Being a leftist is a calling, not a career; it’s a vocation, not a profession. It means you are concerned about structural violence, you are concerned about exploitation at the work place, you are concerned about institutionalized contempt against gay brothers and lesbian sisters, hatred against peoples of color, and the subordination of women. It means that you are willing to fight against, and to try to understand the sources of social misery at the structural and institutional levels, as well as at the existential and personal levels. That’s what it means to be a leftist; that’s why we choose to be certain kinds of human beings.
Cornel West
#484
#475
It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.
Michael Foucault
#433
The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.
Arundhati Roy
#378
This city is afraid of me. I see its true face. The streets are extended of the gutter, filled with blood. And if the drain becomes clogged, drown them all. The accumulated dirt from their dirty deedswill opschuimen their belly …and all the whores and politicians will cry: ‘Help us’. And I’ll whisper no. The world ison the edge of the abyss.
Watchmen (the movie)
#360
Being, metaphysics (thought) passes over into politics (into reality), just as on the threshold of bare life, politics steps beyond itself into theory.
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer
#250
Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, political parties, nations, and eras it’s the rule.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#211
The novelty of the coming politics is that it will no longer be a struggle for the seizure and control of the state, but the fight between state and non-state (humanity): an unbridgeable disjunction of the singularity qualunque from state organisation.
Giorgio Agamben, The coming community
#178
But if there’s no political visions to realize, no higher goal to pursue, no new beginning, no rebirth, then what? Guns go silent only to discover that nothing has really been accomplished. Old structures of injustice remain, recent conflicts are added to old ones.Does this sound depressing? I think it is.
Desiderii Marginis, Strife (album cover)
#43
A bank expropriation is as detached from a bank robbery, as politicians are from real life.
Yiannis Dimitrakis
