are independent and not captive to corporate power. But we do not live in such a system. We live in a system that is incapable of reforming itself. The first step to dismantling that system is to dismantle the ideas that give it legitimacy. Once that is done, though the system may be able to cling to power through coercion and fear for years, it will have been given a mortal blow.
“Many ideas, once held to be true, have come to be regarded as wrong and evil,” Berkman wrote.
Thus the ideas of the divine right of kings, of slavery and serfdom. There was a time when the whole world believed those institutions to be right, just, and unchangeable. In the measure that those superstitions and false beliefs were fought by advanced thinkers, they became discredited and lost their hold upon the people, and finally the institutions that incorporated those ideas were abolished. Highbrows will tell you that they had “outlived their usefulness” and therefore they “died.” But how did they “outlive” their “usefulness”? To whom were they useful, and how did they “die”? We know already that they were useful only to the master class, and they were done away with by popular uprisings and revolutions. 35
IV /Conversion
Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good. 1
—T HOMAS P AINE ,
T HE R IGHTS OF M AN
R onnie Kasrils, white, middle-class, and Jewish, was working as a twenty-two-year-old scriptwriter for a South African film company called Alpha Film Studios in March 1960 when the Sharpeville Massacre took place. Sixty-nine unarmed blacks who had been protesting the apartheid regime’s restrictive pass laws were gunned down by white South African police, with 180 seriously wounded. 2 Many were shot in the back as they fled. 3
He approached some black workers at the studio to commiserate. They told him: “This is South Africa.
Amapoyisa yi’zinja
. [The police are dogs].” Groups of white English and Afrikaans were also gathering in separate groups. The massacre, everyone knew, signaled the start of a new phase in blacks’ battle for liberation in apartheid South Africa. One of the white men told Kasrils: “
Moe’nie
[Don’t] worry, mate, you’ll be in the trenches with the rest of us.
Ons wit ous
[us white guys] have to sink or swim together.” 4
But his white coworkers were wrong. Something snapped in Kasrils. He underwent a conversion—the rite of passage of all revolutionaries. During the next few days, he argued passionately with family and friends about the gross injustice that had taken place, but found that “outside my immediate circle, few whites showed any sensitivity—the general view being: ‘we should machinegun the lot of them.’ ” 5
He watched enraged blacks burn their passbooks in defiance and get arrested. The apartheid government declared a state of emergency. It outlawed the African National Congress (ANC) and its rival, the Pan African Congress (PAC). British-made Saracen armored cars, with their mounted .30 caliber machine guns, rumbled down the streets of the Alexandra Township, where most of the black workers at the film studio lived. Kasrils was no longer able to be a passive accomplice in a system of such gross injustice. He took time off from his job and went to Durban, where he met Rowley Arenstein, a radical lawyer who was being hunted by the police. Arenstein urged Kasrils to join what he called
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