this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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I get your point: by engaging in this social, economical and political system we are all complicit in the crimes perpetrated in Gaza. But moralism alone won’t actually get you far. The problem isn’t our collective lack of morals, it’s a lack of power.
Case in point: I live in the Netherlands, and a lot of people I know actually do feel deeply uncomfortable by this. Some actually did take to the streets in mass for several weeks. Btw, I am talking about retirees and young mothers, so not your average leftist student either.
However those that did protest quickly learned a lesson about class struggle in a Western democracy: our right-winged parlement didn’t budge an inch. Instead it turned the PR-machine on them, branding them as ‘troublemakers‘, ‘wokists’ and even ‘Islamic youths’. After building the narrative for several days, it started to deploy the riot police. And once they’d mopped up the demonstrators, they blamed the damages on the heartless, antisocial demonstrators who wreaked havoc on our peaceful society.
When faced with state propaganda and state violence, most protesters eventually give up. Gaza is too distant an issue for them to risk sacrificing their social status, relationships or even personal safety. People nowadays are also deeply apolitical, so these protests typically aren’t part of any rooted and well organized opposition.
Back in the 1960’s or 1970’s you had workers parties that would actually connect different groups and social issues to the wider narrative of class struggle and organize sustained and effective opposition. Workers parties could actually throw in in their weight to somewhat counterbalance the state narrative and even attempts at suppressing protests.
But the fall of communism and the rise of neoliberalism effectively killed the political left. Conservatism and corporatism are now the leading ideologies in Western governments. Therefore solidarity with Gaza is quickly branded as extremism. And if the movement then doesn’t dissipate on its own, it is often actively suppressed.