ect
THE CLOSING STATEMENT
HOPE COMES FROM THE HOPELESS
it's
nal-
At this stage of History, either one of two things is possible:
either the general population will take control of its own
destiny and will concern itself with community interests,
guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern
for others; or, alternatively, there will be no destiny for
ner
ers,
irit
anyone to control.
NOAM CHOMSKY, MANUFACTURING CONSENT
st
ES
You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the
revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your
spirit, or it is nowhere.
URSULA K. LE GUIN, THE DISPOSSESSED
The stakes are as high as they could be. We may destroy our-
selves and destroy the planet. So we need thinking that goes be-
yond existing boundaries. We need to question the status quo.
We need political imagination.
You can't know the answer before you ask the question. And
we should make a collective effort to find the answer. As a mat-
ter of fact, nobody can expect to have full knowledge about
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THE CLOSING STATEMENT
anything when you enter the international waters of piracy.
the unknown. What there should be is an active and alive mind,
There can't be unchangeable sets of rules when you're entering
a heart that's in the right place, and good intentions.
who condemn me, I promised myself to always give the benefit
I made a vow to be open and understanding even to those
know from experience what it means to be a witch who has
of the doubt before judging. I don't judge quickly because I
to be burned at the stake. I know how it feels when you're
an outcast. You're dispossessed of your right to talk, to think,
used as a scapegoat. It's scary. There is no dialogue when you're
to have joy or pain ... to live. You're dehumanized, you're por-
trayed as an enemy, you're an object among other objects.
ised himself that no matter what the circumstances he'd re-
I choose to be the Idiot, Dostoevsky's character, who
main open, sympathetic, kind to people around him. We're all
prom-
searching, always asking, and we can never be perfect, we climb
and we fall, we're going through pain and sometimes causing
pain too. I may say, write, or do stupid things, not knowing that
it can hurt somebody. And I am sorry for that.
It's okay with me if I sound childish. I prefer to try, to risk,
and to burn. I choose to live like a kid; kids are not afraid to
admit that they don't know some things, and they have end
less curiosity and willingness to learn. When my daughter does
something that hurts me, she comes to me and says, "Give me
a hug."
Many of those who wanted to beat me or destroy me
really just needed a hug. I faced a mercenary who was hired
by my government to physically hurt me, and he did burn my
eyes.
I stood in front of him and kindly asked, "Why did you
choose to do that? It's painful. It hurts. You hurt my eyes. Why?"
And then I saw a human behind his eyes, but he was confused
and did not have any coherent, human answer to the question.
All human beings want to believe they have dignity. If you
answer dehumanization with more dehumanization, it'll be
easy for your opponent to ignore your words and feelings, stig.
matize you, put you in prison, take your life away.
It's physically painful to see the hurricane of hatred, lies, and
hypocrisy that is politics right now. It's normalized to deceive, to
be insincere and nontransparent. As long as you're not caught,
it's fine. And more often, they don't care if they are caught.
I'm tired of doublethink. They're petty liars, all those people
who sit in the White House and quote the Bible but never fol-
low Christian virtues of not judging, of simplicity and honesty.
We're tired of lies. Truth really does have some kind of on-
tological, existential superiority. That's why so many people
support Bernie Sanders, who is making a moral political revolu-
tion by simply being a politician who refused to sell his dignity, whose
deeds follow his words and who indeed serves the people, not
corporations, friends, and his own pocket. He does what a pol-
itician should do. Isn't it pathological that a politician who's
honestly and consistently doing his/her work is an exception?
We need a miracle to get out of here. And miracles are real;
they have happened to me before. Unconditional love, for ex-
ample, or solidarity, or courageous collective action. Miracles
always happen at the right moment in the lives of those with a
childlike faith in the triumph of truth over falsehood, of those
who believe in mutual aid and live in keeping with the gift
economy. You cannot buy the revolution, you can only be the
revolution.
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232
235
A compeed power structure is built on lies. To quote
Wacie Havel works only as long as people are willing to
hewe het a chance that has to be made: do not live
THE CLOSING STATEMENT
useful attitude: don't expect that anybody has to do a favor
for you or your cause. But if they do, you're genuinely
happy. I'm amazed and thankful every single time some-
body decides to help with the cause I'm working on. It
means that they trust me and get inspiration from working
with me. In itself, it's the biggest reward you can get. Some-
times you lose a battle, or an action that you've been pre-
paring for weeks is stopped, prevented by police listening to
your phones. Under those circumstances it's hard not to be
angry or frustrated. But, hey, you met so many incredible
generous and loving humans while you were working on
the action.
Take to leave you with some things that I may or may not)
Murse learned from doing political artistic actions.
. I have learned: A combination of Zen, willpower, calm-
mess, and persistence.
Martial artists know everything about the power of this
elixir. When you're fighting, you don't want to be trapped
by fear or rage, hiding and escaping instead of calmly play-
ing chess in the ring. You want to win with your wits.
. I have learned: To give myself fully to the action I do.
Those who own the power and who use this power to
screw us up are watching us: they're not going to give us
even an inch if we don't show persistence.
. I have learned: To feel good about others being mad
You can hardly imagine how many people I irritate.
Overall, it's a good sign for a (wo)man of political action
when they call you a criminal or an outcast.
It's not just opponents who'll be mad at you. When
you
knock on doors and ask people to participate, some of
them will tell you to go fuck yourself. That's fine. So go
fuck yourself—it helps to relax and to get your thoughts
together and keep going.
you will
• I have learned: I'm not ashamed of who I am.
If I seriously cared what everybody thinks about me, I
would have accomplished nothing. Today, you'll be called a
horny piece of hysterical vagina. Tomorrow, they'll devote
to you a glossy ten-pound magazine, where they say, "She
dealt with body and sexuality issues." And then
know that both things are equally dull.
I was told: don't march in the rally under feminist
banners—you'll be hated for that, because our country is
not ready to understand feminism, Russians think feminists
are angry ladies who have not been fucked for years and
want to kill all men, blah, blah, blah. They said to Bernie
• I have learned: To be grateful, to throw out those greedy
expectations about life and people around me.
Working with volunteers helps to develop an extremely
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237
(9)
Sanders dont call yourself a socialist, rural America is
techis word. But still after generations of Cold
propaganda
at commies, Americans were about
o wote for a socials. You keep doing what you do, and you
All rules, including those on these pages, may be (and possi-
bly should be) thrown away. These rules should be treated as
just another Pussy Riot punk prayer, which I have performed
to open myself up to a miracle, a (failed) attempt at being a rev-
olution. A rigid interpretation of any rule or advice kills the
spirit of freedom, and it's the last thing that should happen.
I believe we should follow what Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote
at the end of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:
THE CLOSING STATEMENT
er the world change its opinion of you.
If you are not proud of who you are, nobody will be.
• I have learned: I'm not trapped in thinking nobody cares
Get nd of the messiah complex. You cannot solve the
worid's problems alone. If you think so, you are Trump.
Your activist effort is a unique and important part of a
global chain reaction and, ergo, it has to be done. Or: think
globally act locally
6.54. My propositions serve as elucidations in the following
way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them
as nonsensical, when he has used them-as steps—to climb be-
yond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after
he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions,
and then he will see the world aright.
• I have learned: To reject political gaslighting.
Experts, economics magazines, think tanks, Ivy League
colleges, parliamentarians, Putin—they all politically gas-
light us, try to manipulate our thinking and persuade us we
are wrong. They say that everything is fine and we're cre-
ating problems out of nothing. They want you to feel that
you're not educated, you're not aware enough to have an
opinion and act on it. Who knows the quality of people's
lives better than the people themselves?
Wittgenstein conceded that his own propositions are at
some level incorrect, but they could still be useful. I would en-
dorse this idea about any set of rules.
No matter how you perform your acts of civil disobedience-
rallying, occupying, painting, making music, or stealing and
freeing animals from the zoo-go do it, tear the fabric of sub-
mission to pieces.
And know this: if everyone who tweeted against Trump
showed up on the street and refused to leave until he left,
Trump would be out of office in a week. The powerless do have
power.
• I have learned: To be dumb.
Like Bernie Sanders says, if I were not dumb, I would
have stopped my political activity a long time ago. Because
"there is no point, you will never change it," as they say. But
I'm dumb, so I act.
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