Anything less than the end of this world is not enough March 25, 2024
The same American ordnance that has previously in history ended and displaced innumerable lives - from the Philippines, Nicaragua, Korea, Vietnam, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan (by no means an exhaustive list), from the “banana wars” to the “forever wars” a century later, a countless and truly unknowable amount of death, both civilian and resistance - are now ending lives in Gaza, Palestine. They are killing with the same munitions used by the US from the Korean War simultaneously alongside weaponry being produced today as a capitalist surplus being sold to the genocidal Israeli occupation. All the hospitals have been rendered inoperable, and medical teams have been made targets; selfless Palestinian aid workers who have tirelessly worked to save human lives without rest or proper medicinal supplies are murdered, kidnapped, and tortured by the IOF. This is violence being enacted on a population that is also currently being starved to death. This is a mode of warfare which is the natural and historic expression of western interests, built on a fundamental assumption that we are backwards, trapped in our own limitations which require civilizing and eradication, fleshed out with capitalism’s basic need for expansion, made manifest with military subjugation, both domestic and abroad.
There is no forgiveness for this level of destruction now or in the past, since the Nakba of 1948. There is no occupational “retaliation” to the armed resistance of an occupied people, only irredeemable depravity for the sake of the colonial project, here and everywhere. In this current world, however, it perpetuates justified by lies, extending death’s hand long after excuses have been understood as propagated fallacy. I live in a country where people don’t want to be wrong even when presented with new, more accurate information; where people depend on ignorance to get on with it. I live within a culture which inherently, proudly understands itself as parasites to the earth, while destroying globally the indigenous practices which help the land to flourish. The illusion of a democracy is a luxury of entertainment afforded to white world. This all has made living day to day, for the entirety of my existence, feel immensely absurd and disjointed, psychically demoralizing, and by default alienating because the meager dream that we are beholden to invest in at the sacrifice of all else, that necessitates the very existence of this dominance, was never a dream, but a living nightmare which requires us to numb ourselves to the fact. The history of my nationality is a testament to this. And so, every single person who looks at this current genocide with any level of apathy is my enemy for life.
Invest in political education so you can understand the world around you. Invest in your community so you can change the world, at first immediately around you. I still don’t know how to do this well. We are actively made not to do these things. I look toward others to learn, and I hope to lead in my search for a new world only if by example. Every colonial project seeks dominance through psychological control. Colonization of the land wasn’t possible without complete demoralization of the mind. Extend the rejection of this with every aspect of your being, and at every interface with reality. Your relationship with power may be complicated but its relationship with you is not. Learning is always available to you; it happens (perhaps especially) outside of a monetized, privatized academia. Maintain intellectual curiosity, rigorous study, and writing. The history of struggles to overcome oppression is filled with people who made time to do it during wars, strikes, in prison, and much more. What excuse do we have to forgo an entire epistemology especially when there is no true liberation without the Palestinians’? In the end, if there is a brighter future ahead, it will have nothing to do with us here in the core. We will be riding on the backs of the colonized majority of the world, and rightly so. The very least we can do is mentally divest completely from the hegemony that which distracts and palliates us into a catatonic unknowing.
How is it that we have even allowed and continue to allow, for one second, ourselves to go around in whispers, scared to be caught agreeing that mass murder is bad? How is it that this society has convinced itself that we live in deeply confusing and complex times? That one is able to decouple themselves from the struggle of an entire people under the guise that it isn’t one’s business? That we have accepted the language games of western bourgeois philosophy to define thought for so long? We have to refuse to answer colonial questions. Colonial questions produce colonial answers. In theory, lived experience is enough. In practice, not so much. In theory, poverty and oppression should radicalize people and no one should be a reactionary. In practice, not so much. Saying “you don’t need theory, only experience” is itself a theoretical concept that doesn’t pan out in practice. There’s also a theoretical assumption that comes with this, that we’re all perfect perceivers of experience with no bias or framing through an indoctrinated lens. This also is not so much the case in practice.
Artists, keep Palestine in mind with everything you do; seek political alignment if or when you decide to interact with an institution, festival, representation, or an industry - or forgo the opportunity. It doesn't take much to realize who your audience is. Look at the promo photos for whatever it is you're winning some representation award at. Feel the disquieting juxtaposition of uncomfortable avoidance, your whimsical gestures and ironic distance to something actually quite serious. Think about how easy it is to pay no mind within the dreamlike comfort of support afforded to you. Let caution, rejection, and vigilance permeate and inform your practice because genocide includes epistemicide, and what good are we but narcissistic decorators of capital and an individualizing pursuit of self-exploitation if we don’t do something to slow this process, if only culturally?
None of these ideas are new nor are they exclusively mine. Least of all are these extremist views by any measure. These are basic tenets of humanity, of being human. This is in part a compilation of articulations that originate from people much more eloquent than I, and I am combining everything I know to be true to remember my convictions during an increasingly disaffecting time. I’m writing this down for my own reference and for the reference of others that may know me, lest we forget who we are in the face of subsisting on a daily basis as subjects of the imperial core. Even if one knows and agrees, it would be remiss not to remind ourselves. No country in history has ever possessed such a sophisticated propaganda apparatus as the United States: a system that not only indoctrinates its own citizens, but much of the world. Those within the propaganda bubble live in the eternal present with no history, no understanding, jumping from one distraction to the next. We are molded to be eternal children and the perfect consumers. We are required to believe in the benevolence the US, casting a blind eye to every nation that has been and are actively being destroyed in order to accelerate the circulation of capital, under the guise of a meaningless freedom and puppet democracy. The basic deal on offer for us is to serve as tools for white enjoyment and wealth aggregation, while relinquishing any extension of political agency.
We must learn to abandon this world, because the next struggles to be born. As things get increasingly dire politically, I think it will be important to learn to love the fight. Part of you must find pleasure in defiance, refusal, and even sabotage. That’s needed for longevity on our part. Even if you and I have been marching since October (something we will continue to do as the bare minimum), the Palestinian struggle, as with many decolonizing struggles across history and present day, spans generations and generations into the future until we as the people of the world - not politicians or leaders of empire - see an end to the settler-colonial zionist entity.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
"Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill or betray it, in relative opacity" - Fanon
"Palestine is a place where the spring is so fragrant and colorful that it is almost as if stones blossom... Palestine is home even when one's home there has been destroyed because a sense of belonging surpasses the stones of a house." - Nadia Yaqub on Samirah 'Azzam's work
“By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master?" - Walter Rodney