Today's Resistance is Inward and Deliberate

Our movements have changed since the '60s

Sixty years ago, western societies were in turmoil over the atrocities being committed by the USA in Viet Nam. Americans were being drafted to fight an unjust war, and were protesting, and trying to change the culture. Which, in many ways, they did.

Later, under the cover of disco, neoliberalism and reality TV, austerity and conservatism came back with a vengeance.

Now here we are, with western leaders supporting Israel as it commits genocide in Gaza.

So many of us are appalled and don’t know what to do. But we’re doing what we can as we experience the agony of helplessly watching the slaughter continue.

Back in the 60s, we had just come through a period of prosperity.

But now, we’re coming through decades of increasing austerity, so resistance is different today.

We can’t afford the flower power and free wheeling of the 60s. And, as we can see, decades of austerity often lead to fascism.

When people have to struggle to survive under increasingly difficult circumstances, there’s a tendency to blame others who are often worse off: immigrants, people of other ethnicities, religions and beliefs.

It would make more sense to look at the structure of our systems that funnel money to the very wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. Many don’t seem to notice that their tax dollars are being funnelled away from our social safety net and into the hands of billionaires.

As we witness the ongoing genocide in Gaza, it feels to me like there’s a shift taking place.

We watch in disbelief the decimation of Gaza, the senseless slaughter, and Israeli soldiers boasting about the atrocities they’re committing.

The level of destruction we see in Gaza is unparalleled. This article captures the extent of what Israel is trying to achieve.

Our protests are different from what they were in the 1960s.

We’re now connected online so we see, blow by blow, the brutalization committed in Gaza.

And we communicate with each other over the internet; sharing information, giving moral support and strategizing.

We’re now in a different time, and there’s a different way of being in the world.

People are angry, frustrated and exhausted. The unrelenting propaganda on mainstream media blames people who are different from us — usually who are worse off than we are — for our troubles, it’s not surprising that there’s a surge in fascist and white supremacist beliefs.

People like Donald Trump and Pierre Poilievre get the emotions right, but the policies wrong. When their backers are millionaires and billionaires, whose interests do you think they’ll serve? Not yours. They’re wolves in sheeps’ clothing.

And the political parties that traditionally defended our interests have become rightwing. Think Democrat, Liberal and Labour in the USA, Canada and the UK respectively. They all support neoliberalism and genocide and do the bidding of their wealthy donors.

For me, genocide is a red line. I refuse to vote for a party that crosses that line. As they say, if you wonder what you would have done during the holocaust in Germany, it’s what you’re doing right now.

Over the past ten years or so, many have become aware of their colonialist pasts and the genocide our ancestors committed against indigenous people. At the beginning of many events, land acknowledgements are given, honouring the indigenous people whose lands we occupy.

How do we get those who deliver land acknowledgements to see that the genocide our ancestors committed is of the same impulse that drives the genocide in Gaza?

How do we get people onside? Many of us are outraged at our deteriorating living conditions. This is what happens when our tax dollars are funnelled into the NATO war machine and the hands of the rich instead of the public good.

I wonder how we cut through the echo chamber of fake news and false narratives? How do we get people to look at the structures that have been created to divide us, while robbing us blind and leaving us out in the cold? Here are some examples of ways we’re being manipulated and misled.

How do we take back the reigns of our so-called democracy, when money has such a big voice and the rest of us are hardly heard?

Watching the horrors of this genocide every day on our devices is doing something to many of us. We know it’s wrong. We know the stakes are high. We know that ‘never again’ was intended for everyone.

How many of us will do whatever it takes to stop the genocide, and make sure it never happens again?

I think many of us are de-westernizing ourselves, as described by this writer.

Our society doesn’t fit us anymore. It doesn’t support us materially, nor does it help us to understand ourselves and each other, or to create a healthy, caring global society.

It is cognitive dissonance writ large.

And it’s turning western nations into pariahs on the world stage.

And it can’t last. Our system is imploding, and has lost all moral legitimacy. It’s losing its military adventures, and its economies are shrivelling as fewer non-western countries are relying on the American dollar.

How do we on the ground in western countries adjust to this new reality in a good way that doesn’t lead to increasingly brutal societies?

How do we learn to look out for each other, instead of being suspicious of those who are different from us? How do we create longer tables instead of higher walls?

How do we create the solidarity this moment demands?

I wish I had answers. But one thing I know is that this is the challenge of our lifetime.

And, back to how this is more of an internal than external transformation, here’s an interesting article that explores this more fully.

Thanks to Vijay Prashad for sharing this poem from his Consortium News article A World Without Context.

El Salvadoran guerrilla poet Roque Dalton (1935–1975), wrote an elegy to “apolitical intellectuals”:

I

One day,
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the humblest
of our people.

They will be asked
what they did
when
their homeland was slowly
extinguished,
like a sweet fire,
small and alone.

No one will ask them
about their suits,
or about their long
siestas
after lunch,
or about their sterile
battles with nothingness,
nor about
their ontological
way
of making money.
They won’t be questioned
about Greek mythology,
or about the self-disgust they felt
when someone, deep down,
accepted the fate of dying a coward’s death.
They’ll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of a total lie.

II

On that day
the humble people will come.
Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
yet, every day, brought them
their bread and milk,
their eggs and tortillas,
those who mended their clothes,
who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and tended their gardens,
who worked for them,
and they’ll ask:
‘What did you do when the poor
suffered, when the tenderness and life
was snuffed out of them?’.

III

Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will have nothing to say.

A vulture of silence
will devour your insides.
Your own misery
will gnaw at your soul.
And you will be silent,
ashamed of yourselves.

Take good care, all. Let’s sustain ourselves and each other, and find inclusive ways of working together. That’s what will enable us to change course.

* * * * * * *

I love the BDS campaign and the effect it’s having on Israel’s economy.

Here's an excellent list of products from Israel: https://boycott.thewitness.news/browse/1

Here's a way to help others not in your bubble to boycott Israel: https://www.cjpme.org/stickies_2024_en

And here's where you can support Palestine by buying a keffiyeh:

https://www.hirbawi.ps/