Yesterday, Saturday 21st of October, hundreds of thousands marched in London, under Palestinian flags. Their chants were carefully chosen. I didn’t go. I cannot explain why. It has to do with the fact that it seems like we are all monitoring each other’s opinions. 

I did go to the pro–Ukraine protests on the 26th of March. I felt many things. My heart sank. I heard chanting in Ukrainian. I saw broken faces. I also saw almost more journalists than people who were not. A lot of flags. Too many to my liking. Someone had a sign with Putin drawn like a dick. Was that supposed to be funny? A random guy saw a sign regarding Chernobyl and yelled: IS PUTIN THE GUY WHO ALSO BOMBARDED CHERNOBYL???  

The chanting kept going; STOP PUTIN STOP THE WAR!

I understand the need for a specific message calling for action but I cannot help to think that something was missing in the discourse. I saw a sign comparing Putin with Hitler, everything with a humorous kind of flavour. 

I also saw a gentleman summoning the Budapest memorandum of security from 1994 and demanding the ban of Russia from SWIFT. At the time I didn’t know what any of those things were. Thanks to that gentleman, I kind of know now. 

Conflicted and emotional, I left. I felt almost sick. But above all; angry. Angry that some people took the opportunity to create funny signs and cheeky slogans. Angry that political activism is the next trend that capitalism is going to digest.

Angry that some people just couldn’t grasp the fact that has (almost) nothing to do with a single despotic man being drunk on power. And me, a privileged Spanish (BASQUE!) individual having the audacity to even try to analyse the situation as if it was a chess game. 

 When people were being killed. 

It felt like we were not doing enough, like we missed the point. And I think we did, although I am still not completely sure why. I don’t know if it’s better for fewer people to show up if those people will not take away the legitimacy of the cause. This is why I didn’t go to the pro-Palestine march. I don’t need to justify myself, but writing it down also declutters my thought process. I couldn’t fathom people performing for the socials or trying to be funny in a situation like this. I had some friends in the march, and reportedly, the right energy was summoned, and no cause was delegitimised. 

You can go to Instagram or Facebook and literally open any profile. Right now, everyone is a Ukraine expert. Everyone is a Middle East conflict expert. Everyone knows the facts, and they are sharing posts left and right, because how could we not?

How could we stay quiet? How could we keep our social media free of political content in these tough times? Right?

Sharing political content on Instagram feels like carrying one of those distasteful signs. It feels dirty. It feels like joking about Putin in a serious pro-Ukraine march. It feels like trying to come up with a comedic sign for a pro-Palestine protest. It feels like stirring the pot, it feels like producing bullshit. 

Thet say that ‘if you are not angry, you are not paying attention’.

I understand the thought behind it and the reasons why someone might say it. And I do feel angry most of the time when I read the news a bit too much. However, whenever someone does use this sentence, it always comes off as an intent to climb up to a higher moral ground. A contest to see who the most informed academic person is. A contest to see who the biggest sufferer corporate worker is. As if the person who would post and share more would somehow care more.

This makes me angrier; makes the noise in the media louder and makes us all stray further from what matters. I don’t want to go in deep on what is going on in the world right now, not because I am afraid of not saying the right things, but because I am not an authority, and therefore, I should keep my thoughts to myself.

But;

I am not afraid to write down that if you are not against fascism, you are a fascist. 

I am not afraid to write down that enlightened centrists are cowards. I hate being reductive when talking about politics but, it’s like the far left wants to get everyone’s basic needs and the far right is willing to do anything (including exterminating entire social groups based on whatever thing they find fitting) just to keep the status quo, and there they are, the centrists, telling us that both sides seem to be ‘too much’.

I am not afraid of saying that, when Meta has officially apologised for adding ‘terrorist’ to some Palestinian user bios, is very clear who is the one cooking in this kitchen.

I am not afraid to say that I don’t want to see any memes or humoristic interpellations on this matter. 

I am not afraid of saying that we shouldn’t be asking the same rhetorical questions over and over again. 

I loathe this obsession with infantilising everything, even if the masses need to be spoon-fed. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? There are, indeed, good guys and bad guys but they are not easily identifiable. Because humans are complicated. Because years and years of oppression make a conflict convoluted. Because we should probably stop putting people who are preparing for the collapse of our society in positions of power.

Tomorrow, I need to wake up early and go to work. Tomorrow, I will perform menial tasks, while people are being killed.

And here I am, a white European Basque guy, trying to communicate how angry I am, while people are being killed.

At this moment, I feel slightly paranoid. I feel a little bit scared. I can see my privileged lifestyle going down like a house of cards shortly. And I ask myself: what can I do?

I don’t have the answers. But I will try to be mindful of what I share. I will try to educate myself. I will try to ask. I will try to never assume and to always build my own opinion using critical thinking.

I will avoid freely posting and sharing empty absolutes that mean nothing, and I will champion real-life activism over the digital performative one. This is about people trying to convince savages that we need to treat human beings like human beings. An oxymoron.  

And here I am, still privlieged, still geographically far way from any major conflict, still typing, without knowing very well if I am performing or not.

I guess I will feel angry and go to work.