Say It Out Loud

Fighting fascism through voices of courage, reason, and dignity

- Fatima Bhutto

“Don’t ever forget 

that the least fascist 

Among fascists 

Also are 

Fascists”

Roque Dalton was a Salvadoran revolutionary and poet. In the early 1960s, he was exiled from his country and spent years wandering South America. Returning home secretly from Cuba he was promptly arrested. But, in a glorious twist of fate (for Dalton, at least), an earthquake brought his prison walls tumbling down and he escaped.

Politics, Dalton said, are taken up at the risk of life. Otherwise, don’t bother.

He went back into exile once more, and again eventually returned to El Savador. Though he slipped back into the underground without getting arrested, days before Dalton would have turned 40, he was killed. A young poet lost to infighting, treachery, and betrayal.

Dalton wrote the above lines under a pseudonym just before his death in 1975. The poem was titled Advice that is No Longer Necessary Anywhere in the World but Here in El Salvador.

Today, Dalton’s advice is necessary not only in El Salvador but everywhere in the world, especially our own world, here in the subcontinent.

Today, if you are a president, a member of parliament, or head of a corporation, you can threaten minorities, women, and dissenters without fear.

Today, we have the unique horror of hearing loud voices defend the gang rapists of a child.