Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Or: Ambulance Chasing All the Way to the Xenophobia Hospital (On Identity Politics in Montreal)
Prologue
On March 9th, 2011, in Midan El-Tahrir in Egypt, the Egyptian military arrested an estimated 18 women. They tortured them and carried out “virginity tests” to be able to prosecute them for “prostitution” – a charge any unmarried woman who is not a virgin faces in most of the Arab world. In Egypt “prostitution” carries a punishment of up to seven years, and obviously social and cultural death if not an honor killing by the families. Women faced persecution for taking part in protests and various occupations of the square because of this case, combined with horrendous sexual assaults by security forces in the Midan. This story on its own reflects the severe consequences of conservative society. Conservatism is anti-insurrection, developed and encouraged by states to control ‘the crowd’ and ‘the people’. When every random aunty is an informant, and every random uncle is a prosecutor, who needs the state anyway? In the fight for freedom across these conservative communities, the fight against the state is one and the same with the fight against the dogma of religion and culture. In essence, a rebellion against “community”, the watchdogs of the state, cannot be separated from the fight against the state.
During the first intifada, Gaza was both the flame and the land of the intifada, it was a feminist intifada, a Palestinian women’s Intifada. The Islamists, including so-called feminists, and their allies, people who just learned to use the word revolutionary, freedom fighter, or even martyr, do a better job rewriting the intifada’s history than Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, or any Israeli propagandist could ever dream of. The intifada started in December 9th 1987, and ended in 1991, when it was sold out in negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and the Israelis in the Madrid Conference. More than 65% of Palestinian women in Gaza and the West Bank were active in the intifada in consistent commitment and capacity.
A brief run-through: in 1987 most of the Palestinian Authority and political parties were in exile. The men who did not manage to be in exile were either in prison or killed. When an Israeli vehicle ran over four Palestinians in Jabalia camp (the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza and the one that just got leveled to the ground in Israel’s most recent genocide), riots broke out immediately. Issac Rabin ordered the Israeli military to use unlimited force to crush the riots, which led to the largest demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience that Palestine had ever witnessed, all led by Palestinian women: feminist unions, Palestinian women militants, and Palestinian women in all the different political parties. They organized the marches, the riots, mutual aid, educational campaigns, neighborhood security, prisoner supports, prison riots, checkpoint riots, border riots, student and worker strikes.
When the Madrid Conference happened, women were still in “the streets” when they heard the news of the conference – they did not know that it was unfolding. Some of the women organizers boycotted the conference because they were fundamentally against negotiations and felt they could go further by not submitting to them. Some boycotted them for not being included, and others felt that they were betrayed by their comrades – because they didn’t share with them their plans of starting negotiations. To their total dismay and shock, the Palestinian comrades in exile initiated the negotiations in hopes of the return of “the men” from exile to “govern” and establish the Palestinian Authority in both the West Bank and Gaza.
Most of the Palestinian women who took part in the Intifada and ended up serving time left prison to a completely different reality than when they entered. They were shunned by the political scene and a conservative community that could no longer recognize them.
Within months of “the men” being back from exile, Palestinian women’s unions, affinities, and community organizations were shut down or had their role diluted because the “gun-waving real revolutionary militants” were back from exile. They had just sold out the Palestinian refugees in the camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria and jumped into the new project of fighting from “behind enemy lines”.
The negotiations were a sellout not for excluding Palestinian women, but for the delusions of supposedly winning a right to govern territories that are still getting swallowed whole by the Israelis. ‘Stop the Intifada and you get the right for political parties to enter the territories armed and all, with elections and a government.’ Who stops a rebellion to earn the right to govern over occupied colonized territories? Fools and traitors.
A hard truth to reflect on, in the face of the history of resistance and blood spilled with pure courage and a belief in freedom. That’s what authoritarians will always do though, and it’s not unique to the Palestinians. Some idiots on the “left” think pointing out this history will only benefit ‘the right’, as if ‘the right’ and Zionists need help with their work. As if any narrative ever managed to stop a genocide or liberate an olive tree. So we are shushed in times of peace and in times of war. Sometimes, I get to be shushed by random white people for not committing to Hamas revolutionary doctrine (the thawabet). To be clear, this history (women organizing the Intifada and the contradictory outcome of authoritarian governance) is needed to imagine a revolt or to claim the abilities to resist and fight, beyond the anti-insurrectional powers of Hamas — or other political parties who came to rise by negotiating on the back of what the Palestinian movement and Palestinian resistance managed to establish. Since their fight is for authority over Gaza, their first enemy is not Israel, but the people, just like any wannabe state. Acknowledging how political parties use resistance movements to claim authority is not a dismissal of affinity for freedom fighters, for those that show us how to resist from the bleakest of places. The spirit of rebellion does not emerge from Hamas or the PA and will exist beyond them and oftentimes despite them. To critique the authoritarians is to increase the capacity for the fight. Freedom cannot come to be by practicing what you are fighting against. Authoritarians are not the voice of the rebellion, they are the leeches that steal its soul.
During the Syrian revolution, every Friday’s mass demonstrations saw political debates with the Islamists who pushed to start every demonstration at the mosque. The Sunni saw the repression of the Assad regime against the Muslim Brotherhood and any religious organizing as an attack on freedom. And thus, a fight for freedom is a fight for religious affiliation. It was suddenly an established fact that the Sunni, the religious majority in Syria, were the most repressed under Assad – regardless of class, or proximity to governmental and economic power. So people who have never seen the inside of a mosque used to wait outside it for Friday prayers to end so they could start the march. Another debate: as allahu akbar became a chant in the streets — ‘God is the greatest’ — leftists still found a way of swallowing it – because if you squint your eyes enough, you will see that it is a revolutionary chant, since it is dismissing the power of the state and military by stating that God is greater than all.
I don’t want to go into what came of the Syrian revolution, but rest assured a new term was invented as the response to the aftermath of Assad’s fall and the ISIS takeover, it’s called Al-Mathlomiye Alsunnia as in the victimized Sunni mentality. It is inspiring all the ethnic cleansing, the religious repression, the political repression, and the push for absolute control over women’s bodies. You see, it was never established in the Syrian revolution that authority is the enemy, or that oppression is wrong. What was established and cemented is that the Sunni should rule, and they should not be oppressed. That’s it, that is the reality we live in in its wake, the reality that was crystal clear within 6 months of the Syrian revolution. The Syrians with all their sacrifices, with all their courage, with all their pain, remind us yet again of a lesson as old as time: pain does not make truth, pain and suffering and the overcoming of that suffering doesn’t always lead to revolution, to freedom, or even to justice. I mean just look at the Zionist project with its weaponizing of Jewish history and the Holocaust. Beyond the idea that pain in itself is not enough to make a path of justice or truth, courage in itself (while venerated) should not be a truth teller, the Joulani government winning the Syrian crown as an award for the sacrifices of the Syrian Sunni. The motto of this failed kingdom of God is “those who liberate decide”. The Syrian revolution with its protesters facing live ammunition with their bodies, as people created neighborhood councils, liberated areas, and shut down infrastructure, put your average anarchist in North America to absolute shame. That courage alone was not enough, and could never be enough. The revolution and its ideal is essential. No authority should be gained as a reward for the revolution: making the revolutionaries themselves into emperors just gives us another enemy.
Racism evolved its claws to become identity politics, so the first story about Egypt is to point out the obvious: community is not a static unit, community is ever-evolving and made up of its people with all their social conditions and their contradictions. Community, when we essentialize it as a unchallenged, protected category, will often be the voice of hetero-normative, conservative, male and religious authority. The second story about Palestine is to challenge the idea that resistance is based on command: that authoritarians are those who plant the seeds of resistance rather than those who suppress it. Highlighting the voices of authoritarians is a betrayal of all those who fought and will continue to fight. The words of the resistance and its people will not be found in the mouths of those who rule them. The third story about Syria is to point out that learning from each other and having empathy with all of this wretched earth’s pain should never be a ticket to impose one’s will or control. Those with the deepest wounds are not cleansing our sins the more they bleed, and they are not liberating us with their pain. Perhaps if we stopped the fantasy of Jesus on a cross for our salvation, we will see their humanity and we will fight for freedom rather than be busy worshiping those who fight or suffer. The embarrassment of having to say any of this is not because I don’t mean what I say, it’s because I don’t believe the participants in identity politics believe what they say. They are the ones who define who is the voice of the community after all. They are the ones who choose which is the voice of the resistance, and they are the ones who choose which pain we should acknowledge, because none of these social categories will ever have only one voice. The identity politicians are not concerned with listening, they are the playwrights, and they cast the actors based on an aesthetic, then justify their cast by attacking your identity, like dogs with rabies that do not ever want to be challenged. This prologue is an insult to my brain, because I engage with the idiotic excuses of identity politicians. As if they come from a place of logical thought, rather than pure lust to be rulers.
II
Montreal, October 2023: Early on, the demos for Palestine started rolling, after hesitation from many anarchists. When they finally started to show up, they saw their role precisely as one of representation. In one instance, a bunch of Arab kids took up some space and started getting rowdy at an action. Some anarchists walked up to their comrades asking them to support the kids. The response: we, anarchists, are there as guests, this is not our place. With another banner team responding with a no because the banner had their organization’s name on it. One kid got arrested. I don’t know why anyone would feel like a guest at a demo, I’ve never suffered from that mental illness, but for anarchists in Montreal to feel like guests they must have divorced themselves from the role of their empire in genocide and settler colonialism. I guess the point is you stop being a settler if you are just a guest, you stop being a part of the empire if you change your identity. Just a badge you have to wear, and there you are, absolved from any consequences that the system that serves you imposes. You don’t have to fight it. You just need to identify as an anarchist. As if it’s a descriptive identity not a practiced one.
At a meeting where we discussed not wanting to organize with an Islamist DJ bro wannabe political group, a comrade mentioned that they found it very important not to work with them, due to past history, and experiences with the bros (who were organizers and agitators of an anti-trans march). An anarchist who was present at the meeting as a representative of an anarchist queer group, jumped to assert that “as a queer person I don’t mind marching with transphobes, because this is not about me this is about Palestine”. A friend and comrade who I’m quite sure looked “white passing” at least to this brain-rotten comrade mentioned that the two issues are not separate, and it’s a simple question of not platforming them, rather than kicking them out. Another queer white anarchist jumped in, “we need to listen to the community, and not center ourselves”. The friend who is a Palestinian lesbian and a recent immigrant started shedding tears in silence, tears of an anger she would like me to clarify. My comrade did not go to another anarchist space or meeting, and the two white comrades burned out two months later, my wager is that they were exhausted from not centering themselves, and went back to their “usual spaces”. I don’t think they ever developed the brain power to realize how xenophobic they are, they essentialized homophobia and transphobia as cultural phenomena of the Arabs. A cultural heritage they must respect because it is not their community or their fight. They get to go back to their insufferable, curated, and safe tenderqueer white spaces, because we all know that homophobia is not part of the white settler culture! The Palestinian queers “if they existed” must stay within the voting bloc of these homophobes, because how many fucking caucuses under these identity politics can they get? Dare they one-up the “as a queer person” by saying “as a queer Palestinian” oh the pure horrors! You must protect the voting caucus at all cost. First rule of identity politics is to establish the uniqueness of your own identity in ways that reserve you a platform. After all, you are so unique, as a white person. The colored as they are must remain just colored, otherwise you will never get to speak as a white person. Protect your identity and its uniqueness at all costs, and diminish the complexity of others. You must rule.
Those who were getting bombed were represented by those who are mostly upper-middle class brown kids facing an identity crisis, they are conservative, pro-capitalist, and were leading figures in a political debate just because of their identity. Many immigrant communities tend to be conservative and pro-capitalist with insecure identity attachment that makes their claim of belonging to their home country as authentic as Dubai chocolate is to Middle Eastern desserts. But the booklet of identity politics for dummies does not allow such nuances by design, because identity politics is not there to start a discussion or promote understanding, identity politics is there to institute authority and shut down conversations. Your identity is just a claim for a speaking turn at the big revolutionary mic.
Then there was the camp, where the DJ bros had a big dick to swing now, thanks to the stroking of the queer and femme white allies. They started manipulating prayer times to make excuses for missing general assemblies, imposed halal zones (no gender mixing) and collaborated with cops openly and shamelessly. Any critique they received was Islamophobic. Any challenge they got was a challenge to the Palestinian voice. Did they want to take risks? No, they were there to represent. Other white allies also saw the camp as a place to LARP as a Palestinian refugee, some even saw that they got to be in a new category. They were the ones who are struggling for Palestine now, their body is on the line! They are sleeping in the camp, they are on the front line. Gaza’s borders moved to the lawn at McGill. Isn’t it so beautiful? Gaza is everywhere, the bombs are everywhere. How beautiful, they are no longer settlers of Canada, they are Palestinians! We are all Palestinians! Therefore those sleeping in the camp must get a bigger say on Palestine. At a general assembly, PYM announced that their legal fund will only cover those who get approvals for their actions from PYM. When I challenged it, a white comrade held me back, reminding me that we the anarchists have our own resources. I disagreed because my people in that moment were anyone in the camp, and an open challenge to idiotic decisions was needed if not for me, then for other less experienced people who were going to get fucked by identity politics. The unchallenged submission to the idiotic takes of PYM, M4P, SPHR, and finally anarchists for hire made it less of a political scene and more of a theater. The fact that the anarchists allowed themselves to participate in this clownery of general assemblies diluted both their politics and the quality of their actions. When finally there was a push to leave the encampment, two other immigrant women took offense at my vote because it differed from that of a Palestinian woman. I was told that “if my opinions were worth anything, I would see it as my duty to be supportive of the Palestinian woman”, yet ironically the same was not told to her. Because the two actually agreed with her, hence my opinion became a betrayal of my identity, and I am sure if they had agreed with me, that poor fellow Palestinian would have been at the receiving end of the weaponized tears (actual tears!) instead, until they made her submit to my opinion.
I would love to add here that I foolishly thought the moronic stands and shameless takes of many anarchists were due to a lack of experience in internationalist struggles, entrenched Zionism in Canadian culture, classic racism, and perhaps lack of clarity on worthy targets or projects to engage in. However, thanks to an onslaught of challenges, intentional feedback and conversations, the lack of success in even making a dent in the killing machine pushing us to review methods, and genuinely quick burnout from allies, I thought we were arriving somewhere. You see naively I thought the constant weaponizing of identity politics made people resentful of it. I assumed we were all able to clearly point it out as counter-insurgent and counter-revolutionary. Who am I though if not just another fool?
When Abisay was shot by the police, the identity politics came back in full force. Was it the first-ever police violence any of these so-called comrades had heard about? No. Was it about far-away people who they cannot understand? No. Was it about a system they have never lived under and forces that operate in ways they don’t know? No. Nonetheless, we were swamped with accusations of ambulance-chasing (or being “opportunistic”). White voices were the loudest to say that it’s not our place, it’s not our people, it’s not our neighborhood. You would think that if someone hears themselves othering people as a weird foreign species, they would realize that they sound more like fascists than allies, but that was not the case. You see? We had to submit to the idea that anarchists never interact with the police, anarchy is for whites only, and we all are middle-class or wealthy white college kids. We exceptionalize anarchy so much, and we spend years analyzing why we are not connecting with others, or why the space is so white. Perhaps because you yourself define it as a white space? But what do I know, I am just a stupid angry brown woman. The family, which had a clear and honest split between angry escalation and passive voices, saw the anarchists center the passive voices, bad-jacketing other anarchists and even threatening them if they engaged in what seemed like escalation. We are just there to grieve. As if grieving someone you don’t know, even more, who you would never want to know, because anarchy is only for whites, is a more honest position than attacking the police that you have your own vendetta against.
The white people who benefit from the system did not find it ironic that their vote was to be passive, to attack nothing, to burn nothing. They were the justice warriors waving the white flag to announce times of mourning. The community who live with daily police violence were cast as non-fighters, whose culture of passivity is now platformed by the pure souls of the white anarchists. We “the warriors of justice for hire” are just listening in on what the people want from us. We echoed the lines that the police issue in their statements after every killing, that if people are cute and obey the law, no one would die. That police violence is predictable and can be worked with in logical ways, we control the police violence. How fucking shameful. Escalated or not, burning a police station or not, these communities will always be hunted by the police, we are not bringing danger to them, if anything we could have managed to give them a breather by pushing the police for once to chase someone else. (But don’t take my word for it. Look at a few months later when they killed Nooran Rezayi and respected our politics by thinking we will lose our shit, and once nothing happened, they came back to reign terror on his friends with house raids at nine addresses. It is kind of sad that the police take us more seriously than we take ourselves!)
Pardon my digression, back to the far-away lands of Saint-Michel. When escalation arose, and the no-fucks-to-give among us were there to be active, to offer maalox, de-arrest, or simply reroute a confused brutalized crowd, we were seen as opportunistic adrenaline junkies who came to the suburb to put the community in danger. Those accusations were from comrades not the community. I don’t remember hearing it from people who I held hands with, who protected me and I them, when we had each other’s back. But I did hear it from white comrades who chose to come unmasked and unready, who could not even help a brutalized person up off the pavement, because they had “no masks on”. Those who came to the suburb to do virtue signaling as the good grieving white people. Forget escalation. Who is looking for an opportunity here? Why was it so important to you that a grieving racialized community see your ugly ass white faces? Did you want a hug from the angry brother? Did you want to be seen in pain? Were you trying to say that not all the white people are bad? Did you want to see them, or did you want them to see you? Alas, I the opportunist who cannot get my adrenaline anywhere else. You are the honest ones!
The anarchists and activists who have lived in the city for god knows how many years decided that you cannot act without social ties, so now is the time for community barbecues and relationship building. They could not have thought of the community-building projects before the shooting. When did the idea of connecting with the racialized community come up? After the killing, when it was trending on the news. That’s exactly what those dumbass, fool community members will see as the basis of an honest, reliable and truthful relationship. Well let me tell you my friend… Growing up in the slums of the camp made me immune to the NGO-y breath of allies arriving with their exciting plans and hot projects, those onlookers who came to visit us like they visit the zoo. Those who needed us for their project grants, those who needed us for their case study in the academic hall of fame, and those who down the line will mention how they connected with us on a date when they are trying to pursue the bleeding heart of a white woman. We smell you, no amount of raggedy clothes will cover your stench. No tears will make our pain one. To act from a place of honesty is the only thing you can do. Can I bring back Abisay with a riot? No. Can I stop future killing from happening if I learned about his favorite color or his route to school? No. Was he a unique special case? No. The idea that police violence can be taken as anything less than a systematic force that needs to be fought, whether or not one can testify in detail to how they’ve been personally impacted, will only benefit the police. Can we disagree on strategy? Sure. So: I think that police should be scared of us, we as a community can show force and anger, submission comes to you piece by piece stealing your soul until you are nothing but an obedient cog in the machine. Anger and vengeance make us connect with one another, anger makes us a threat so maybe the police will kill less, at least until we take them down. I just want to make them run away scared. That’s it, that’s my objective, I don’t want people to feel alienated, or that somehow, something could have been different about how they lived or acted that could have prevented the inevitable — the police are there to kill. Did I reach my objective? Not really I mean no police station was burned and no weeks of riots started. Was I there to play my hand and suffer its consequences? 100%. Did I run away? No. Did I only look out for or identify with the anarchists? Absolutely not. I was high-key embarrassed. Am I able to opt in and out of the fantasy of being able to limit police violence? No, and nothing will ever give me that protection.
Well then, how about you my friend? When was the second barbecue? Did your initiative end when the media left? When did you last speak to the mum? Did you drop her a fruit basket this month? Check on her? Are you able to name one new friend from the community? No. Because you are not there for a fight, but also because although you fetishize the community, and infantilize them, they are not fools. They don’t trust you, they know you won’t be there during a crackdown, and you will never be them. Your experiences with the police are lab-made in scheduled protests and fun graffiti runs. Maybe some drugs here and there, a speeding ticket. This will never change, at least not while you hold tight to your separation and unique category. Maybe when they finish killing all those of us that are colored, the immigrants, and the refugees, they will come for you the whites. Maybe only then will you not be too stressed about looking opportunistic, and you will fight and win a world safe for the white people. My wager is in that far-off future, the Irish will again not be white, the Italians will become Middle Eastern and the “us” will become smaller and smaller until you are swallowed whole. Do not worry that is not a sad end, it’s the only fantasy that helps me not punch you in the face.
This second part is an insult to my soul. For betraying my instinct and intuition, for choosing to act like I believe that people are held back from the fight by any myriad of these pretend reasons. The truth is, those who want to fight for something will always find a way, and those who look for an easy way out will always find it. Some seem to think that we should be suspicious of those who are enraged, the restless souls. That somehow we need to prove our anger, our sadness, and the place we want to fight from. How can you sleep at night though? How are you not angry? Stupid as I am, why is it suspicious when I try to practice my politics? How come it is not suspicious that you never practice yours? Are you so used to consuming the news, that you feel entitled to pictures of our body parts? Do you need me to share my stories? You want the stories of pain to munch on? If I prove to you my pain, would it calm down the rabies? How many stories though? Would my stories of the border police make me less of an adventurer? Arrests? Jail time? Cars gunned down at the camp gate? Sexual assault in exchange of no deportation? Hunger? Loss? You are not worthy. Last thing I read about white people collecting exotic body parts was the Belgians collecting hands in the Congo. You won’t consume my soul — or my history. I know it’s just a history, I am here now after all. I hold that history deep inside because I need to answer for it. You on the other hand want me to beat you into submission with the shame of not having a similar life, it’s a kink of the white allies. Not a tool for liberation. However, I want to answer for my actions, I want to tell you what I think, I want to make mistakes, to be brave, to learn from when I chicken out. I want a comradeship that challenges me, not a flock of dogs that I need to cut parts of myself to feed so they are companions on my path. I detest you.
III
I try to write every now and then, and always end up with an angry rant, inherently I do not think I have the talent for it. The suffocating repetition of this scene though makes it hard to interact, discuss, or even give or receive critique. Last October I had a major depression. I caught myself spiraling in a discussion where some people repeatedly asserted that as anarchists we should remember our positions of privilege and approach racialized and migrant communities with different, simpler projects rather than a clear political agenda. I am without status. I have no legal pathways to gaining one. So I angrily responded that I hope we stop defining anarchy as an upper-middle-class thing for white people. The white woman who I was responding to just snapped her fingers and nodded her head as in “preach sister”. I wanted to slap her soul out of her cheeks, instead I just turned red and stared at my feet. We are incapable of engaging with each other, because we actually don’t listen to each other. My spiral was due to the realization that I have become a caricature of myself, my anger is expected and awaited, to be consumed in meetings. We keep mentioning that these are white spaces, yet “they are just confused”, “it was a linguistic problem I don’t think they understand”, or better yet claiming that any mention of the Middle East even as an example is inherently a use of identity politics, when I get this feedback I am delusional if I think it is about race. Meanwhile France, Germany or even Italy is just another neighborhood in Canada. Dare I say that’s a practice of identity politics or centering whiteness or western experiences? No.
In an angry exchange with another organizer I asked him why as an anarchist he thinks it’s okay to protect his islamophobic zionist friend? He responded with: I can work with anyone, I work with the Islamists too! It’s true, he spent months centering an Islamist, campist and feminist voice and shoving her down our throat as the community representative. I wish I could go tell her his hot take that she was platformed so he can feel better about not challenging his zionist friend. No point in doing that, it will be exactly the same look an aunty gave when Arab anarchists showed up to the anti-trans demo and told her that she is marching with the fascists who want her killed and Gaza leveled, it was a look of shame, but a knowing shame that she only had to face because someone said it out loud.
Some think identity politics is helping start conversations about race or class or whatever. It is not, it is just starting an oppression marathon, just so white people feel legitimate participating. I was recently attacked by the metro tracks by an old white man who was enraged that I couldn’t speak French — it was not the first time in the city, but 3 out of the 3 francophones to whom I told this story asked me if the person was homeless. Wouldn’t you think that religiously repeating that fascism is on the rise amid ongoing obsession over language policies makes it strange for the first question to be whether the person was homeless? Of course they were not. I did not find the attack weird, but I did find the response out of place, specifically after all those conversations about “race” and how it’s not white people’s place to act. I mean if the conclusion is that we are so aware of race dynamics thanks to identity politics how come it only ever gets centered in conversations about our resistance? Quite suspicious no? Some think that the way forward is to ignore that identities exist. Just like that! As if I can wake up, decide that I am a citizen, that I do have papers, that I can go to the hospital or an airport. Others think we should just hide our identities, avoid being clearly anarchists, blend in, be whoever you want to be. Others maintain a distance between what they say and their actions. I will give you a tip, try asking them if maybe we don’t push hard enough because we don’t want to take risks. Or maybe we chickened out of escalation precisely because we don’t get bombed and we mostly don’t go hungry? You will see that people will be livid. They will reject such accusations, and you will be lucky to be merely the idiotic anarchist leading people into danger. It’s always: the time was not right because we do not have the public support, or the plan was stupid because it will bring repression, or we need to build communities to be able to act from them. How come it’s a given that the space is white and privileged, but it is not a given that maybe that’s the reason we do not act the politics we front?
Some people will not bat an eye starting every meeting with recognizing decolonized land. Our white privilege bla bla. Is this what people mean by shame is not a motivator? You think your anarchist project is to stop being ashamed of being white settlers with privileges? Do you start meeting with this is a white privileged space to disarm your biases or to just affirm your identity? Is this what they call manifestation? Were you ever ashamed though? Can you recognize what shame is? Let me help you. This is what shame looks like. At a vigil recently that SLAM held in honor of a woman who killed herself on the day of her eviction, some white comrades felt that it’s not our place to take a stand. SLAM should not have made a statement or planned an action because the woman was not part of the union, so it was “ambulance chasing” to step up. You would think shame about lack of racial diversity might have encouraged reflections on neighborhood outreach and the biases that led to a tenant union being primarily white in a city that does not struggle with diversity. That is not where the brains of these white comrades went, no, it went to do not make a statement. Do not plan an action.
A statement was written and a vigil was called. Unsurprisingly, the family was pissed, even the GoFundMe that the tenant made before her death mentioned having been cut off by her family and being in conflict with them. None of these dimwits will tolerate the voices of the family of a trans person if they knew the person had cut ties with their family, but again this person is brown, xenophobia kicks in, no analysis can withstand the exotic takes of community voices in the rigid minds of white allies.
The statement was taken down the day before the vigil, because the family said so. A statement which already did not mention her name and included an acknowledgment that SLAM didn’t know her. So here I am under the snow, tired, overworked and triggered by the trauma of a suffocating religious dogma. A white person in front of me starts the vigil with an apology to the family as they lock eyes with a media camera. If you are sorry why am I seeing your face? Why are you holding the mic? Why am I hearing your shaky tone of white fragility? Be sorry and go home! If you want to respect the family’s wishes you would have stayed home. If I am ambulance chasing, then why are you on the mic standing tall and being the white ally with the bleeding heart who is sorry to the family? Another ally joins in, “we are not here to speak of this person” (this person that no one spoke of to begin with, they were an afterthought in their own death, which was barely mentioned in news reports that led with Three police officers exposed to toxic gas), “we are here to commiserate”. The ally adds, “We have on-call mental health support!” How ironic, to deny the mental health of the dead because their family told you so, but offer mental health support to the white fucking crowd because they are a sensitive, empathetic species triggered by such a story. Another white person steps in to share their struggle against their landlord, their experiences vibrate with the anger and the frustration in the crowd, before the previous ally steps in again: “Let’s do a breathing exercise! Breathe in, breathe out. Feel your emotions”. Why are we taking deep breaths exactly? To calm down? Can you breathe your way out of an eviction?
The demo starts, about twenty stay behind, mostly the sorry allies because they need to hold the moment, don’t worry they will follow up – but they will not actively encourage participation in the march – they are just empathetic like that. They are not ambulance-chasing, they will join a march at a slow pace, conscious of every step, wallowing in their deep deep empathy. It is such a deep empathy they get lost in it, their head gets shoved up their ass and they’re stuck like a pretzel, unable to take action, and in need of community support for their hard organizing work. Incapable of being present for anything but themselves and their feelings, so fuck the person who just killed herself, fuck the family for not seeing their pure white hearts, and fuck the opportunistic angry anarchists. Later on in the demo, the police did the usual violence to comrades and then drove their car through the crowd that is now about 30. People dispersed in big buddy groups. On the way out the people of empathy had just made it, frolicking down, wondering why we dispersed and telling us how we should get back together in a community healing moment. Despicable people. Want to talk about the mental health crisis and the horrors of the conservative community? No. You just want to pick the easy way out, you are white you cannot struggle with the idea of being unliked.
You are not an ambulance chaser, because you do not want to put effort into anything but capitalizing on the image of the white savior. I hate you with all of my heart, you are the enemy, my advice to you is to chase an ambulance even once. Maybe you will make mistakes but the labor and the risk you endure will teach you to grow a spine, will force you to develop a principle to fight for and from. Maybe the ambulance will lead you to the xenophobia hospital that you so desperately need. Ambulance chasing is termed for those who gain benefits from crises like the NGOs that taught you this pacifist and idiotic theater of identity play. You want to play name calling? Let’s have fun with each other. Let’s claw at each other’s hearts until something gives.
When I die, you won’t find my family telling you anything passive, but I am sure your slimy souls will find a random aunty who once maybe knew of me who will tell you this is haram or that’s not what the community wants. When you find her, tell her that if I end up in heaven it’s only to kill God, so she better wish my death goes without the community’s blessing.
This text discusses identity politics in a limited capacity. In its essence it is a fuck-all rant. In the spirit of the insults making lines clear, it might seem like it is arguing for something, but do not be fooled. I am just trying to respect the Arab curse “I spit on you and your honor”. This disclaimer is not to protect white fragility, not at all, it’s precisely to limit the capacity to escape. I want to cut the road ahead before someone concludes with “oh well they could have been nicer about it, if they care to start a conversation”, or “the text is not really a political text so it’s hard to engage with”. I hope you don’t find it engaging, I hope it insults you, I hope it makes you angry, and defensive. In fact, if you do get insulted that might be your only redeeming quality. I am trying to insult you to find your humanity, I am trying to believe that you are not this super calculated villain. You insult me by dehumanizing me. We are not the same. Go build a fort at home and make it your safe space. Get the fuck out of my way.
#bringbackshame
Breathe in Fuck you.
Breathe out Fuck you.
Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.
Pathetic excuse of a comrade.
Namaste and shit lol.