Jed On: Current Events and History · 3:57pm Jun 7th, 2020
There’s a lot of awful things happening in the world right now, so I’ve had to really think about the best way to approach it. It sort of hit home when an author whose work I actually liked turned out to be… well, other people know better than I do so I’ll leave it at that.
Instead, I’m going to share something that, quite frankly, you don’t really have the right to know about me, but I’ll share it anyway, because it’s relevant, and because if even one of the people who ends up reading my inane ramblings learns something or gets something out of it, that’s a positive.
My grandmother’s family lived in Germany during the Second World War. From her, I learned what people in that time thought of him, what ordinary people knew about the worst excesses and what they did not. I learned that in Germany, you had to have a document proving you had no Jewish blood going back literally hundreds of years. I learned about her adopted uncle, a boy with a heart condition who was conscripted and classed A1 fit to fight - and died on the Russian front. And most importantly, I learned why that country did what it did.
“He gave them jobs,” she would say to me, and I learned the deeper meanings of that phrase. “He gave them purpose”, it meant. “He gave them something to direct their frustration at all of the world’s unfairness.”
I’m a fan of the idea of cyclical history, that history repeats itself (and by fan I mean I think the concept has merit, not that I wish history would repeat itself). It’s certainly doing that now. A (supposedly) charismatic figure has taken control of a country, and given certain members of the disenfranchised majority the easiest targets to blame for their disempowerment, as well as offering simple solutions to ending that. What we’re seeing in America isn’t even the beginning of the same roads we’ve seen other nations in history take. I‘ve seen footage of America’s National Guard literally firing on people just watching from their front porches.
The worst thing is, a lot of these men and women now acting in this terrifying, authoritarian way… they’re people, people who might even think they’re doing the right thing.
Do you know why I resist dehumanising the enemy, reducing them to labels like “racists” or “Nazis” and then dismissing them as some nebulous “other” to be merely hated? Because that’s too damn easy. It’s easy to imagine that in seventy years we might end up playing a game where we shoot them like faceless mooks, just like we do German soldiers from WWII in every WWII shooter ever made. But that denies something much more terrifying.
These are people, people who might be just like you or me. To forget that is to wilfully forget our own culpability in the world that created them.
It takes fear, anger, disempowerment, and a feeling of needing someone to blame to become what America is becoming, and make no mistake, the rest of the civilised world isn’t as far behind that as we’d like to be, if at all (I live in the country that voted for Brexit based on a rampantly racist campaign, so believe me, I know exactly how bad my country is right now). We’ve lost the first part of the battle against fascism already: we’ve created fertile ground for that hatred, anger and disempowerment to exist in the first place. We’ve created a world where there are people right now cheering for those National Guard soldiers shooting at innocent bystanders. These aren’t inhuman monsters. They are us. “There but for the grace of God go I”, after all.
In these times it’s important to remember that we may have lost one battle, but the war is not over. That war may take the form of violent action against a rise in authoritarianism, and while I don’t like violence, I’m not going to sit on my staircase in my peaceful city and condemn it. Nor am I going to stand on a soapbox and lecture people on the best way to tackle the rise of right-wing sentiment, the corruption in America’s police force, or the systemic racism that pervades the Western World, because that would imply that I know. Lord knows, I do not. Other people are on the front lines of this war right now, and I support any action that leads to a better world for everyone. I won’t condemn people who don’t know what the best course is, because I don’t either.
What I will do is say this: you have the power to choose the kind of person you are. The kinds of things you believe. You have the power to be a force for positive change in the world. There are many ways to be that change. Only you can decide what that is. You don’t have to let fear win: you can fight that, too. With love, with solidarity, with your courage in the face of adversity, and yes, with your body if that is what it takes. You can fight fear in any number of ways.
But fight.
Always remember that you have more power than you realise. And don’t let the other guy forget it either.
Stay safe, everyone.
Jed.
Well said. This has been a depressing time for everyone. I still hold out some hope that trump will be voted out come November. Though a pessimistic side of me whispers that it won’t happen. I really hope that this is just a aberration in our world’s history and that the protests we are seeing are signs of change and progress coming back.
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I think we’re going to be fine eventually. It’s easy to forget that life today is still magnitudes better than in the preceding centuries. But to quote Barret, “nothing worth fighting for was ever won without sacrifice”.
It's been notable seeing so many people post about this. I'll always be with the people that stand against violence and prefer dialogue (sometimes that puts me at odds with all sides, and that's never fun) and I've butted heads a lot with people who claim any meaningful change can only occur through violent revolution.
But it's as you said: everyone is someone. The idea of them is the first step towards accepting, or at least tolerating violent reprisal.
I've also seen a lot of 'fascism' being thrown around (not you on this case, but a lot of other blogs). I think that word needs to be contextualized every time it's used. Most often than not, it's just a stand-in for authoritarianism, maybe even totalitarianism. Sometimes it means too much, other times too little (fascism had no eugenic characteristics, but nacional-socialism did, and so on). It also can steal away from a discourse, much like misgendering a person in a debate: now the current topic is momentarily put aside to focus on this bloated one. I've seen this too much during my time on debate clubs - on a modern left-right discussion, the easiest way to derail meaningful results is to put 'fascism' in the speech.
Now, I'm not so full of myself to make the claim the word shouldn't be used. In fact, I think its meaning might even have evolved into a different thing altogether. I'm no expert on that. Take a look at what Juan Linz of Yale University has to say on the matter of authoritarianism, it's a fascinating perspective (and please forgive me if he has said other things you might disagree with, I'm not endorsing the whole man, only suggesting his reading of non-democratic regimes).
In short, by throwing our fingers so far into the possible fascist future, it allows for individuals with more nefarious goals to work in the present while giving the impression to the apolitical and undecided that your claims aren't noteworthy.
But, that little rant out of the way, I'm with you. Defend what you believe in, and try your hardest not to lose yourself in the heat of the moment. Sometimes our beliefs need a bit of tuning. A good tule of thumb is, if you want to infringe on their well-being, that's definitely the time.
Edit: if anyone really wants to check Linz, you can find some of his works here