Alan Moore tinha razão:

“Europe is lost, America lost, London lost”, canta Kate Tempest, “still we are clamouring victory”. Se alguém quiser traduzir a letra, posta nos comentários que eu republico aqui.

Europe is lost, America lost, London lost
Still we are clamouring victory
All that is meaningless rules
We have learned nothing from history

People are dead in their lifetimes
Dazed in the shine of the streets
But look how the traffic’s still moving
The system’s too slick to stop working
Business is good. And there’s bands every night in the pubs
And there’s two for one drinks in the clubs

And we scrubbed up well
We washed off the work and the stress
Now all we want’s some excess
Better yet; A night to remember that we’ll soon forget

All of the blood that was bled for these cities to grow
All of the bodies that fell
The roots that were dug from the earth
So these games could be played
I see it tonight in the stains on my hands

The buildings are screaming
I can’t ask for help though, nobody knows me
Hostile, worried, lonely
We move in our packs and these are the rights we were born to
Working and working so we can be all that we want
Then dancing the drudgery off
But even the drugs have got boring
Well, sex is still good when you get it

To sleep, to dream, to keep the dream in reach
To each a dream
Don’t weep, don’t scream
Just keep it in
Keep sleeping in
What am I gonna do to wake up?

I feel the cost of it pushing my body
Like I push my hands into pockets
And softly I walk and I see it, this is all we deserve
The wrongs of our past have resurfaced
Despite all we did to vanquish the traces
My very language is tainted
With all that we stole to replace it with this
I am quiet
Feeling the onset of riot
Riots are tiny though
Systems are huge
The traffic keeps moving, proving there’s nothing to do

It’s big business baby and its smile is hideous
Top down violence, a structural viciousness
Your kids are doped up on medical sedatives
But don’t worry bout that, man. Worry bout terrorists

The water levels rising! The water levels rising!
The animals, the elephants, the polarbears are dying!
Stop crying. Start buying
But what about the oil spill?
Shh. No one likes a party pooping spoil sport

Massacres massacres massacres/new shoes
Ghettoised children murdered in broad daylight by those employed to protect them
Live porn streamed to your pre-teen’s bedrooms
Glass ceiling, no headroom
Half a generation live beneath the breadline

Oh but it’s happy hour on the high street
Friday night at last lads, my treat!
All went fine till that kid got glassed in the last bar
Place went nuts, you can ask our Lou
It was madness, the road ran red, pure claret
And about them immigrants? I can’t stand them
Mostly, I mind my own business
They’re only coming over here to get rich
It’s a sickness
England! England!
Patriotism!

And you wonder why kids want to die for religion?

It goes
Work all your life for a pittance
Maybe you’ll make it to manager
Pray for a raise
Cross the beige days off on your beach babe calendar

The anarchists are desperate for something to smash
Scandalous pictures of fashionable rappers in glamorous magazines
Who’s dating who?
Politico cash in an envelope
Caught sniffing lines off a prostitutes prosthetic tits
And it’s back to the house of lords with slapped wrists
They abduct kids and fuck the heads of dead pigs
But him in a hoodie with a couple of spliffs –
Jail him, he’s the criminal
Jail him, he’s the criminal

It’s the BoredOfItAll generation
The product of product placement and manipulation
Shoot em up, brutal, duty of care
Come on, new shoes
Beautiful hair

Bullshit saccharine ballads
And selfies
And selfies
And selfies
And here’s me outside the palace of ME!

Construct a self and psychosis
And meanwhile the people are dead in their droves
But nobody noticed
Well some of them noticed
You could tell by the emoji they posted

Sleep like a gloved hand covers our eyes
The lights are so nice and bright and lets dream
But some of us are stuck like stones in a slipstream
What am I gonna do wake up?

We are lost
We are lost
We are lost
And still nothing
Will stop
Nothing pauses

We have ambitions and friendships and courtships to think of
Divorces to drink off the thought of

The money
The money
The oil

The planet is shaking and spoiled
Life is a plaything
A garment to soil
The toil the toil
I can’t see an ending at all
Only the end

How is this something to cherish?
When the tribesmen are dead in their deserts
To make room for alien structures
Develop
Develop

And kill what you find if it threatens you
No trace of love in the hunt for the bigger buck
Here in the land where nobody gives a fuck

É um dia sombrio não só para a Inglaterra e para a Europa, mas para todo o planeta.

Tantas máscaras do V de Vingança… de onde elas vêm? O Extra descobriu uma das fábricas que vem abastecendo os Guy Fawkes brasileiros (“a máscara do anônimos”) e fez uma galeria de fotos em seu site. Tem umas aí embaixo.

Embora muitos associem V de Vingança (1981), de Alan Moore e David Lloyd, a uma visão pessimista do que se tornaria a Inglaterra pós-Thatcher, o fato é que nem seu autor não imaginava que o partido conservador inglês ganhasse as eleições parlamentares em 1983 – explicitamente confirmado no ensaio Behind the Painted Smile, do próprio Moore, sobre sua obra:

Starting with the assumption that the Conservatives would obviously lose the 1983 elections, I began to work out a future based upon the Labour Party gaining power, removing all American missiles from British soil and thus preventing Britain from becoming a major target in the event of a nuclear war. With disturbingly little difficulty it was easy for me to plot the course from that point up until the Fascist takeover in the post-holocaust Britain of the 1990’s.

Mas ele não deixou barato e, anos depois, em 1990, citaria a própria Dama de Ferro numa página memorável de seu Miracleman:

Esta foi pinçada pelo Bleeding Cool, que também listou outras manifestações anti-Thatcher nos quadrinhos ingleses. A dica foi do Daniel, valeu!

Foi só falar no mestre dos magos que ele apareceu com força total. Nesta segunda-feira ele lança seu primeiro single, com a faixa “The Decline of English Murder”, com rendas revertidas para o pessoal do Occupy Wall Street – não custa lembrar que o 5 de novembro (além de aniversário do Fred) também é a data-chave do V de Vingança, obra de Moore celebrada tanto pelos Occupy quanto pelos Anonymous. O Guardian fez um vídeo com a música, usando cenas do grupo em ação – e o Bleeding Cool providenciou as letras, ambos abaixo:

Finalmente Moore nos deu seu parecer sobre o movimento identificado por um ícone que ajudou a resgatar. Primeiro em entrevista ao Guardian:

“I suppose when I was writing V for Vendetta I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: wouldn’t it be great if these ideas actually made an impact? So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world… It’s peculiar. It feels like a character I created 30 years ago has somehow escaped the realm of fiction.”

(…)

“That smile is so haunting. I tried to use the cryptic nature of it to dramatic effect. We could show a picture of the character just standing there, silently, with an expression that could have been pleasant, breezy or more sinister. (…) And when you’ve got a sea of V masks, I suppose it makes the protesters appear to be almost a single organism – this “99%” we hear so much about. That in itself is formidable. I can see why the protesters have taken to it.”

(…)

“I think it’s appropriate that this generation of protesters have made their rebellion into something the public at large can engage with more readily than with half-hearted chants, with that traditional, downtrodden sort of British protest. These people look like they’re having a good time. And that sends out a tremendous message.”

Na mesma entrevista, ele riu do fato da Time Warner – que é dona da DC Comics que é dona dos direitos de V de Vingança, o quadrinho que deu origem à máscara – faturar dinheiro com royalties nas vendas do ícone dos Occupy:

“I find it comical, watching Time Warner try to walk this precarious tightrope. It’s a bit embarrassing to be a corporation that seems to be profiting from an anti-corporate protest. It’s not really anything that they want to be associated with. And yet they really don’t like turning down money – it goes against all of their instincts. I find it more funny than irksome.”

Em outra entrevista, à revista Honest, ele diz o ele acha que deva mudar em nosso sistema político:

“Everything. I believe that what’s needed is a radical solution, by which I mean from the roots upwards. Our entire political thinking seems to me to be based upon medieval precepts. These things, they didn’t work particularly well five or six hundred years ago. Their slightly modified forms are not adequate at all for the rapidly changing territory of the 21st Century.

“We need to overhaul the way that we think about money, we need to overhaul the way that we think about who’s running the show. As an anarchist, I believe that power should be given to the people, to the people whose lives this is actually affecting. It’s no longer good enough to have a group of people who are controlling our destinies. The only reason they have the power is because they control the currency. They have no moral authority and, indeed, they show the opposite of moral authority.”

Mais um poster do Shepard Fairey

Alan Moore ainda não se pronunciou oficialmente sobre o movimento Occupy, mas em uma velha entrevista à revista Entertainment Weekly, ele já comentava sobre o fato do grupo Anonymous usar a máscara de Guy Fawkes em seus protestos contra a cientologia, em 2008:

I was also quite heartened the other day when watching the news to see that there were demonstrations outside the Scientology headquarters over here, and that they suddenly flashed to a clip showing all these demonstrators wearing V for Vendetta [Guy Fawkes] masks. That pleased me. That gave me a warm little glow.

O que nos leva à seguinte conclusão: será que os recentes movimentos estão aumentando a audiência de V de Vingança – tanto do quadrinho quanto do filme? Será que isso quer dizer que muito mais gente está ouvindo falar, pela primeira vez, de alguns conceitos básicos do anarquismo?

“Não dá para expulsar uma idéia que já está aí” é o título (traduzido coxalmente) do comunicado que os despejados do Zuccotti Park lançaram nessa terça. Segue a íntegra, em inglês:

A massive police force is presently evicting Liberty Square, home of Occupy Wall Street for the past two months and birthplace of the 99% movement that has spread across the country and around the world

The raid started just after 1:00am. Supporters and allies are mobilizing throughout the city, presently converging at Foley Square. Supporters are also planning public actions for the coming days, including occupation actions.
You can’t evict an idea whose time has come.

Two months ago a few hundred New Yorkers set up an encampment at the doorstep of Wall Street. Since then, Occupy Wall Street has become a national and even international symbol — with similarly styled occupations popping up in cities and towns across America and around the world. A growing popular movement has significantly altered the national narrative about our economy, our democracy, and our future.

Americans are talking about the consolidation of wealth and power in our society, and the stranglehold that the top 1% have over our political system. More and more Americans are seeing the crises of our economy and our democracy as systemic problems, that require collective action to remedy. More and more Americans are identifying as part of the 99%, and saying “enough!”

This burgeoning movement is more than a protest, more than an occupation, and more than any tactic. The “us” in the movement is far broader than those who are able to participate in physical occupation. The movement is everyone who sends supplies, everyone who talks to their friends and families about the underlying issues, everyone who takes some form of action to get involved in this civic process.

This moment is nothing short of America rediscovering the strength we hold when we come together as citizens to take action to address crises that impact us all.

Such a movement cannot be evicted. Some politicians may physically remove us from public spaces — our spaces — and, physically, they may succeed. But we are engaged in a battle over ideas. Our idea is that our political structures should serve us, the people — all of us, not just those who have amassed great wealth and power. We believe that is a highly popular idea, and that is why so many people have come so quickly to identify with Occupy Wall Street and the 99% movement.

You cannot evict an idea whose time has come.