Any kind of nationalism is kinda fucked up and weird to me. Born and raised on stolen land, soaked in blood and slavery, the whole nine yards. I don’t belong here but I don’t belong anywhere else either. Citizen of the world? Except you can’t be. Every inch of every place that hasn’t had the natives fully eliminated is staked out, by people who would die for the dirt, kill for the dirt. Give me this dirtpile or give me death. But better to give you death, other people who I have decided should not be here. Nationalism, like colonialism, is the seed of genocide. Some flavors of it are so mild and banal that you could miss it, but it’s always there, waiting to blossom.
It’s especially wild to me that some people want to kill or die for land in the Middle East. There are much nicer or more interesting deserts and plains and beaches, and most of them don’t have nearly as many genocidal terrorists or fascists, don’t have as many centuries of decapitations and flayings and immolation and destruction. If any place in the world is hell, it’s the holy land. If I was Jewish, I’d be glad to be nowhere near it.
Might feel some type of way about it, since the history of the shituation is very different from that of my ancestral island. What would it be like, to have lost your homeland for over a thousand years, to never be allowed to feel at home anywhere in that entire time? To at last be given a promise of a return there, of a homeland – a promise literally predicated on nationalism and colonialism both – and to see that come to exactly what anybody with an ounce of wisdom could have seen a hundred years away? Poison gift. I’d keep Brooklyn, thanks.
Seriously. People who feel magical about that piece of dirt. What even? I can’t imagine a worse place in the world. Here I can walk down main street and feel the ghosts of natives choked in disease, driven from their homes, murdered in the wilds. Not great. There, I’d be walking the same streets where so many people were slaughtered in so many ways it’s fucking near unimaginable. I’m willing to bet there is not a person in the entire region who is without genocide in their hearts. How could you live through that history and not want to see everyone on the other side of the conflict disappeared? With cruel violence? At least on some level. I know there are peace activists in Israel and bless their hearts. But how often are they tempted to just give up, and join in finishing the job on their opposites?
The overwhelming hate of it all. For dirt. If I was born there, I’d have left and never looked back. The USA is bad enough, but at least I’m not living on a land mine, living in torture alley between people who want nothing more than to see each other reduced to shreds, to blood and then dust. Ain’t no god and ain’t no land and ain’t no ideal worth living in hatred.
This is the only thing we have, when fascists rule the day. The freedom to have moments of peace in our hearts. Because above all they love hate, and we have the ability to love life. They can’t be happy unless horrible shit is happening to someone, somewhere. We are capable of living for good things, and they aren’t. We win even when we lose, given that. What if we didn’t have the option tho? What if we were born into an endless war, gestated in amniotic fluid poisoned with cruelty, with lust for annihilation?
I advocate a no-state solution. Everybody lives as refugees in other countries for another thousand years, and moves back when they’ve learned to play niceys. I used to be more flip about the idea all the holy cities should get nuked (rome, jerusalem, mecca – ideally with everybody moving out first), and I’m not that grody nowadays. But should anybody be living there? No. What’s the half-life on genocide? How long before that land is no longer glowing with hatred?
My guess is that for the remainder of humanity’s time on this world, there will be nothing in Israel or Palestine worth preserving, except for people – who would be much better preserved by leaving that hellhole behind. The touristy beaches, the shopping malls, the ultramodern gleaming skyscrapers, the perfectly irrigated fields – yeah, even the nice parts. They are not nice, because of what they cost. Leave them.
With my nazi-ass country in your corner, Israel, things are about to get even worse. So much worse than you’ve ever imagined. To those of you who love genocide, you may find that getting what you wished for is the worst possible outcome for your people, for humanity. And your day in the sun won’t last. Your whole country will be destroyed. And then rebuilt again, I’m sure, with or without you, and whoever lives there? Probably gonna be genocidal zealots as well, of some flavor. It’s in the dirt.
Fuck dirt.
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My maternal grandparents were from Hungary.
Not one of their descendants has ever showed even the slightest desire to return to The Homeland™.
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re: dirt
Won’t somebody think of the vampires?
We’re a violent species, and that’s the truth. I doubt if there’s any patch of land on earth that doesn’t have a history of bloodshed and conquest.
Of course, the displacement of the indigenous people in, say, the U.S. is more salient because it’s more recent and better documented. The descendants of people who were displaced are still alive to tell us about it, which isn’t the case everywhere. (Ask the Gauls about the Romans.)
I want to say the solution is open borders. Everyone should be able to live where they choose. But I can’t deny there’s also justice in indigenous people wanting to reclaim the land that was taken from them, so maybe it’s more complicated than that.
“It’s especially wild to me that some people want to kill or die for land in the Middle East. There are much nicer or more interesting deserts and plains and beaches, and most of them don’t have nearly as many genocidal terrorists or fascists, don’t have as many centuries of decapitations and flayings and immolation and destruction.”
I think you may be a bit harsh here…
If you and your family own an olive orchard, and your family has owned this olive orchard for several (or dozens of) generations, and you feel proud of the olive oil your family produces… having to give it up would be horrible!
And then you get someone calling your family land “dirt”.
rob – you’re right i can’t fully imagine that position, but from my perspective, fuck those blood olives. during the crusades dudes were tied side to side all around the walls of the city and their throats cut. i thought kosher was largely about trying not to consume blood, yes?
adam – real. so complicated, in fact, that i very rarely talk about it, and usually regret what little i do say. i had a random moment when i felt compelled to say this much, so … let the regret begin.
chigau – yer grandparents sound very wise.
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The south pole?