Resistence

Others resist. Such a resistance can take different forms: protest, economic action, migration, forming alliances, a political counteroffensive at high level. It can also imply the strengthening of a vulnerable culture or an effort to tie religion with politics. It can result in violence, first against those within that culture who choose in favour of modernity and assimilate themselves with the foreign, western culture. Later on violence may be directed at the foreign culture itself.  That is a final stage. The more the centre of globalisation disregards the perifery, not only the economic and social needs of the perifery, but also its traditions, culture, religion and aspirations, the harsher the resistence.  A Western attitude of selfsufficiency and selfcomplacency is seen as arrogant, as an insult, a slap in the face. That breeds resentment. The excluded feel not only poor and dispossessed, but also defeated and humiliated. 

In the 18th century such a haughty attitude of the elite brought about a revolution. Today revolt is in the air. “If you don’t visit your neighbourhood, it will visit you”,  Thomas Friedman wrote. That visit can take different forms. One is migration to the towns. Another one is crime and violence in any metropolis with a dazzling city-centre next to favellas and shantytowns whith breathtaking poverty. A third reaction can be terrorism. Migration does not lead to crime, and crime does not result in terrorism But all of them are consequences of uprooting. Even when there is no direct link between poverty and violence, systematic neglect of aspirations and feelings of unjustice creates conditions within which violence can flourish. People may acquiesce to violence when they feel humiliated, personally and as a group, once they feel not to be taken seriously, not respected or recognized as a culture or as a society, once they feel excluded by the new world system orchestrated by the West. Then they may give a willing ear to violence.  Some approve silently, others give support or shelter. Others show themselves receptive to a message of violent action. Why not, they may think, if the world does not leave us an alternative?

Those who feel that the system does not care about them may try to seek access to the system, try to clear themselves a way into the system.That was the aspiration of migrants and of emancipation movements. Often they were successful. But if you experience that the system does not only ignore you, but brushes you aside, doesn’t want you, cuts you off, excludes you, then you may become inclined to consider it your turn: to turn away from the system. “If the system doen’t want me, then I do not want the system” is a form of logic. People who come as far as this do not even seek access to the system any more.They turn their back upon the system, denounce that system. One step further is to resist and oppose it, to want it being undermined, to attack and  undermine it themselves.

Poverty does not lead straight on to violence. Poverty without any perspective whatsoever, plus the experience of exclusion and neglect, the perception to be seen as lesser people with an inferior culture, to be treated as dispensable by those who do have access to modernity, to the market, to wealth and power, all that together will lead to aversion, resistence, hate, violence and terrorism. Resistence against globalisation which is perceived as perverse, as a curtailment of living space, as occupation.  Aversion against Western dominant values, which steered that process of globalisation in the direction of Global Apartheid. Hate against leaders of that process and against those who hold power within the system. Violence against its symbols. Deadly violence against innocent people within that system Unscrupulous violence, unsparing nothing and nobody, uncompromising also towards oneself,  fanatically believing: ‘this is the only way’.

Is it fully incomprehensible that people who consider themselves desperate, without any perspective, become receptive for the idea that they have been made a desperado by a system beyond reach? One step further and they become receptive for the whisperings of fanatics that they have nothing to lose in a battle against a system that is blocking their future. One more step and they believe that they will gain by sacrificing themselves in that battle. It is hideous, beyond justification, but the notion exists. It should and can be fought, but the most effective way to do so is not by resorting to counterviolence alone, but by taking away the motives and reasons people may have when surrendering to the temptations of fanatics.

Most people, however poor and desparate, dislike violence. They are disillusioned, but in doubt. Many perople in the world have developed ahate/love relation towards the West and its culture.They do not want to make a choice for or against the West. Unless they are forced to do so, for instance by the West itself.  Then resentment overtakes doubt

After  September 11, 2001, world leadership has the task to disarm the fanatics without alienating those who doubt. That requires, as was pleaded by Secretary General Kofi Annan when he received the Nobel Peace Prize, building a sustainable, democratic and peaceful  world society, within which humanity is seen as indivisible. That concept of sustainability, Kofi Annan added, ought to be based upon the dignity and inviolability of all human life, irrespective of origin, race or creed.