Consuming the Genocide

[mixed_biscuits]

Wash Your Hands' job sounds traumatising. Things happening thousands of miles away as they always have and always will shouldn't be.

If you want counter-propaganda read the Hamas manifesto.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

When I read "5,000 dead in bombing" say, I don't really feel that much. If I SAW 5,000 bombed to death I'd feel something, alright. The scale actually depersonalizes it, the old Stalin (?) quote about a tragedy Vs a statistic. Reading about that girl getting beaten to death by her dad recently made me feel all the pity and horror and anger, which is correct but a comparatively small crime I suppose

What I don't understand is the highly selective decision to care about this abstract event rather than countless others, some of which are worse.

 

[sufi]

Maybe if I did watch babies melting and so on I'd get angrier and do a political assassination or something. Maybe screening myself from the images and reports allows me to keep the whole thing in the background. I know yyyyaldrin watches the babies melting etc. Do you sufi?

no, but i feel like it's irresponsible to ignore it or let it just drift past, or pretend it's a million miles away so we're not connected

 

[sufi]

It's like consuming it is all we can do, the genocide has blocked all the possible responses

just as the conflict on the ground is effectively one-sided and takes place in a closed space, there's no space for us to react either

 

[Mr. Tea]

i don't get stuck into the day to day talking posing which one is your team etc

♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️ HAMAS ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

 

[yyaldrin]

 

[shakahislop]

It's like consuming it is all we can do, the genocide has blocked all the possible responses

just as the conflict on the ground is effectively one-sided and takes place in a closed space, there's no space for us to react either

i think like a lot of things your reaction is absorbed into the grid ie into the spaces and discourses that the internet makes, it sets up traps for your reactions. and you end up saying the things you read on the internet in the pub and the person you're talking to says the things that they read on the internet and so on. you get snapped into the grid. it's why having opinions on things like that isn't fun or interesting anymore

 

[shakahislop]

there's this fake thing as well that is a kind of subjectivity that's been generated within us in the UK where we think that there is anything we can do about distant violence as though it's somehow our responsibility. sometimes it is but for this one it's not, it's other people doing the fighting and the idea that anything that happens in the UK would remotely affect what the americans decide to do is laughable, we don't understand sometimes that we are up against a juggernaut

 

[shakahislop]

there's no particular answer to how you're supposed to react to distant violence and distant suffering and there never has been except to pray for them. what we're in now is that you can watch it up close if you want to and that's new

 

[Mr. Tea]

there's this fake thing as well that is a kind of subjectivity that's been generated within us in the UK where we think that there is anything we can do about distant violence as though it's somehow our responsibility. sometimes it is but for this one it's not, it's other people doing the fighting and the idea that anything that happens in the UK would remotely affect what the americans decide to do is laughable, we don't understand sometimes that we are up against a juggernaut

Sadly this is exactly right, I think. The USA is the only country with any real leverage over Israel. Germany would be the #2 spot, going by volumes of weapons sales.

Stopping UK arms exports to Israel would certainly be the right thing to do, and some export licences have been suspended, but it amounts to only a small fraction of a percent of the total.

 

[yyaldrin]

i think you can also just do things for selfish reasons, because it's fun and feels good to sabotage a weapons manufacturer. plus, i think it's a bit fatalistic to think nothing ever matters, you don't know what kind of domino effect things have.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

They start with the live ones.

 

[DLaurent]

I read right wing stuff and that's about as far as I go. Doesn't mean I agree with it. You find yourself spitting your coffee out and thinking the exact opposite.