We Should All Take Up the Cry of ‘Not in My Name’

By Safoora Arbab / Metta Center for Nonviolence

Peace; what kind of a world have we created that so many children are being denied this fundamental condition of existence? What kind of a world do we live in that ideologically driven governments and special interest groups can take away such a basic, simple condition of life with constant and heartless impunity? The unbearable heartbreak of witnessing so many children being killed every single moment in Gaza — as well as in so many other parts of the world — adds to the horrifying visual testimony being televised loudly into our phones that our present political systems have failed. Not only have they failed, but that they have degenerated into horrendous mechanisms of destruction that aid and abet the murder of countless children. I feel extremely angry that I do not have the power to stop this present carnage and, I think, it is an anger and a frustration that many share right now. But, moreover, it is an anger and a frustration that we actually should not be feeling. As people living in so called democratic societies, our governments are supposed to not only represent us but to uphold peace and justice; they are supposed to uphold humanitarian values and be beacons of civilization. None of this is happening right now — nor has it happened for a very long time.

“Not in my name” are the loud cries we hear from Jewish peoples protesting the genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people. Should we not all be taking up this cry in the face of our government’s complicity with this genocide, and the many other brutal acts of violence that have occurred and are ongoing in this world? Even if, in this case, our particular government is officially decrying this violence, it is, nevertheless, complicit with the systems that make such violence possible, and inevitable. The Israeli government is proudly showcasing for us every single minute how systemic violence inevitably leads to, and is inseparable from, physical violence. And it makes it obvious that it would not be perpetrating such brutal violence with its sense of complete impunity without endorsement from the American government, its European and Australian allies, and other governments beholden to them. Despite the fact that the citizens of these countries are out on the streets protesting in droves. Even quiet Perth, in Western Australia, saw surprisingly large turnouts of people calling for an end to the barbarous Israeli state violence against the Palestinians. This is the really heartening light in these dark times; a sign that people do care about other people, people do care about stopping wanton innocent death, especially of the thousands of children being effected every single moment of every single day; and people do care enough to want violence to stop no matter what race, nationality or color the victims are: “Everyone for everyone” is the other apt cry we should all be taking up in solidarity with the Israeli victims of the Hamas attacks who do not want their government to inflict vengeance in their name.

However, this is my question: Will these protests have any lasting effect on government policies that produce the violence? Even if it led to the short-lived “pause” in the IDF bombing of Gaza — which has now resumed with vigor and the death toll and number of injured Palestinian children climbing at horrifying rates — or even if it leads to the ceasefire that most nations are calling for, will this in itself be meaningful without addressing the real reasons for this violence? In other words, will people protesting, on the streets or off them, be able to address the intrinsic violence at the heart of our governments, national institutions and economic systems, which not only makes violence inevitable but thrives on it, deliberately produces it and is leading us all towards ever more horrific and catastrophic forms of destruction?

We all seem to be waiting for such catastrophes with bated breath now, because we all know that the creation and stockpiling of so many armaments, including nuclear ones, will be used at some point or another. We all know that the climate crisis has reached a tipping point, that environmental degradation will have a very high price that we will all have to pay, regardless if we are in the “first” world or the “developing” one. So, will protests change these looming possibilities of catastrophic destruction hanging over all our heads, threatening to annihilate our children’s future? Or, as in the present case, will the protests elicit merely glib political rhetoric once again that will tide us over until people forget about the plight of the Palestinians, as has happened so many times before, and until people just get tired of protesting and move on with their already overly busy lives?

As governments well know this has happened before: massive protests against invading Iraq in 2003; against the wonton deaths during the “war on terror” in Afghanistan and the chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan; massive turnouts of young people demanding their government take action immediately to stop the climate and environmental crisis; protests against the Saudi genocide in Yemen — where again innocent children are killed with the sanction and armaments provided by the US; massive protests against police brutality in the US and the constant abuse of African Americans; protests against the violation of women’s rights and freedoms in Iran; the Arab Spring uprisings; against totalitarian governments worldwide: in China, Hong Kong, Iran, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan and many, many other places. Some of these protests have been louder than others with some incidents affecting the social imaginary much more viscerally as the one in Gaza is presently doing. But the fact remains that these protests have had no lasting effect and have not changed government policies they set out to change. Instead governments are engaging in ever more sophisticated forms of social control, of producing “misinformation” on a scale that Nazi Germany only dreamed about and of revving up economic systems of inequality to create a passive populace that will not even have the time or energy to protest however empathetic they may feel. Therefore, it is even more heartening, that despite all the effort at media censorship and misinformation, of singular narratives, of racial profiling, of criminalizing dissent, of brutal policing against protestors, of the militarization of our civic spaces, people recognize the “truth” and come out onto the streets in droves to defend what is real, what is right, what is true and what is just.

However, my question is addressed to everyone that feels this empathy and the desire to take to the streets: Is it not time to protest towards changing these unworkable systems of governance as well as protest against the systems that makes this constant violence possible? Is it not time to acknowledge the fact that governments, and the centralized nation-state system, are the ultimate sources of systemic violence in the world? Is it not time to acknowledge the fact that governments are no longer representative of its people? And here I’m talking about so called “democratic” countries — totalitarian ones at least have the decency to be open about how they govern. And if these nation-states are no longer viable forms of socio-political organization, if they are no longer upholding “the social contract” — which is its raison d’etre — why do they still exist? Are those not the questions we should be asking now: if our governments no longer serve us, if the nation-state system no longer represents us, should we not be organizing alternate forms of communities that do represents us? After all, our forms of government are not natural phenomenon that cannot be changed — they are social constructs that must be changed if we want a world in which peace is the reality and the birthright of every child.

There have been loud cries for the abolition of police, for the abolition of war, for the abolition of militarism, especially from those who are activists in the nonviolence circles. But what is the root of all of these forms of violence — both physical and systemic — if not the nation-state system and its centralized institutions that cannot govern without the constant threat of coercion? Moreover, all governments are now beholden to special interest groups, particularly in the U.S. The U.S. government uses our money to fund endless wars instead of funding what we, its citizens, want, need and demand: universal healthcare, debt-free education, basic housing, clean food and immediate policies addressing climate change, peace, prosperity, economic equity, amongst other pressing issues? People everywhere want these things, regardless of nationality; they do not want to fund the killing of innocent peoples, particularly children who are now, increasingly, the target of wars; most people neither sanction death or destruction, nor do they want to continually feed an already obese armament industry. Therefore, should we not cry out for the abolition of our present political systems because they have not only become redundant but, in fact, threaten our very existence and that of this planet?

And I am not saying that we should change these unworkable systems through laws or by beseeching our governments to do so because not only is that tautological, it is asking the perpetrators of violence, and those that profit by it, to now abstain from it or find a solution to it — it’s like asking a drug addict to create an environment where drug addiction is no longer possible and also asking them to imprison the drug dealers. That is madness. And trying to change the systems from within points to the condition of madness, defined as that which you keep trying to do in the hopes that somehow the results will be different next time — this is especially reflected in the U.S. elections that only has the two choices of Democrats or Republicans with voters hoping that a particular candidate from either party will, finally, bring about meaningful change. They will not, because it is impossible for change to originate from the same mechanisms that create, perpetuate and benefit from the problems.

Although I hope that progressive political candidates come to power, I know — as do most of us — that this will not happen. At least not actual progressive changemakers. And even if by some miracle such candidates get elected, they will not have any real power to affect change; and if by some miracle they can affect some token changes they will be taken out either physically or psychologically and made impotent. Or they will become corrupted if they manage to “play” the system. Therefore, I urge those candidates, and all peoples aspiring for real, and not rhetorical change to put their efforts into creating alternative systems of governance, of imagining alternative ways of organizing communities and of detailing alternative socio-political models. Ones that are aligned with what most people value, ones that are aligned with life and not with death. One cannot create change or align our present systems towards life and peace while those very same systems are enmeshed in, and even thrive on, death and destruction. It is more than blindness to not see that — it is a form of self-delusional madness that we all need to cure ourselves from.

Instead we need to start creating a politics grounded upon love, on friendship, on flourishing, on the sacred fact that we are all part of life. We urgently need to set up, or acknowledge alternative cosmologies that are premised upon the sanctity of life. As such, critique and protest against is no longer enough, we must stand and protest for something else; we must construct alternatives, construct or inhabit alternative cosmologies and truths, we must construct alternative worlds. Not a singular model but a diverse plurality of worlds co-existing with one another. Is this merely a pipe dream? Perhaps. But dreams and the imagination are where alternative models start. We also already have models of alternative forms of socio-political organization, both historical and contemporary — none are perfect but they can serve as preliminary models to build upon; preliminary models become more and more functional through use; perfection can never be a starting point, or even an end goal, but rather it is the processes we should focus on. The goal is to create radical change now.

Part II: Alternative models

Alternative, and truly representative forms of community organization have, and do exist in many places: the Khudai Khidmatgar Movement, led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan, set up alternative systems of education, adjudication, reconciliation — in place of constant retribution — emancipation — not just of women but especially of masculinity and its identification with violence — and they especially changed what it means to be an honorable warrior. Amongst other things, they were the largest “army” of nonviolence that has ever been organized, not just in British India fighting against colonial rule, but one that has not been replicated since. This is just one silenced, historical example. There was also the West Bengali refugees that set up a vibrant community comprised of Dalits, or lower caste Hindus, on the island of Morichjhapi in Sundarbans; Amitav Ghosh dramatizes this silenced history in his novel “The Hungry Tide.” In France there is the Zone to Defend or ZAD movement, which occupied the land where the government proposed building an airport; they not only successfully stopped that project but created a thriving, anarchic community over their forty years of struggle against the state. There is also the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement that, once again, has established a vibrant community outside the nation-state system. Each time, of course, the state has brutally disbanded and even massacred these communities, or is trying to do so even now, precisely because they pose such a potent threat to centralized governments by their alternative models of community organization. And these examples are merely ones that have seeped into the news despite a media environment that is not even attuned to recognizing alternatives; as such, there must be many more examples, perhaps even seemingly mundane ones being enacted all around us.

For Gandhi, the ideal form of governance for India was a decentralized network of local communities with the “village” as the basic unit of socio-political organization; this unit, as he visualized, would connect with other villages in, “ever-widening, never ascending circles. Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom.” (M.K. Gandhi in Panchgani, July 21, 1946) In other words, local bodies would decide how to govern their communities, and they would be connected to neighboring communities horizontally, with no vertical forms of authority. The presumption here being that people can take responsibility for governing themselves and they would do so much more equitably when groups are small, local and have to arrive at decisions through the consensus of all of its members, regardless of gender, caste, race or religion. In fact, the ultimate aim of the framework of nonviolence, according to many of its proponents, is to cultivate enlightened human beings and egalitarian societies whereby governing bodies and rulers become redundant. As Gandhi also stated:

Political power, in my opinion, cannot be our ultimate aim. It is one of the means used by men for their all-round advancement. The power to control national life through national representatives is called political power. Representatives will become unnecessary if the national life becomes so perfect as to be self-controlled. It will then be a state of enlightened anarchy in which each person will become his own ruler. He will conduct himself in such a way that his behaviour will not hamper the well-being of his neighbours. In an ideal State there will be no political institution and therefore no political power. That is why Thoreau has said in his classic statement that that government is best which governs the least.

Philosophical anarchy has a long and honorable association with the framework of nonviolence with its most vocal and famous proponent being Leo Tolstoy who, in turn, drew upon Quaker traditions to formulate that Christianity — or to be more precise, the message of Christ, was peace. This, as Tolstoy vehemently upholds in “The Kingdom of God is Within” and other writings, cannot co-exist with a centralized nation-state system, because not only are such systems structured upon violence but, through the discourse of national interest and patriotism, they deliberately elicit violence and wars. Gandhi often acknowledged that Tolstoy (as well as Thoreau, the Quakers, John Ruskin as well as Indian traditions) inspired his unique articulations and comprehensive understandings of nonviolence. Although here Gandhi refers to Thoreau, who advocated for less government oversight and not anarchic forms of self-governance that Tolstoy envisioned as ideal, and which echoed Gandhi’s own politically pragmatic — and even expedient — position more often than not. However, Gandhi also admits that many will dismiss even this position — but especially his ideal vision — as unrealistic and utopian. This was certainly the case even by his closest supporters, such as Jawaharlal Nehru who, as the first prime Minister of India, instituted a modern centralized state and dismissed Gandhi’s vision as archaic and unrealistic. But Gandhi argues that utopian thinking is not unrealistic; on the contrary, it is necessary, even if its aims cannot be fully realizable: “We must have a proper picture of what we want, before we can have something approaching it. If there ever is to be a republic of every village in India, then I claim verity for my picture in which the last is equal to the first or, in other words, no one is to be the first and none the last.” The final phrase of this sentence is Gandhi’s reference to an alternative and equitable economic system outlined by John Ruskin in “Unto This Last.”

The point of utopias is not to achieve them, and that too completely and perfectly, but rather to understand them as blueprints for the future; to look upon them as diagrammatic sketches of the kinds of structures we want to create or as a map for the directions in which we want to go. In other words, the utopian imaginary should be understood as an ongoing process, aiming at a particular kind of future but one that needs to be embodied in the present. A picture grounded upon the premise that humans have the capacity and the desire to transform and to create alternate, life-affirming systems. Others will argue that self-governance is impossible because it would clash with self-interest, or the accepted truism that each person is only concerned with themselves. This belief maintains that if humans are left to their own devices, socio-political mayhem and violence would reign. Which is precisely how the political “realists” define “anarchy” and, in turn, how they justify the necessity of a strong, centralized government: the populace must be controlled by laws, and a police force and a military establishment to enforce those laws, or there would be chaos and unending violence. This is the normative justification given for institutionalizing a strong centralized State with a monopoly on violence. But that justification is grounded on the premise that humans are intrinsically violent beings. As well as the premise that governments create and enforce just laws. Neither of which is true so why do we keep holding on to these premises not just as truisms but as though we have no other choices? And to keep holding onto a system when the results of such premises—and of such governance — are staring us starkly in the face with ever-increasing menace?

As someone who understands the significance of the framework of nonviolence beyond its methods of civil disobedience — as the means for creating alternate cosmologies, as a technology for creating alternate ways of being human and as a methodology for creating alternate ways of living — what is most dismaying to see is that most people are only attuned to the language and visuals of violence, and that they do not comprehend anything outside its sphere. As such, it was only when Hamas committed acts of violence, and the Israeli government responded with violence magnified a hundredfold, that the world, once again, turns its attention to the Palestinian-Israeli problem—a problem ongoing since 1948, and even earlier if we trace its roots to the formation of Zionist ideology at the end of the 19th century. And yet the many nonviolent forms of resistance organized by both Palestinians and Israelis remain unnoticed and even deliberately silenced. However, it is these groups, as well as many other social activists, academics, teachers, (real) news reporters all over the world that have planted the seeds of the present-day awareness—an awareness that instigated people to come are out into the streets in droves; the massive protests we are now witnessing all over the world are one of the consequences of this ongoing, and often subterranean, nonviolent resistance. Especially bearing fruit now is the indefatigable resistance waged by the Palestinian people against the misrepresentations of their history, against the systemic racism undergirding their living conditions and by highlighting them to the world, against economic systems upholding Israeli oppression and through the BDS movement, to name just a few of the very effective methods of resistance they have deployed. This is why, today, people everywhere are demanding to know the contexts and the causes of this conflict; and despite ongoing media and government efforts to the contrary, there is a dawning recognition that the truth is far different from what propaganda is depicting.

But why is it that we do not recognize, pay attention to, or heed reality without some form of dramatic violence? Even writing a novel, or a film script, as I recently learnt upon joining a writing group, cannot be done without “conflict” or the plot would just not work, as the instructor informed me; she said this in response to my comment that “utopia” was not on her list of genres while “dystopia” was; her response was that utopian novels do not really work, and are boring, because they do not involve “conflict.” Of course, they do, as conflict is a natural human condition that we cannot do away with but to translate conflict into “violence” is not a natural condition. Violence is not natural or normal but a learnt response, and it is an exception not a norm; much scientific research corroborates this now. As Gandhi famously stated, if violence were the only way in which we resolved conflict the human race would be extinct by now. Nevertheless, we are all culpable in upholding the narrative that humans are naturally violent beings if that is the only language we speak, if that is the only imaginary we can visualize, and if that is the only reality we can comprehend.

Therefore, it is time we overturn the myth that Thomas Hobbes most famously promoted and that still structures and justifies the creation of the Leviathan, or the centralized State and our socio-political institutions. What Hobbes calls the “state of nature,” or the natural human condition, in “Leviathan” continues to be considered a truism, so it is worth revisiting:

In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short…To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice.

The justification that Hobbes, and other political theorists often labelled “realists” and “pragmatists,” give for the formation of the centralized state and its monopoly on violence is, quite simply, grounded upon the presumption that humans are intrinsically violent beings. And these same theorists and proponents of realpolitiks often also do not ascribe violence to a context or, as is usually the case, a network of contexts—which is probably why context and causes becomes taboo topics in the midst of wars. The formation of Hobbes’ political theory, for example, also has a context: the hundred years of bloody wars in Europe which was eventually resolved by the Treaty of Westphalia and the creation of the nation-state system in the seventeenth century. At that time, centralized power was considered the most viable form of organizing human community because it could forcefully pacify and control otherwise violent societies. But this model has not only become the globally dominant one—largely through European colonialism — we have also lost the capacity to imagine alternate possibilities to it. Despite the fact that there exists, historically and predominantly in non-European cosmologies, different forms of organizing communities that have been doing so much more successfully and for far longer than the European model of the nation-state. Such societies do have laws, justice and produce “the fruit” of industry — perhaps even more equitably than we do.

Particularly notable are indigenous forms of consensus democracy where the “chief” actually has no power, in the sense of being able to physically enforce obedience but rather can only persuade others to comply through moral authority. The underlying presumption of human beings in this model is starkly different: not only does consensus democracy presume that humans have the intelligence, the desire and the capacity to resolve conflicts without resorting to violence as the default position of governance, but it respects and give voice to the opinion of each person in that community — they have the power to represent themselves which, in turn, affects the decisions that community makes as a whole. So what do such presumptions about human nature tell us about these societies and their cosmologies? And which ones do we want to adopt, model and acknowledge as “natural,” right and just?

I am not endorsing a return, or idealizing the past, what I am saying, however, is that we must seriously look at alternative models to the politics of death and destruction that currently structures our world. Why — because, I believe, we no longer want to live in a world where the death of children can be legitimated, rationalized and justified. No law can make the killing of children right, if it does, it is not just; no amount of reasons can make the targeting of children right, if it does it is insanity; no justifications can take away the conditions of peace from a child, if they do, it is a clear pointer that it serves tyrants and, therefore, is a perverse mockery of justice. This world must be overthrown, even if we do not know as yet what will take its place — let us be open to, and imagine and construct other possibilities. The beauty, the wonder and the joy shinning out of our children’s eyes beckons us all not to destroy something so sacred, and they beckon us to create sanctuaries that cherish them.

Editor’s Note: This month makes four years since ScheerPost was born, maturing into an award-winning top news source on the most important issues of our time at a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes. Alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and we are one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing a “birthday gift” to help us reach our goal of $50,000 — we are 75% there. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.

Donate ONLINE

Send a Check

You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.