#antifascism — Public Fediverse posts

Good morning, lovely people!

I spent my weekend mostly dealing with banks and stuff regarding my finances, but I also got some writing done. Nothing really for publishing, just for myself, but I think I might share. This was first based on a reflection on a quote by Ulrike Meinhof (yes, that Ulrike Meinhof), but it became much more, and much longer. So...

Where do we come from?

We come from cities built out of concrete and anxiety, from streets where thousands of people live stacked beside one another and somehow remain strangers. We come from the capitalist metropolitan machine, from its noise and its loneliness, from the strange modern miracle of being surrounded by humanity and still being told that you are alone.

We come from the war of everyone against everyone else, though it rarely announces itself as war. It comes dressed as competition. As career. As market forces. As personal responsibility. As the cheerful little lie that everyone is free, provided they can afford the price of admission.

We come from a system that teaches us to measure one another before it teaches us to know one another.

Who is productive?
Who is employable?
Who is attractive?
Who is healthy?
Who belongs?
Who is German?
Who is foreign?
Who is respectable?
Who is old enough to matter?
Who is young enough to be ignored?
Who is sick enough to be pitied but not inconvenient enough to require anything?

And somewhere along the way, even our bodies become filing cabinets.

Men and women.
Young and old.
Healthy and sick.
Normal and deviant.
Citizen and foreigner.
Winner and loser.

Little administrative boxes for an animal that was never designed to fit inside one.

We come from the row house, the Plattenbau, the suburb, the commuter train. From bedrooms where teenagers learned to hate themselves quietly. From classrooms where obedience was mistaken for education. From offices where eight hours disappeared beneath fluorescent lights. From hospitals and prisons and psychiatric wards. From waiting rooms where suffering becomes a number on a screen.

We come from the television glowing in the dark.

From the smartphone in our hands.

From advertising whispering that we are incomplete.

From algorithms discovering our weaknesses and selling them back to us.

From consumerism's peculiar promise that loneliness can be purchased in twelve convenient instalments.

We come from being told to work harder when we were already exhausted.

From being told to try harder when the door had been locked from the other side.

From being told that poverty was a personal failure, illness an inconvenience, exhaustion a lack of discipline, and unhappiness a defective attitude.

We come from depression.

From illness.

From degradation.

From humiliation.

From every small cruelty that was called character-building because somebody preferred cruelty to care.

We come from corporal punishment and social punishment, from the raised hand and the raised eyebrow, from the teacher who shamed the child, the parent who frightened the child, the institution that disciplined the inconvenient human being until they became convenient.

We come from the ideology of nonviolence that sometimes asks the wounded to remain polite while the powerful continue doing the wounding.

We come from people who were told to forgive before anyone bothered to stop the harm.

We come from people who survived.

And that word matters.

Because history is full of people who were not supposed to survive it.

We come from workers whose labour became somebody else's profit.

From women whose lives were made smaller by the architecture of gender.

From queer people who learned to make themselves invisible and then, occasionally, decided to become gloriously impossible to ignore.

From migrants and refugees whose humanity was made conditional upon paperwork.

From colonised people whose countries were turned into markets and whose histories were turned into footnotes.

From the people imperialism exploited, displaced, impoverished, disciplined and then blamed for the ruins.

We come from empire's long shadow.

We come from wars remembered in monuments and wars forgotten in mass graves.

We come from children who learned too early that adults can be dangerous.

We come from adults who learned too late that obedience is not the same thing as goodness.

And we come from every person who looked at this enormous machinery of misery and thought:

No.

Not loudly, necessarily.

Sometimes just a tiny, private no.

A refusal to become cruel.

A refusal to believe that another person's suffering is deserved.

A refusal to accept that competition is the natural condition of humanity simply because capitalism has become very good at arranging the furniture that way.

A refusal to become what hurt us.

Because that, too, is part of where we come from.

We come from resistance.

Not always heroic resistance. Mostly not.

We come from small acts.

From sharing food.

From translating a letter for somebody who cannot understand the bureaucracy.

From teaching a child something simply because knowledge ought to belong to them.

From making a home where someone else can finally unclench their shoulders.

From sitting beside the person everybody else has decided is difficult.

From saying I believe you.

From saying you can stay.

From saying this is not your fault.

From saying we can build something else.

Perhaps this is the strange inheritance we carry.

We have inherited a world that tells us human beings are competitors, commodities, categories, consumers, voters, taxpayers, employees, bodies.

And still, somehow, we keep becoming people.

Messy people.

Tender people.

Angry people.

Ridiculous people.

People who make tea for someone who is sad. People who rescue cats. People who write poems at two in the morning. People who teach. People who translate. People who fall in love with inconvenient humans and inconvenient ideas. People who look at a machine built to turn life into profit and insist that life is not raw material.

That is where we come from.

From the concrete.

From the violence.

From the loneliness.

From the history that bruised us.

But also from every hand that reached through it.

Every voice that said another world was possible.

Every person who refused to become indifferent.

And perhaps that is why we are still here.

Not because history has been gentle.

It has not.

But because somewhere beneath all the architecture of fear, beneath the invoices and borders and prisons and rankings and little boxes into which we keep trying to sort one another, there remains this stubborn, inconvenient thing:

a human being looking at another human being and recognising a fellow creature.

No market can quite explain that.

No spreadsheet can measure it.

No empire has ever managed to abolish it completely.

And perhaps, in the end, that is where we begin.

#Capitalism #AntiImperialism #Antifascism #QueerLiberation #HumanDignity #Solidarity #MutualAid #CriticalTheory #AnotherWorldIsPossible #HopeIsPolitical

Good morning, lovely people!

I spent my weekend mostly dealing with banks and stuff regarding my finances, but I also got some writing done. Nothing really for publishing, just for myself, but I think I might share. This was first based on a reflection on a quote by Ulrike Meinhof (yes, that Ulrike Meinhof), but it became much more, and much longer. So...

Where do we come from?

We come from cities built out of concrete and anxiety, from streets where thousands of people live stacked beside one another and somehow remain strangers. We come from the capitalist metropolitan machine, from its noise and its loneliness, from the strange modern miracle of being surrounded by humanity and still being told that you are alone.

We come from the war of everyone against everyone else, though it rarely announces itself as war. It comes dressed as competition. As career. As market forces. As personal responsibility. As the cheerful little lie that everyone is free, provided they can afford the price of admission.

We come from a system that teaches us to measure one another before it teaches us to know one another.

Who is productive?
Who is employable?
Who is attractive?
Who is healthy?
Who belongs?
Who is German?
Who is foreign?
Who is respectable?
Who is old enough to matter?
Who is young enough to be ignored?
Who is sick enough to be pitied but not inconvenient enough to require anything?

And somewhere along the way, even our bodies become filing cabinets.

Men and women.
Young and old.
Healthy and sick.
Normal and deviant.
Citizen and foreigner.
Winner and loser.

Little administrative boxes for an animal that was never designed to fit inside one.

We come from the row house, the Plattenbau, the suburb, the commuter train. From bedrooms where teenagers learned to hate themselves quietly. From classrooms where obedience was mistaken for education. From offices where eight hours disappeared beneath fluorescent lights. From hospitals and prisons and psychiatric wards. From waiting rooms where suffering becomes a number on a screen.

We come from the television glowing in the dark.

From the smartphone in our hands.

From advertising whispering that we are incomplete.

From algorithms discovering our weaknesses and selling them back to us.

From consumerism's peculiar promise that loneliness can be purchased in twelve convenient instalments.

We come from being told to work harder when we were already exhausted.

From being told to try harder when the door had been locked from the other side.

From being told that poverty was a personal failure, illness an inconvenience, exhaustion a lack of discipline, and unhappiness a defective attitude.

We come from depression.

From illness.

From degradation.

From humiliation.

From every small cruelty that was called character-building because somebody preferred cruelty to care.

We come from corporal punishment and social punishment, from the raised hand and the raised eyebrow, from the teacher who shamed the child, the parent who frightened the child, the institution that disciplined the inconvenient human being until they became convenient.

We come from the ideology of nonviolence that sometimes asks the wounded to remain polite while the powerful continue doing the wounding.

We come from people who were told to forgive before anyone bothered to stop the harm.

We come from people who survived.

And that word matters.

Because history is full of people who were not supposed to survive it.

We come from workers whose labour became somebody else's profit.

From women whose lives were made smaller by the architecture of gender.

From queer people who learned to make themselves invisible and then, occasionally, decided to become gloriously impossible to ignore.

From migrants and refugees whose humanity was made conditional upon paperwork.

From colonised people whose countries were turned into markets and whose histories were turned into footnotes.

From the people imperialism exploited, displaced, impoverished, disciplined and then blamed for the ruins.

We come from empire's long shadow.

We come from wars remembered in monuments and wars forgotten in mass graves.

We come from children who learned too early that adults can be dangerous.

We come from adults who learned too late that obedience is not the same thing as goodness.

And we come from every person who looked at this enormous machinery of misery and thought:

No.

Not loudly, necessarily.

Sometimes just a tiny, private no.

A refusal to become cruel.

A refusal to believe that another person's suffering is deserved.

A refusal to accept that competition is the natural condition of humanity simply because capitalism has become very good at arranging the furniture that way.

A refusal to become what hurt us.

Because that, too, is part of where we come from.

We come from resistance.

Not always heroic resistance. Mostly not.

We come from small acts.

From sharing food.

From translating a letter for somebody who cannot understand the bureaucracy.

From teaching a child something simply because knowledge ought to belong to them.

From making a home where someone else can finally unclench their shoulders.

From sitting beside the person everybody else has decided is difficult.

From saying I believe you.

From saying you can stay.

From saying this is not your fault.

From saying we can build something else.

Perhaps this is the strange inheritance we carry.

We have inherited a world that tells us human beings are competitors, commodities, categories, consumers, voters, taxpayers, employees, bodies.

And still, somehow, we keep becoming people.

Messy people.

Tender people.

Angry people.

Ridiculous people.

People who make tea for someone who is sad. People who rescue cats. People who write poems at two in the morning. People who teach. People who translate. People who fall in love with inconvenient humans and inconvenient ideas. People who look at a machine built to turn life into profit and insist that life is not raw material.

That is where we come from.

From the concrete.

From the violence.

From the loneliness.

From the history that bruised us.

But also from every hand that reached through it.

Every voice that said another world was possible.

Every person who refused to become indifferent.

And perhaps that is why we are still here.

Not because history has been gentle.

It has not.

But because somewhere beneath all the architecture of fear, beneath the invoices and borders and prisons and rankings and little boxes into which we keep trying to sort one another, there remains this stubborn, inconvenient thing:

a human being looking at another human being and recognising a fellow creature.

No market can quite explain that.

No spreadsheet can measure it.

No empire has ever managed to abolish it completely.

And perhaps, in the end, that is where we begin.

#Capitalism #AntiImperialism #Antifascism #QueerLiberation #HumanDignity #Solidarity #MutualAid #CriticalTheory #AnotherWorldIsPossible #HopeIsPolitical

Good morning, lovely people!

I spent my weekend mostly dealing with banks and stuff regarding my finances, but I also got some writing done. Nothing really for publishing, just for myself, but I think I might share. This was first based on a reflection on a quote by Ulrike Meinhof (yes, that Ulrike Meinhof), but it became much more, and much longer. So...

Where do we come from?

We come from cities built out of concrete and anxiety, from streets where thousands of people live stacked beside one another and somehow remain strangers. We come from the capitalist metropolitan machine, from its noise and its loneliness, from the strange modern miracle of being surrounded by humanity and still being told that you are alone.

We come from the war of everyone against everyone else, though it rarely announces itself as war. It comes dressed as competition. As career. As market forces. As personal responsibility. As the cheerful little lie that everyone is free, provided they can afford the price of admission.

We come from a system that teaches us to measure one another before it teaches us to know one another.

Who is productive?
Who is employable?
Who is attractive?
Who is healthy?
Who belongs?
Who is German?
Who is foreign?
Who is respectable?
Who is old enough to matter?
Who is young enough to be ignored?
Who is sick enough to be pitied but not inconvenient enough to require anything?

And somewhere along the way, even our bodies become filing cabinets.

Men and women.
Young and old.
Healthy and sick.
Normal and deviant.
Citizen and foreigner.
Winner and loser.

Little administrative boxes for an animal that was never designed to fit inside one.

We come from the row house, the Plattenbau, the suburb, the commuter train. From bedrooms where teenagers learned to hate themselves quietly. From classrooms where obedience was mistaken for education. From offices where eight hours disappeared beneath fluorescent lights. From hospitals and prisons and psychiatric wards. From waiting rooms where suffering becomes a number on a screen.

We come from the television glowing in the dark.

From the smartphone in our hands.

From advertising whispering that we are incomplete.

From algorithms discovering our weaknesses and selling them back to us.

From consumerism's peculiar promise that loneliness can be purchased in twelve convenient instalments.

We come from being told to work harder when we were already exhausted.

From being told to try harder when the door had been locked from the other side.

From being told that poverty was a personal failure, illness an inconvenience, exhaustion a lack of discipline, and unhappiness a defective attitude.

We come from depression.

From illness.

From degradation.

From humiliation.

From every small cruelty that was called character-building because somebody preferred cruelty to care.

We come from corporal punishment and social punishment, from the raised hand and the raised eyebrow, from the teacher who shamed the child, the parent who frightened the child, the institution that disciplined the inconvenient human being until they became convenient.

We come from the ideology of nonviolence that sometimes asks the wounded to remain polite while the powerful continue doing the wounding.

We come from people who were told to forgive before anyone bothered to stop the harm.

We come from people who survived.

And that word matters.

Because history is full of people who were not supposed to survive it.

We come from workers whose labour became somebody else's profit.

From women whose lives were made smaller by the architecture of gender.

From queer people who learned to make themselves invisible and then, occasionally, decided to become gloriously impossible to ignore.

From migrants and refugees whose humanity was made conditional upon paperwork.

From colonised people whose countries were turned into markets and whose histories were turned into footnotes.

From the people imperialism exploited, displaced, impoverished, disciplined and then blamed for the ruins.

We come from empire's long shadow.

We come from wars remembered in monuments and wars forgotten in mass graves.

We come from children who learned too early that adults can be dangerous.

We come from adults who learned too late that obedience is not the same thing as goodness.

And we come from every person who looked at this enormous machinery of misery and thought:

No.

Not loudly, necessarily.

Sometimes just a tiny, private no.

A refusal to become cruel.

A refusal to believe that another person's suffering is deserved.

A refusal to accept that competition is the natural condition of humanity simply because capitalism has become very good at arranging the furniture that way.

A refusal to become what hurt us.

Because that, too, is part of where we come from.

We come from resistance.

Not always heroic resistance. Mostly not.

We come from small acts.

From sharing food.

From translating a letter for somebody who cannot understand the bureaucracy.

From teaching a child something simply because knowledge ought to belong to them.

From making a home where someone else can finally unclench their shoulders.

From sitting beside the person everybody else has decided is difficult.

From saying I believe you.

From saying you can stay.

From saying this is not your fault.

From saying we can build something else.

Perhaps this is the strange inheritance we carry.

We have inherited a world that tells us human beings are competitors, commodities, categories, consumers, voters, taxpayers, employees, bodies.

And still, somehow, we keep becoming people.

Messy people.

Tender people.

Angry people.

Ridiculous people.

People who make tea for someone who is sad. People who rescue cats. People who write poems at two in the morning. People who teach. People who translate. People who fall in love with inconvenient humans and inconvenient ideas. People who look at a machine built to turn life into profit and insist that life is not raw material.

That is where we come from.

From the concrete.

From the violence.

From the loneliness.

From the history that bruised us.

But also from every hand that reached through it.

Every voice that said another world was possible.

Every person who refused to become indifferent.

And perhaps that is why we are still here.

Not because history has been gentle.

It has not.

But because somewhere beneath all the architecture of fear, beneath the invoices and borders and prisons and rankings and little boxes into which we keep trying to sort one another, there remains this stubborn, inconvenient thing:

a human being looking at another human being and recognising a fellow creature.

No market can quite explain that.

No spreadsheet can measure it.

No empire has ever managed to abolish it completely.

And perhaps, in the end, that is where we begin.

#Capitalism #AntiImperialism #Antifascism #QueerLiberation #HumanDignity #Solidarity #MutualAid #CriticalTheory #AnotherWorldIsPossible #HopeIsPolitical

Good morning, lovely people!

I spent my weekend mostly dealing with banks and stuff regarding my finances, but I also got some writing done. Nothing really for publishing, just for myself, but I think I might share. This was first based on a reflection on a quote by Ulrike Meinhof (yes, that Ulrike Meinhof), but it became much more, and much longer. So...

Where do we come from?

We come from cities built out of concrete and anxiety, from streets where thousands of people live stacked beside one another and somehow remain strangers. We come from the capitalist metropolitan machine, from its noise and its loneliness, from the strange modern miracle of being surrounded by humanity and still being told that you are alone.

We come from the war of everyone against everyone else, though it rarely announces itself as war. It comes dressed as competition. As career. As market forces. As personal responsibility. As the cheerful little lie that everyone is free, provided they can afford the price of admission.

We come from a system that teaches us to measure one another before it teaches us to know one another.

Who is productive?
Who is employable?
Who is attractive?
Who is healthy?
Who belongs?
Who is German?
Who is foreign?
Who is respectable?
Who is old enough to matter?
Who is young enough to be ignored?
Who is sick enough to be pitied but not inconvenient enough to require anything?

And somewhere along the way, even our bodies become filing cabinets.

Men and women.
Young and old.
Healthy and sick.
Normal and deviant.
Citizen and foreigner.
Winner and loser.

Little administrative boxes for an animal that was never designed to fit inside one.

We come from the row house, the Plattenbau, the suburb, the commuter train. From bedrooms where teenagers learned to hate themselves quietly. From classrooms where obedience was mistaken for education. From offices where eight hours disappeared beneath fluorescent lights. From hospitals and prisons and psychiatric wards. From waiting rooms where suffering becomes a number on a screen.

We come from the television glowing in the dark.

From the smartphone in our hands.

From advertising whispering that we are incomplete.

From algorithms discovering our weaknesses and selling them back to us.

From consumerism's peculiar promise that loneliness can be purchased in twelve convenient instalments.

We come from being told to work harder when we were already exhausted.

From being told to try harder when the door had been locked from the other side.

From being told that poverty was a personal failure, illness an inconvenience, exhaustion a lack of discipline, and unhappiness a defective attitude.

We come from depression.

From illness.

From degradation.

From humiliation.

From every small cruelty that was called character-building because somebody preferred cruelty to care.

We come from corporal punishment and social punishment, from the raised hand and the raised eyebrow, from the teacher who shamed the child, the parent who frightened the child, the institution that disciplined the inconvenient human being until they became convenient.

We come from the ideology of nonviolence that sometimes asks the wounded to remain polite while the powerful continue doing the wounding.

We come from people who were told to forgive before anyone bothered to stop the harm.

We come from people who survived.

And that word matters.

Because history is full of people who were not supposed to survive it.

We come from workers whose labour became somebody else's profit.

From women whose lives were made smaller by the architecture of gender.

From queer people who learned to make themselves invisible and then, occasionally, decided to become gloriously impossible to ignore.

From migrants and refugees whose humanity was made conditional upon paperwork.

From colonised people whose countries were turned into markets and whose histories were turned into footnotes.

From the people imperialism exploited, displaced, impoverished, disciplined and then blamed for the ruins.

We come from empire's long shadow.

We come from wars remembered in monuments and wars forgotten in mass graves.

We come from children who learned too early that adults can be dangerous.

We come from adults who learned too late that obedience is not the same thing as goodness.

And we come from every person who looked at this enormous machinery of misery and thought:

No.

Not loudly, necessarily.

Sometimes just a tiny, private no.

A refusal to become cruel.

A refusal to believe that another person's suffering is deserved.

A refusal to accept that competition is the natural condition of humanity simply because capitalism has become very good at arranging the furniture that way.

A refusal to become what hurt us.

Because that, too, is part of where we come from.

We come from resistance.

Not always heroic resistance. Mostly not.

We come from small acts.

From sharing food.

From translating a letter for somebody who cannot understand the bureaucracy.

From teaching a child something simply because knowledge ought to belong to them.

From making a home where someone else can finally unclench their shoulders.

From sitting beside the person everybody else has decided is difficult.

From saying I believe you.

From saying you can stay.

From saying this is not your fault.

From saying we can build something else.

Perhaps this is the strange inheritance we carry.

We have inherited a world that tells us human beings are competitors, commodities, categories, consumers, voters, taxpayers, employees, bodies.

And still, somehow, we keep becoming people.

Messy people.

Tender people.

Angry people.

Ridiculous people.

People who make tea for someone who is sad. People who rescue cats. People who write poems at two in the morning. People who teach. People who translate. People who fall in love with inconvenient humans and inconvenient ideas. People who look at a machine built to turn life into profit and insist that life is not raw material.

That is where we come from.

From the concrete.

From the violence.

From the loneliness.

From the history that bruised us.

But also from every hand that reached through it.

Every voice that said another world was possible.

Every person who refused to become indifferent.

And perhaps that is why we are still here.

Not because history has been gentle.

It has not.

But because somewhere beneath all the architecture of fear, beneath the invoices and borders and prisons and rankings and little boxes into which we keep trying to sort one another, there remains this stubborn, inconvenient thing:

a human being looking at another human being and recognising a fellow creature.

No market can quite explain that.

No spreadsheet can measure it.

No empire has ever managed to abolish it completely.

And perhaps, in the end, that is where we begin.

#Capitalism #AntiImperialism #Antifascism #QueerLiberation #HumanDignity #Solidarity #MutualAid #CriticalTheory #AnotherWorldIsPossible #HopeIsPolitical