O-sa-ma?

von John Holloway and Eloína Peláez

"Yo no soy terrorista, yo no soy terrorista,
Soy del talibán, soy del talibán, soy del talibán”

Sung to the tune of La Bamba, this is the chorus of a song being sung by mendicant musicians in the buses of Mexico City. The song goes on to remind us of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and to indicate who the real terrorists are. Bin Laden already has his own corrido or heroic ballad being sung in the north of the country. His mask outsells even masks of Vicente Fox and Carlos Salinas de Gortari in the city centre. On the march commemorating the anniversary of the 1968 massacre of students, a large group of students burned the US flag in front of the National Palace to the chant of O-sa-ma, O-sa-ma.

This does not necessarily reflect accurately the reaction in Mexico (whatever "Mexico" means) to the attack of 11^th September. What it does indicate perhaps is the degree to which people have focussed on one aspect of the spectacular attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

The attack of 11^th September was profoundly contradictory. On the one hand it was an attack on the symbols of power – not, unless one is absolutely and wilfully blind, the symbols of freedom and democracy. On the other hand, it killed thousands of people, most of whom had little to do with the exercise of power, many of them nameless illegal immigrants who will probably remain nameless for ever. For very many people, the initial reaction was inevitably contradictory: an initial, undeniable "Wow! Yes!" as the symbols of power were destroyed, followed immediately by a deep and growing sense of horror as we saw people throwing themselves from the windows to a certain death.

It is important to hold on to both sides of this contradiction, the jubilation and the horror. If we forget the first moment of our reaction (as perhaps we do, with a sense of shame, seeing again the bodies falling), then we lose all comprehension of the reaction of millions throughout the world, we lose sight of the 'perverted utopian core' of the terrorist action (Tischler 2001), the fact that the terrorists killed themselves in order to create a better world. If we lose sight of the second moment of our reaction, then we fall into the terrible symmetry of the struggle for power, a struggle in which the killing of people is just seen as a means to an end. In this there is no difference between Bush and the attackers on the Twin Towers: both reproduce a society in which human dignity is a meaningless concept. What at first appears to be a contradictory reaction is in fact quite coherent. The first moment (the jubilation) says quite simply "we hate a world of power", the second (the horror) says "but we cannot change it by pitching power against power, inhumanity against inhumanity".

Now, the daily bombing of Afghanistan brings out the symmetry and the asymmetry of the attackers and the US state. The symmetry is clear from the fact that the bombers of Afghanistan show the same absolute blindness to the killing of people as did the attackers on the twin towers. The asymmetry lies in the fact that the object of the attack is not a symbol of power, but symbolises the powerlessness of people throughout the world. The pictures of the poor houses in ruin, the babies being buried, the families fleeing from the cities, stand in stark contrast to the smug, well-fed complacency of the politicians and experts on our television screens. The two moments of our reaction are still present: "we hate a world of power, but we cannot change it by pitching power against power, inhumanity against inhumanity." But it is undoubtedly the first moment that becomes more strident: "we hate a world of power".

In all this it is hardly surprising that "power" becomes identified with the United States, for that is the role that the US state has assumed. The more viscerally the US is identified with power (in Latin America more so than in Europe, probably; among some sectors of the population more than other, clearly), the more the hatred of power becomes translated into anti-Americanism – and into opposition to the total support declared by the Mexican government, like most other governments, for the US position. One version of this is the opinion, apparently widely held in Mexico, among intellectuals as well, that the whole thing was organised by the US state, or some branch of it, to allow themselves to pursue the sort of aggression that they are now pursuing. In this context it is clear that the burning of the American flag, the chants of O-sa-ma and the songs praising the Taliban have nothing to do with islamic fundamentalism or support for the reactionary policies of the fundamentalist movement: they translate quite simply the hatred of power. In this context too, the reaction of Hebe de Bonafini of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina (widely reported in Mexico), declaring her elation at the attack on the twin towers, is more than understandable.

Politically and theoretically, it is important to hold on to both sides of our initial reaction. If we forget the horror, we throw ourselves back thirty years to the romantic, oppressive politics of the dedicated, angry revolutionary ready to sacrifice himself (or herself, but generally, it is a male-oriented conception of politics) to destroy imperialism. But if we forget the initial elation, then we lose touch with the profound reaction against capitalist power in all the world. We must not simply reject but start-from-and-go-beyond the cries of O-sa-ma, O-sa-ma.

Reference

Tischler Sergion (2001) "Subjetividad y Capitalismo. Una reflexión sobre las Torres Gemelas", Bajo El Volcán no. 4