Short 🧵I am at Edinburgh Book Fest to talk about my new book. And it feels like there are two realities: one of business as usual and the other inahibited by those consumed by Western funded, armed, supported genocides. We sit in the same room, walk the same streets but…
1/n
…we live in different matetial, emotional, psychological, MORAL universes. Those of us broken each day by the genocides of our stranger-kin in Gaza, Sudan, Congo recognise each other from glint of tears in our eyes, hushed words of grief, and desperate soothing hugs
2/n
And the others: there are glares and eye rolls when they think we don’t see (or perhaps they only pretend they don’t want us to see). Some grumble and harrumph. But the most revealing: they do not meet our eyes? Out of shame? Guilt? Fear? Hatred? Disgust?
3/4
Short 🧵to address this “why alienate allies?” rhetoric that emerges every time we critique White Feminists. ONLY allies I recognise are those who are working towards complete and comprehensice end of the global imperialist capitalist white supremacist heteropatriarchy
And working towards complete, comprehensive indivisible justice. This requires recognising that Western wealth and privilege are built, sustained and perpetuated by historical and ongoing enslavement, extractivism, resource theft and genocide
“Allies” have to not merely recognise this fact but actively challege, undermine, subvert and dismmantle these structures of injustice.
And they must do so without tone policing, without expecting gratitude and without threat of withholding their ‘allyship’
🧵For 77+ years, Israel has operated on one principle: change the facts on the ground - apartheid, forced expulsion, ethnic cleansing, genocide - and US-UK-W Europe will ensure that becomes the new reality for the region, regardless of international law 1/n
This principle has ensured Israel seized far more land in 1948 than granted by Western colonial states. Let’s not pretend that in 1948, there was any substantial opposition to US-UK-W Europeab colonial hegemony. Soviets were reeling after WW2 and China was in civil war)
Former Western colonial powers gave cover and support to the Nakba in 1948 just as they are doing now. Palestinians were expelled and murdered en mass and then blamed and demonised for not leaving and dying quietly.
And in short term, do things: adopt a fundraiser. Boost colonised voices. Organise, talk, write. Support minoritised/colonised businesses in your community and online. Boycott, push for divestment and sanctions. Pressure your leaders.
Be that dissenting voice in rooms where few colonised can be present. And yes, this means being the ‘nuisance.’ Becoming the ‘difficult one.’ And yes it takes strength snd courage and endurance because it’s a daily, ongoing project.
It’s the only way to break the deliberately constructed solipsism that keeps people of conscience at the imperial core chained to the horrors inflicted in their name, again and again.
Short 🧵For 20 months now, we have borne witness to the livestreamed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. We must talk of the moral injury caused by bearing witness (links in replies). But we should note that people who are looking away and silent will bear greater moral injury
We experience moral injury when we perpetrate, fail to prevent, or witness events - most often of violence - that contradict or transgress our moral beliefs, norms and expectations. Soldiers often suffer moral injury. As do children in situations of familial violence
One can argue that the modern army (with its colonial roots) is constructed on inflicting moral injury on its own personnel. This ensures that they are ‘immunised’ to moral injury that may emerge from their actions. This is immunisation has been central colonial violence.
Huge respect Francesca, and specially for your untiring work but sorry, this IS exactly the Europe you belong to!
Going by info on Wikipedia, you were born in the midst of the Cambodian genocide. You began primary school during the Guatemala genocide. 1/n
You were at school during the second phase of Burundi genocide. And through it all, the East Timor genocide continued in phases. Then there was Bosnia, Paraguay, Rwanda, The Congo, Somalia. The list continues. And this is only the period till you reached adulthood
These are all colonial genocides, dirctly or indirectly supported, enabled, funded and armed by the colonial powers. With foundations in centuries of (mostly) European colonial enterprise. Rarely have Europeans - individually or collectively - been held accountable