c/david-graeber
Lectures, interviews, and talks by David Graeber — anthropologist, anarchist, author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Bullshit Jobs, and The Dawn of Everything.
…a real militarization of American society. And it took this very, very strange form among liberals of this sort of worship of Gandhi. Gandhi was basically used as a justification for repressive police power in a way that I hadn't seen before in the sense…
…real militarization of American society. And it took this very, very strange form among liberals of this sort of worship of Gandhi. Gandhi was basically used as a justification for repressive police power in a way that I hadn't seen before in the sense…
…hockey game has more than two broken windows. It's really nothing. We're talking about 500 occupations, two or three broken windows. Gandhi never pulled off anything like that. They used to chide us. There was this guy, I remember, at some conference, some…
…remember, at some conference, some liberal, he was a very well-meaning person, sort of saying, well, you know, you should learn from Gandhi. You know, when there was an incident of violence in his Quit India campaign, you know, he called off the whole…
…with machetes and setting them on fire. And it's like, I think if that happened in Cleveland, we'd probably call off the campaign too. Gandhi would have cared if two people broke a window. That kind of thing would not have been a big issue for him. So…
…would not have been a big issue for him. So essentially, and this is why I say this kind of bizarre misplaced use of Gandhi becomes a form of militarization in itself. In order to create a movement where not a single person attacked by police so much…
…But you're ultimately trying to make the people in power change their minds. Whereas in direct action, you're ignoring them. So Gandhi, actually, was a famous direct actionist in that sense, the salt march. Instead of saying, we won't pay our taxes, or…
…up their hands are young. I was involved in this. It was a consult campus demo. People occupied Senate House, a total Gandhi and nonviolent thing. They were immediately attacked. People were being roughed up. There was one guy that had his teeth punched…