| Paul Virilio
Popular Defense & Ecological Struggles
Translated by Mark Polizzotti
| Ecological catastrophes
are only terrifying for civilians. For the military, they're
but a simulation of chaos, an opportunity to justify an art
of warfare which is all the more autonomous as the political
state dies out. At this point, all civilian populations are
helpless victims of the scam, of this ransacking of the world’s
resources. |
What is popular defense?
From whom do we have to defend ourselves?
Originally civilian populations were capable of defending themselves
both in times of peace and war. A military racket was subsequently
imposed upon them in the name of protection and popular defense lost
its capacity to resist external attack. In case of total war, between
the native populations which form the constitutional basis of all
great modern states and the military now in charge of defending them
there was no more “common culture.” Industrial wars subsequently
managed to replace the thousand-year-old pact of semi-colonization
with total colonization. First experimented with in South America,
this kind of “endo-colonization” (the military cracking
down on its own population) was gradually extended to all the post-industrial
countries through the exponential development of the techno-military
complex. |
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