HN_ZOOM_INTERVIEW_WITH_PANKAJ_MISHRA_GALLERY_VIEW_10-23-24

ETVBHARAT

1/10/2025

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

00:07you know, if we use the word mass extermination, you know, with a clear conscience, and as

00:12you say, even with fristons of virtue, could we pick this thought of yours and say it applies

00:18to the way a part of world is behaving, you know, vis-a-vis the current war in Palestine?

00:25Well, certainly, I think the people who had set themselves up, set themselves up as arbiters of

00:30international morality, and I mean by this, the nations of Western Europe and North America,

00:39they are certainly exposing to the world how shallow their sense of morality was,

00:47and how, you know, they can easily become complicit in these acts of mass extermination,

00:57and actually crack down on people who are pointing to those acts of mass extermination,

01:02whether these are students or academics or journalists. So, ironically, it's a sort of

01:12smaller, less powerful countries like South Africa today, or Ireland, or Spain, or Bolivia,

01:21that are now speaking up for international law and international morality today. An extraordinary,

01:28extraordinary reversal where, you know, the countries that claim the right to lecture

01:34others about human rights and individual dignity have all collaborated in an act of

01:43extermination, and it's a sort of, you know, countries who have been lectured to in the past,

01:51who have come forward to uphold certain norms of international justice and morality.

01:58Right. I also wanted to talk about this issue that is very, I have been following it as well,

02:05and actually, I have been experiencing it, is how this, this war has been reported. You know,

02:12some prestigious news outlets, how they deploy the passive voice, while reporting the massacres

02:20reporting the massacres happening in Gaza. And, you know, Israelis, while Israelis are killed,

02:26or they die in active voice, Palestinians die passively, they are not killed, you know,

02:33they dehydrate to death. I read one of the Guardian headlines. Do you think language

02:40is being used as a weapon, you know, to erase the humanity of the oppressed?

02:44Oh, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, that's been one of the most shocking and demoralizing aspects

02:51of the last year or so. Obviously, you know, human beings have been, have known themselves,

03:00have revealed themselves to be full of, you know, all kinds of nasty and evil traits.

03:08And nation states have behaved badly over, over, over the long course of human history.

03:17But I think there's never been a time when democracies or the free press in, in, in,

03:26in democracies have colluded to the extent they have colluded in the last year or so,

03:31to obscure the very plain and simple facts of atrocity. And I think that has shocked a lot of

03:40people who had invested faith, naively, perhaps, in modern journalism, who had thought that it's

03:50the role of journalism, to speak truth to power, to bring to lights, to bring to lights, you know,

03:57to bring to light, you know, the abuses of, of, of power. They've been, you know,

04:05really incredibly rudely surprised by the way some of the most prestigious periodicals

04:12in the Western world have covered, or not covered, really, this, this, this war in Gaza.

04:22I don't really know where we go from here, whether, again, you know, what we've seen in

04:27the geopolitical realm, whether it's media or institutions, media institutions of the

04:36non-Western world that will rise to the challenge and, and sort of, you know, save

04:43some of the norms of journalism. Is this going to happen, or is journalism also now going to

04:51be universally discredited, like many governments and many, many, many sort of, you know, politicians

04:58and political movements?

HN_ZOOM_INTERVIEW_WITH_PANKAJ_MISHRA_GALLERY_VIEW_10-23-24

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