Being nonpolitical is a privilege
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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"I don't get into politics" is a fancy way of saying, "My rights aren't up for debate every few years."
As a Trans person I don't have the privilege of being apolitical, my very life has been politicized and I therefore must be political as a result.
Even having the state talk about doing bad things to you or those you love is incredibly oppressive.
"That law didn't even get passed. Why are you upset?"
"Well Mom, your grandchild deserves to grow up in a place where his existence isn't publicly challenged on a daily basis."
It's worse than that, you have been politicized against your will.
I have been politicized from the very moment I was born, first I was made political for being Jewish, then for having divorced parents, afterwards my Autism made me fundementally political, and now the simple act of understanding myself as a women has made me a political statement. Nearly every aspect of my life from my gender, my sexuality, my ethnicity, my religion, my background, where I live, and who my parents are have been used against me in the name of politics. Yet after everything my political views are fundementally shaped by me wishing to be left alone and wanting others to hold that same freedom (AnSynd).
For people with money to spare maybe, but being apolitical is the default state of working class people (aka the majority of voters). You don't have time to get involved in activism when it's taking all you can do to just put food on the table.
Fascism is just authoritarian capitalism, and then as now its main base of support is the middle class, meaning people with something to lose. Like, the main electoral constituency of Donald Trump is not disgruntled rust belt workers but small business owners- car dealerships, construction companies, realtors. Just like in Germany back in the day.
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/family-capitalism-and-the-small-business-insurrection/
Only tangentially related -
I once read a book by a Holocaust survivor where he said (paraphrased) that the really nice ones didn't survive the camps - the ones giving away part of their rations, the ones giving away their blankets to the sick, the ones standing up for their fellows, the ones trying to help the weaker, they were the first ones to be shot, or going into the gas chambers, or dying of hunger or disease. And those willing to be selfish were the ones more likely to survive.
Obviously no judgement or blame either way, in situations like these you'll have to do what's necessary but that point of view hit me really hard at the time "the really nice ones didn't survive the camps".
It made me truly realize the horror those camps represented, they didn't just take their belongings, or their lives, or their dignity - they robbed them of their humanity to the point where being nice to your fellow people would get you killed and that was a horrific aspect that never made it into my consciousness until I read that sentence " the really nice ones didn't survive the camps."
In highschool my German teacher's first memory was her train that was headed to a concentration camp being attacked and they were able to run into the woods.
Her family had belonged to one of the Christian churches that originally didn't say anything but eventually spoke up against the Holocaust.
So the congregation was either killed or in the process of getting sent to the same camps they didn't speak out against first.
It's not enough to eventually do the right thing, you have to stand up for shit immediately, hesitate and it's too late. If everyone stands up at once, it's enough people.
People forget that less than half the people killed in the Holocaust was because they were Jewish.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims
There were 6 million for being Jewish. And 11 million more for other reasons, which is really close to 1/3 than half.
Because when it started with Jewish people, not everybody stood up at once.
my German teacher’s first memory was her train that was headed to a concentration camp being attacked and they were able to run into the woods.
Imagine what kind of news coverage we'd get if some local Antifa group did this for a bus full of deported migrants.
It started with communists. And unionists. And artists and gays. Jews were later on.
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I am (in the perception of other people) obnoxiously vocal about most things, from civil rights to big tech.
Yes, you're tired of hearing about it. It still FUCKING SUCKS and if you're tired of hearing about it get on the bandwagon and be obnoxiously vocal until we fucking do something about it.
Exactly
Banned
The absence of tension isn't the same peace as the presence of justice.
Sometimes the rational and ethical path forward is to make some noise.
It's a shame so many people are straight brainwashed into thinking 'this is good enough' and my favorite 'it could be worse' as a justification for ignoring problems.
It's like the frequent misuse of "it is what it is"
That's not meant to be an excuse for not fixing anything. It was something you said to someone who you agreed with that there was an issue, but didn't want to go thru the whole discussion for a 100th time about how bad shit is.
That steps accomplished, people know shits bad.
What the phrase really meant originally was:
It is what it is, so how about we talk about a plausible way to change it.
Like before Biden dropped out and people responded to any criticism of Biden by saying Trump was worse.
We knew that, but because Trump was so bad we needed to do what we could to stop him from winning, which was Biden stepping down.
To do more we talk about positives of Kamala being president. trump being a dangerous piece of shit has been covered, repeating it ain't going to change anyone's minds.
Or, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Brother... it IS broken for many.
All too often, I see folks making the noise described as "the problem" rather than "the symptoms".
Occasionally, I get to hear how the folks making the noise are dupes of Iranian fifth columnist terror cells who have been embedded in US universities to spread Marxism, anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism.
Also see: MLK's speech about how the largest threat to black people's rights is the white liberal.
White moderate*
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”
- MLK Jr "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
Sophie Scholl is the ultimate badass, and a quote of hers motivates me to more and more political action. The ovaries on this woman, the guts, just before she is killed at twenty-one.
"How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"
-Sophie Scholl, 22 February, 1942.
Actual patriots and heroes
"The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who don't like to make waves--or enemies." -Sophie Scholl
I would argue the loud ones who went to the rallies, burned books and actually took people out of their homes were more integral to the proliferation of Nazi ideals.
For the impetus of the idea, yes. But bystanders play a crucial role in letting fascism proliferate.
Yeah, it is virtually identical.
Only a third or so of the Reichstag was Nazi - the population would presumably be about the same proportion.
Those people letting their neighbors get dragged off weren't Nazis. They were "apolitical" or some other excuse.
The proportion of Republicans in the US is probably between a quarter to a third...
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
They all think I'm a nice person.
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