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/This is the text of a speech delivered by *John Holloway* during a
concert in the harbour of Rostock in the context of the anti-G8
protests, on June 3 2007 :
/
*Our Place, our Time
*(My thanks to Dorothea Härlin, Lars Stubbe, Nestor Lopez, Raquel
Gutiérrez and Vittorio Sergi)
Our place. This is our place. Not theirs, ours. Ours is a space without
borders, without definitions. They have their own place, over there,
behind the metal barriers, the barbed wire, surrounded by thousands of
police. That is where the mass murderers belong, in the prison that we
have created for them. The political leaders of the world move only when
they are surrounded by police and bodyguards, behind high walls,
protected by guns and helicopters. They cannot move freely because they
are afraid of us.
Our time. This is our time. Not theirs, ours. A time of intensity, a
time of passion, a time of dreams, a time of breaking time. A time in
which we refuse all continuity, a time for making the world anew. We
shall dance to dawn and beyond if we want. Their time is the time of the
clock that ticks the seconds of death, the time of continuity that says
"obey today, obey tomorrow". Their time is the timetable of their plan
to destroy humanity.
Our music, our dance. This is our music, our dance. Not theirs, ours.
They have no music, the only music they know is the music they turn up
loud to drown the screams of the people they are torturing in Guantanamo
and in prison camps throughout the world. The only dance they know is
the march of their soldiers who are trampling over the world.
Our place, our time, our music, our dance. We are the centre of the world.
It is important to remember that. Especially in these miserable times.
Especially when they have launched the Fourth World War against us, the
war of all states against all people. Especially when capital is
celebrating its orgies. Especially when the violent repression of those
who want to create a different world has become the routine practice of
all states. They are trying to subordinate us. To make us mindless
robots. To make us like them.
They want us to be like them. Imagine, to be like them, stinking bits of
inhumanity – the very thought is sickening. That is the very last thing
on earth that we want. By every means possible, by brutality, by
seduction, by bribery, they try to make us to be like them, to act like
them. That is what the real enemy is, not just them but becoming like
them. How many revolutions have ended like that in the past, with the
revolutionary leaders becoming new rulers! How many revolutionary
movements have become bogged down in the violent meaninglessness of one
army confronting another, all thoughts of human emancipation long since
lost! If we become like them, we have lost.
Asymmetry, then, is the key to our struggle. No symmetry. Above all, no
symmetry. Our weapon is that we do not act like them, we do not talk
like them, we do not look like them, we are not even comprehensible to
them.
Against their walls and barriers we set our space without frontiers.
Against their clock our time of intensity and relaxation. Against the
noise of their emptiness our music. Against their march our dance.
Against their hierarchy our horizontality. Against their state our
assemblies. Against their representative democracy our
self-determination. Against their institutions our organising. Against
the brutality of their violence, the creativity of a self-defence rooted
in popular support. Against their police our clowns (… or?)
Against their self-satisfaction, our rage. Against their death our life.
Against their money our dignity. Against their destruction our
creativity. Against their labour our doing.
Against their sexual dimorphism our polymorphous perversity. Against
their definitions our overflowing. Against their prose our poetry.
Against their nouns our verbs. Against their pomposity our laughter.
Against their arrogance, our knowledge that they depend on us. Against
their permanence our understanding that we make them and if we do not
make them tomorrow, they will not exist tomorrow. Against their command
our insubordination. Against their control, our world that they cannot
control, that they will never be able to control.
Our place, our time, our music, our dance. In this moment we are the
centre of the world. Let's enjoy it!
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