Violence imposes a binary view of the world - Mary Kaldor
Mary Kaldor: "Violence is a form of communication. Violence as a form of communication imposes a binary view of the world."
"You can only have friends and enemies. That's when you become a Serb and a Croat; a Jew and an anti-Semite. If someone's trying to kill you because you're a Jew you suddenly start to feel like a Jew."
"Violence creates this binary identity, where as through discussion you can have multiple identities. You can see the world in different ways. Non-violent communication offers many more possibilities."
Mient Jan Faber: "I was four years old and my father was in the resistance movement in the Netherlands against the German occupiers. We were evacuated and staying the north of the country. The Germans came now and then to interrogate my mother because they wanted to find my father and kill him."
"I remember the interrogations because I was there. I later asked if it was true that I had been there, and it hadn't been a fantasy. And she told me I had been there, because she thought that if she had a small boy with her the Germans would not touch me."
"Which they didn't, but they did something else. They couldn't find my father because my mother did give them any answer. But they took my uncle who was a small grocer and they killed him. Instead of my father."
"Those guys are my enemies. In that sense you have to talk about friends and enemies."
Mary Kaldor: "But not only friends and enemies. When you have a war you divide everyone into friends and enemies."
Bottom-up Politics: an agency-centred approach to globalisation
