![v for vendetta opening monologue v for vendetta opening monologue](https://149353678.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/V-VENDETTA-SPEECH.jpg)
Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.
![v for vendetta opening monologue v for vendetta opening monologue](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_aoX21af_hw/maxresdefault.jpg)
Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. There are of course those who do not want us to speak. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone’s death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine – the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I reproduce the text of the speech below: The last few lines are unfortunately missing from the clip, but there is enough there to carry the meaning and passion of this singularly eloquent speech.
![v for vendetta opening monologue v for vendetta opening monologue](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5wft_aa6ITA/hqdefault.jpg)
But this time, there is a YouTube video clip of the speech from the film. The bloody suppression of civil society and dissenting voices has come far sooner than even I expected, and in the aftermath of Batu Burok, I feel compelled to post - for the third time in one month - the text of the speech by ‘ V‘ from the film ‘ V for Vendetta‘, as a reminder of what we the people of Malaysia face if we do not make a stand now in the face of impending fascism, and also as a reminder of what we should be fighting for: freedom, equality and justice. In the past several years especially we have seen increasingly fascist tendencies manifest in the UMNO-BN government, from the active suppression and persecution of dissenting voices and civil society (including the recent Batu Burok clashes and Paya Mengkuang standoff) to the constant race supremacist rhetoric spewing forth from the ranks of UMNO, rampant corruption and almost total hijacking of the mainstream media, to name just a few examples. One which in some respects is even more insidious than the colonials they eventually replaced. All actors – Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, Stephen Fry, John Hurt, Tim Pigott-Smith, Rupert Graves, Roger Allam, Ben Miles, Sinéad Cusack, Natasha Wightman, John Standing, Eddie Marsan, Clive Ashborn, Emma Field-Rayner, Ian Burfield, Mark Phoenix, Alister Mazzotti, Billie Cook, Guy Henry, Cosima Shaw, Megan Gay, Roderic Culver, Tara Hacking, Andy Rashleigh, Chad Stahelski, Antje Rau, Amelda Brown, Richard Campbell, Patricia Gannon, Mark Longhurst, Simon Holmes, Charles Cork, John Ringham, Oliver Bradshaw, Jack Schouten, Caoimhe Murdock, Juliet Howland, Brin Rosser, Raife Patrick Burchell, Joseph Rye, Adrian Finighan, Malcolm Sinclair, Bradley Steve Ford, Madeleine Rakic-Platt, Selina Giles, Carsten Hayes, Derek Hutchinson, Martin Savage, Grant Burgin, Greg Donaldson, Imogen Poots, Jason Griffiths, Laura Greenwood, Kyra Meyer, Paul Antony-Barber, Anna Farnworth, Mary Stockley, Simon Newby, David Merheb, Daniel Donaldson, Dulcie Smart, Ben Posener, Ian T.As a Malaysiakini columnist wrote some weeks ago prior to the 50th anniversary of Malayan Independence, we have merely traded one set of colonisers and oppressors for another, home-grown one.