The unbearable lightness of a stolen mandate. Alleged or real. A stolen democracy. A freedom struggle and a history of non-violent struggle.
And no post-poll analysis will help. Mostly, it is an apology for the status quo. A delusionary tactic that all is well. An illusion of normalcy, whereby all normalcy seems fake.
All is well! Is it?
Stolen or not stolen, you can spot a banana republic from a distance. A camouflaged democracy is as transparent as it can be. Neither a totally brainwashed nation, nor a totally whitewashed reality can sugarcoat the filthy waters of the quagmire. It’s indeed a typical case of sinking-sinking-drinking-water. The water, like the air, is dirty. Reeking of poison and bile and vicious substances manufactured like consent.
And you can’t even protest against the air you breathe!
Those who have studied politics as an interdisciplinary subject intrinsic in social sciences, philosophy, arts, culture and literature, lived and practiced it as a principle of hope, in the remote mappings of the margins, far away from the cushy, addictive trappings of the power establishment, know it too well. Like a kid playing hide and seek, chooses to shut his eyes thinking she/he will not be discovered, you just can’t hide anymore, despite all the pseudo comfort zones of trappings and mappings you have carved out for yourself. Detachment then becomes a seductive nightmare, a never-ending stasis of stagnation, a delusion of not accepting the testimony of daily defeat.
No, you can’t hide. This evil in the air will get you, anyway, any which way you can hide, eyes shut. Like that famous Pastor Martin Niemolar poem (1946): First they came for the … and I did not speak out… Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
From one geography to another, the banana republic’s well-oiled wheels roll on like a mechanical nightmare in action replay, fast forward, on and on, onwards! It does not care for ethical conduct, or the stated conventions of a democracy; it cares a damn if the whole world is outraged. They have allies, and they are not skin-deep. This is because truth has already been slaughtered in cold blood, like the women and children of Gaza.
All distances shall close in. The object might seem far, but it is closer than it seems. Just look at your cracked mirror. Don’t shut your eyes. It won’t help.
In these post-abnormal times, all that is fake and sold out, is loud, successful and cacophonic. The only paradigm shift is despair, often exiled in stark silence which no one wants to see or hear. This is a different kind of twilight zone. A modern, diabolical mask of everyday doomsday. Almost invisible.
From the Andamans kala pani, to the slave ships and racist shores of the goddamned ‘free world’ of the white supremacists, their skins and teeth and faces rotting with bad faith and bad language, it is not difficult to see the repetitive unfolding of history’s ceaseless march from one barbarism into another. Only the weapons have changed. While the weapons of the weak seem to have remained the same.
And, yet, is there any other option but to dig in?
With words and silences, images, still and moving, black and white pictures, charcoal sketches, spoofy cartoons and colourful comic strips, parallel cinema, the magic of animation, independent media, documentary and fiction, flowers, books and dreams, insomnia and mountain springs, the soft stillness of a winter morning sunshine, and the dark, sheltered warmth of a freezing night. With fingers and eyes, heart and soul, senses and instincts, solitude and solidarity. Dig in, I say. Feel the moist, dew-soaked winter earth with your hands, eyes and eyelashes, lips and caresses, whispers and poetry. Resurrect!
Listen to Jean Paul Sartre, in this brilliant preface to the epical Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fannon:
“A new generation came on the scene, which changed the issue. With unbelievable patience, its writers and poets tried to explain to us that our values and the true facts of their lives did not hang together, and that they could neither reject them completely nor yet assimilate them. By and large, what they were saying was this: ‘You are making us into monstrosities; your humanism claims we are at one with the rest of humanity but your racist methods set us apart…’
… Listen: ‘Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience.’ The tone is new. Who dares to speak thus? It is an African, a man from the Third World, an ex-‘native’. He adds: ‘Europe now lives at such a mad, reckless pace that she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to keep away from it.’ In other words, she’s done for. A truth which is not pleasant to state but of which we are all convinced, are we not, fellow-Europeans, in the marrow of our bones?…”
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And yet, Europe shows the way. In each day of resistance. The longest standing ovation in the history of the Venice Film Festival was for a brave film on six-year-old Hind Rijab, her fragile body riddled with 335 bullets by 25 plus armed men of the IDF, while she pleaded for help on a helpline. Elders in their 80s and 90s, some in wheel chairs, black and white, men and women, ready to go to prison, while branded as ‘terrorists’ by Keir Starmer’s guilt-ridden police in London, Leeds, elsewhere in UK. One of them singing another version of ‘We shall overcome’ – you know, so well, we are not terrorists.
His solo becomes a collective chorus. A symphony of resistance.
Italy goes for three total shutdowns. Schoolkids and mothers join dockworkers, university students, writers and artists, singing songs of solidarity with the homeless people of a ravaged Gaza. Packed concerts becoming arenas of protest. Football stadiums erupting with the colours of the Palestine flag. City after city have exploded. Slogans of mass resistance resonate like a memory in slow motion. Like graffiti in long hand, on a faded brick wall, written yesterday.
And then arrives a smiling young immigrant from New York, touching hands and hearts, ready to take on the mighty empire of white billionaires, and racist deep pockets, with their media and war machines of mass murders, and their phobia of mythical commies –Reds under the Beds! He does not fudge or doublespeak – he speaks it right on their faces. Yes, it is a genocide in Gaza, he says. He stands with the suffering and aspirations of ordinary folks, across race and colour, and he means it. No wonder, he sparks optimism and joy all over the world.
Ditto in Spain and Ireland. And in campuses across Europe and the US. On the streets and public squares. Everyday a new song emerges in the horizon, solo, shared, sung alone and in chorus, becoming an international anthem in the social media. Like Bella Ciao!
When emotions and melodies of resistance touch the deepest chord of the soul, become so intensely popular, viral, loved, sung in private and public spaces, how can you condemn them in prison?
I tell you, nothing is immortal. Nothing lasts forever. Not even banana republics.
