HN_ZOOM_INTERVIEW_WITH_PANKAJ_MISHRA_SPEAKER_VIEW_10-23-22

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Transcript

00:00But now, people across the world are also voicing their opinion against it.

00:05However, at the same time, when you talk about ordinary people contributing to the acts of,

00:12you know, if we use the word mass extermination, you know, with a clear conscience, and as

00:16you say, even with frissons of virtue, could we take this thought of yours and say it applies

00:23to the way a part of the world is behaving, you know, vis-a-vis the current war in Palestine?

00:30Well, certainly, I think the people who had set themselves up, set themselves up as arbiters of

00:34international morality, and I mean by this, the nations of Western Europe and North America,

00:44they are certainly exposing to the world how shallow their sense of morality was,

00:52and how, you know, they can easily become complicit in these acts of mass extermination,

01:02and actually crack down on people who are pointing to those acts of mass extermination,

01:07whether these are students or academics or journalists. So, ironically, it's a sort of

01:17smaller, less powerful countries like South Africa today, or Ireland or Spain or Bolivia,

01:26that are now speaking up for international law and international morality today. An extraordinary,

01:33extraordinary reversal, where, you know, the countries that claim the right to lecture others

01:39about human rights and individual dignity, have all collaborated in an act of extermination.

01:49And it's a sort of, you know, countries who have been lectured to in the past,

01:55who have come forward to uphold certain norms of international justice and morality.

02:02Right. I also wanted to talk about this issue that is very, I have been following it as well,

02:10and actually, I have been experiencing it, is how this, this war has been reported,

02:17you know, some prestigious news outlets, how they deploy the passive voice,

02:22while reporting the massacres happening in Gaza. And, you know, Israel, while Israelis are killed

02:30or they die in active voice, Palestinians die passively, they are not killed, you know,

02:36they dehydrate to death. I read one of the Guardian headlines. Do you think language

02:43is being used as a weapon, you know, to erase the humanity of the oppressed?

02:49Oh, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, that's been one of the most shocking and demoralizing aspects

02:57of the last year or so. Obviously, you know, human beings have been,

03:05have known themselves, have revealed themselves to be full of, you know, all kinds of

03:12nasty and evil traits. And nation states have behaved badly over the long course of human

03:21history. But I think there's never been a time when democracies or the free press in democracies

03:34have colluded to the extent they have colluded in the last year or so, to obscure the very plain

03:42and simple facts of atrocity. And I think that has shocked a lot of people who had invested faith

03:50naively, perhaps, in modern journalism, who had thought that it's the role of journalism

03:58to speak truth to power, to bring to light, you know, the abuses of power.

04:08They've been, you know, really incredibly rudely surprised by the way some of the most prestigious

04:16periodicals in the Western world have covered or not covered, really, this war in Gaza.

04:27I don't really know where we go from here, whether, again, you know, what we've seen in the

04:32geopolitical realm, whether it's media or institutions, media institutions of the non-Western

04:42world that will rise to the challenge and sort of, you know, save some of the norms of journalism.

04:52Is this going to happen or is journalism also now going to be universally discredited,

04:58like many governments?