at the beginning of the genocide i used to make a lot of posts encouraging people to speak up and thanking people for speaking up, because i know a lot of people were intimidated by manufactured complexity about the middle east, and a lot of people were scared of repercussions. and then i stopped, because it started to feel really dehumanizing to be thanking allies for the bare minimum, and because i was tired, and because i was distracted by the scope of loss
but now i've noticed that as things have gotten worse, as so many of the things we asked you to speak up before they happened have come to pass, people are actually less likely to talk about palestine than they were ten months ago. now that it's palestine and lebanon, now that it's genocide and carnage, now that it's clear that the rule of law really doesn't apply equally no matter how much people protest and how much evidence they compile, now that people are criminalizing free speech and actively inviting authoritarianism simply to curb protest on palestine, i've noticed a withdrawal that isn't just exhaustion, but also disillusionment. and unfortunately this has left the onus on the most vulnerable to continue to be the most visible
so let me get back to it. yes, it is the bare minimum and it is small. yes, it can be more complicated now with an election you care about coming up soon. yes, things are very bleak. but i've said it before. this isn't a short term process. this is the long haul. there is no button that ends a genocide, there is only a lever we are all collectively pulling together.
the least and most you can do is speak up. i will give you concrete examples: when you see a post that dehumanizes arabs, a post that ignores genocide, a post that justifies massacres, you actually should object to that. it's not nothing. this is the rhetoric that allows these wars to continue, as poisonous as overt warmongering is covert normalizing with warmongering, is ignoring the genocide in gaza and the massacres in lebanon, and all the other overreaches of the US war machine. when you see people being unfairly targeted for being pro-palestine, you should still support them. when you see the things you love—movies, celebrities, literature, publishers, companies—supporting genocide, normalizing israeli war crimes, ignoring the sheer amount of suffering in the world, ignoring the wars happening with your taxes, you should still speak up against them. this isn't something you stop doing. this is now something you live with, the way you live with every other principle you hold dear, whether it comes to racism, to homophobia, to kindness, to cruelty, to keeping libraries open, to keeping children alive.
if you remember that this is injustice, then you have a role. your role is to remind people. they haven't forgotten that they are committing injustice, they're hoping you have. and the least you can do, the very least you can do, is remind them that you haven't.
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