I’ve seen and heard some people talk about Gilroy’s specific historical parallels he’s drawing on, and I think it’s noteworthy that when the interviewer tries to tie the PORD to the Patriot Act, Gilroy says the below:
You could point at that, but there’s 3,000 years of recorded history too. You can go to the Montagnards, you can go to the Urgun, you can go to the African National Congress, you can go back to the Roman revolution. Changing people’s sentences, fascism, oppression — you can pull everything. Some things are more germane for what we’re doing now, for the second half, but watching revolutions come together and watching political factions within them, there’s a universal truth: There’s almost never just one forward motion. There are all kinds of people moving in different directions. These are universal concepts.
Maybe it’s just how he was feeling that day, but it feels like there’s a connection between
- Gilroy resisting pointing to specific parallels and instead pointing to “universal concepts” and oppressive moves that empires make And
- Nemik describing his theory of freedom as the natural state of people, and empire as specifically unnatural.
Empire isn’t new to Gilroy, it’s a story that’s been repeated again and again. They draw on images the audience will recognize from recent history, but it’s a universal story. It’s universal, but it’s not inevitable…
I don’t have any conclusions here, but this show gives me so much to think about, and for that I’m grateful.