Yesterday I went to hear Jaggi Singh speak at Hart House. Frankly, I wasn’t impressed. I have seen him around, read articles about him, but I haven’t read anything he has written. I’ve been to protests where I have seen him very active, and arrested quite dramatically. However, I have never heard his ideas about anything, except the general anarchist-anti-capitalist stance.

To be honest, I find he talked a lot and didn’t say much. The topic of his speech was that we, as Canadians, shouldn’t think we are without blood on our hands, and then he went on to list about 40 minutes worth of contemporary examples of oppression, both internally and externally, domestic and abroad, that “Canada” (I didn’t understand if he was talking about Canada the society or Canada the government, or both) is actively involved in. And, that was basically the end, with no theory, no philosophy, no plan of action, except the standard Michael Moore type complaining, without any form of positive plans.

Which is not to say I didn’t agree with him. I don’t know if such simplistic labels as “Socialist” or “Anarchist”–or even “theist” or “atheist”–should be used by intelligent people, who are always free for forge their own path. Yet, however much this man is famous in activist circles, I thought he didn’t tell me anything I (or most of the group that was assembled) already knew. Governments are bad?? What a shock. The history lesson I could have got from reading Indymedia, Noam Chomsky and Wikipedia.

However, what I did find shocking was his so-called opposition to violence, which was only an opposition to the violence of the oppressor, not the oppressed. At an even whose fliers demanded an end uniquivicol to violence at the university (not just one type of violence), I found that calling US and Canadian oppressors “murderers” and those who retaliate with violence, such as the leaders of the Haitian revolution, “unequivocal”.(Jaggi called Toussaint L’Ouverture a hero).

I got up and tried to point out the slight hypocrisy in that statement. I made the point that some theorists would argue that violence, in all its forms, is the problem, and not who wields it. Despite what the Wikipedia article says about him, he is not a pacifist, and he admitted that he supported the use of violence when it is necessary in conflict against oppression.

I hope that one day we can reach a point where only thinkers and humanitarians can be thought of as heroes. It takes more bravery to be Gandhi or Dr. King that a violent military commander, regardless of what side he shed blood for–blood is blood. Later I discussed a wonderful Derrida essay with a member of the audience, “The Force of Law”, which, in short, says that all critique, all revolution, begins with a kind of Divine violence that does away with law, but that same movement of violence eventually sets up and enforces new law, defeating its original purpose.

The end of violence, Derrida writes, exists in this messianic time (not a specific messianism) that is always in the future, but it never arrives. The ideal is always betrayed.

I guess I didn’t agree with his ideas of the role of violence.