So… #Gaza is still trending on social media, as the genocide enters its 220th day.
And maybe it’s the cynic in me, or I’ve been through this cycle too many times, but for some reason I am thinking of lessons learned from #Kony2012
Remember Kony 2012? It was supposed to be the big moment – social media trending tags actually CHANGING something – actually getting a horrific war criminal to the ICC? Joseph Kony, remember? The guy who tried the coup against Museveni in Uganda, Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army -Christian extremists (dominion theology) – resulting from colonial mind-sets imposed by the empire that never slept – the Brits. No? Not ringing any bells?
Hmm – it was a big trending topic, it was a film by a white guy who was convinced that if he could just get #Kony2012 to trend on Twitter, that would get this violent child soldier turned adult soldier turned crucifier of children to the International Criminal Court.
But it didn’t. And 12 years later, he’s still at large in South Sudan, doing the deep and dirty work of the (now multinational) business empire by continuing his brutality to allow the multinational corps’ resource extraction of gold, oil, rubber, diamonds, gold and of course coltan from the Congo – to power the mini devices that every human must now allegedly have and own.
Oh, and Museveni’s also still in power in the banana republic (equivalent of Honduras when the US was using it as its base to attack El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 80s) of Uganda. His name means ‘of the seventh’ which was the brigade his dad fought with in WWII for the British. Why was WWII being fought in Uganda, you ask? To which I reply: why was ‘World War I’? And why have those wars of colonial empire never actually ended, 100+ years later? Why is the only threat to the ‘benevolent monarchy’ of Museveni coming from a right-wing US-shadow-funded Christian militia group, you ask? Good question. Hmmm….could it be: empire?
I just really don’t want #Gaza to be the next trending term that gets forgotten next season, next year. It’s so easy for trends to be a big thing for a minute, then the crackdown happens. Then, those who pushed the hardest end up graduating, and those who are left are stuck with debt and bills and student organizations that are suspended and broke while the university’s endowment just keeps investing in genocide. People turn back to themselves, to their own problems. Because the system has us all in check. Constantly checking our phones, our devices, our work to ensure that we’re working. And another generation gets sold on the lie – and return to a self-centered void. Somewhere in between we are suspended in happiness and horror – in between the two every day.
As Nora Barrows-Friedman wrote a few hours or days or weeks ago (time has become irrelevant in these 220 days – we all live between a series of images – the sounds of screams in our ears, ringing constantly as we see the next horror on the feed – Telegram, TikTok, Twitter – though the algorithm keeps pushing it down to distract us, it keeps coming back. Because it is real. And it is surreal. And it is happening right now, in front of our watching, crying eyes and hurting ears and gasping mouths and shaking hands as we scroll and cry and shout and march in disbelief and horror that this is happening and continues to happen and the world is just letting it happen despite what we are seeing every single day): “every single day I see the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
When we think it can’t get any worse, it can. And it does.
And yet…
and yet.
The students are in the streets – as we were, over and over and over again.
But it feels different this time. Am I wrong?
Have we ever seen this much outright support for Palestine?
And in the midst of the height of fear/election season in the ol’ US of Amreeka.
Where people used to be afraid to whisper the word Palestine – we are seeing it shouted in the streets on the daily, we are seeing the students stand up to the shock troops of empire and push back and gain ground and take space and hold it – with nothing more than the power of their words, their truth, their privilege that gives them the right to protest, when those they are standing for have only one right: to be bombed. Over and over and over and over again.
How much punishment must the people of Gaza be subjected to for what are actually the crimes of Europe? Because that is what we are seeing with the pounding of schools and hospitals with 2,000 pound bombs – over and over and over and over again. Revenge for October 7th? That was surpassed in the first two weeks – if it were ‘an eye for an eye’, well they got their 1100 dead within 2 weeks in October. But the bombing continued. The raining of bombs on families, fleeing and running for cover. In November our hearts bled for Reem, with her Princess Leia buns in her grandfather’s arms as he wailed to the heavens “Soul of my soul”, and we hoped against hope in late November, when Hamas released dozens of hostages – who smiled, shook hands, gave hugs, took with them puppies and joy to be free. But the hope was short-lived, as those hostages returned to the normal life of consumer capitalism in Tel Aviv and Haifa, and the Gazans remained in an open-air prison, under the rain of bombs and the invasion of ground troops – many of whom had hopped planes from the US, Brazil, France and England to join the fight against “Amalek” as Netanyahu put it – a biblical reference that means: kill all – women, children, infants, leave no structure or even an animal alive.
And we have seen it. For 220 days now we have seen it.
Is it enough to push us to action?
Real action?
Using our American privilege — as I just saw one activist for Palestine post: Privilege isn’t something to be ashamed of, but a blanket you can share with all who are cold – and I would add: a voice you can use for all whose voices are panting in fear as they run from one displaced persons camp to another, with no safe place in all of the open-air prison of Gaza.
Will this moment be another #Kony2012? Forgotten by the summer, as trends move on to other things?
Or will this be the moment that pushes the whole world out of tired, self-centered complicity into a movement that finally ends this age of empires and brings us back into connection with each other as human beings?
It’s up to us. So …. which will it be?
