cobbles

There's a freeze that happens when you witness atrocity from a distance. We're watching a real time genocide happening on the Gaza Strip while the IDF makes the argument that the civilians they kill deserved it somehow.

It reminds me of the excuse that Prosecuting Lawyers worried that the defence of my Grandfathers Gestapo torturer might make during the Post war prosecution of war criminals.

From the Affidavit it appears that Private SMITH, when captured, was wearing civilian clothes. This may be put forward as a defence by the accused and as justifying SMITH to be treated as a spy. Whatever the circumstances of the case, treatment such as is set out above can of course never be justified, and there appears to be no defence whatever.

In the historical archives of the UN you can read about the testimony my grandfather made.

My Grandfather was working with the British Underground in France during 1941 helping Airmen, Captured troops and a vulnerable family leave during the six trips he made to Marseilles as a passeur/helper. When he was captured he was then tortured for what he knew and then shipped off to several of the German Arbeitan Penal camps. He met the civilians who helped him in France in the Camps again after they had been betrayed by Harold Cole.

He never knew why he survived and those civilians were executed. But the underground was funded by locals, the British Government and some rich benefactors.

Resistance tends to need help from outside a country as much as inside. Resistance often is transnational.

Fast forward to now, and we see people trapped in Gaza. To help those folks political and economic pressure is needed.

Meanwhile a Labour Government is pushing the courts to lock up protesters who support Palestine action. Let's be clear here. Labour has long been captured by Capitalism, it's stepped away from the roots of socialism decades ago under New Labour.

The trappings of government with the need for negotiation with the entrenched political classes that inhabited Westminster has changed the party. It's the moving target of the “center” which means placating the right. Ignoring Human Rights. We have normalised the Far Right. This didn't happen overnight. The Far Right never went away. They just hid their views under a thin veneer of “civility”. We gave them permission with the idea of “balance.” Our media organisations ignored Karl Popper. So the center gradually moved, because of the fear of the left. Plus the fear of the funding cut, the loss of advertising. Eyes on content mattered.

The trappings of a Zombie empire, made up of an aristocracy where the only membership you ever needed was generational power. Wealth is just a store of that power. But they told us the lie of Thatcherism and New Labour continued it. Yes the working classes moved up, some of us became middle class. But we fell for the shell game. Our wealth isn't generational, so the only power we can have is the power we share. The aristocracy, the billionaires won't share it with us.

There's a reason why authoritarian regimes often have a very close relationship with industrialists, with the Tech Barons. It's all about the money, but the money's just a store for power.

We're complicit in this when we look down on striking. We look down on the folks who point out the hard truth. We are complicit as we look down on those who are less fortunate as somehow lesser. Not deserving of our help or compassion. It's what fuels anti immigration, ableism. It's the desire to not stick out, so you don't give that helping hand.

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. – Hannah Arendt The Life of the Mind

I see our bonds tightening around us so slowly. I started to see the bonds with the G8 protests in 2003. But the bonds started to tighten much earlier with that, when Thatcher broke the Unions. When the poll tax riots forced a policy rethink.

We became complacent. We allowed the kettling. We allowed a Government to ignore a million people marching against the invasion of Iraq, when we should have joined the marchers.

Between Labour Governments, we allowed the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to use the excuse of Austerity to cut the benefits of disabled people. We are means testing the elderly with arbitrary limits, when they've been frugal. We need Universal Basic Income, but we're kept obedient by rising food and electricity prices. We keep our heads down and hope we don't get laid off. We allowed the social safety net to be taken away from us and turned inward.

We're watching as one of the architects of New Labour is thinking about how to carve up Gaza. Stealing Land, allowing people to be starved to death. Yet again allowing an invasion to serve Capital.

A Labour Government is locking people up for protesting this. These protests will not be the only time. Anytime we wish to protest for human rights there will be a danger of prosecution, of state violence. So anyone with dependents, who's income is precarious will be rightly terrified of taking part in protests.

So any Government can gradually tighten the bonds on us. With no come back, to protest will be criminal. No matter how much state violence is enacted against us. The violence of authoritarianism. Make no mistake, we are captured now. Some of us are just out on day release. Don't make a fuss, otherwise your life will be ruined. We're isolated from each other, so we feel powerless. We have no support structure, no community safety net. No one is coming to save us. So we must find a way to build community support to save each other.

Fear keeps us in line. So at what point do we resist? The longer we leave it, the harder it will be to resist.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. – Victor Frankl

Our values demand sacrifice. How long do we leave off resisting before we must sacrifice everything to defend the human rights of others? Our humanity demands our care, our acknowledgement that authoritarian regimes are humanities enemy. Those regimes are a threat to us because they threaten our human rights by ignoring the human rights of those they deem as “enemies.”

We often flirt with the idea of the heroism of resistance. We romanticise the escape lines. We imagine a long journey sneaking through the forests of France and over the mountains. Which some of it was. But a lot of it was guiding escapees onto trains, hiding in plain sight under the eyes of Nazi's and French officials alike.

The very nature of resistance must be flexible. Sometimes it's loud protest. But sometimes, resistance is giving shelter. Sometimes resistance is hiding the existence of the vulnerable. Sometimes resistance is loudly protecting them. It depends.

But we must always try to resist authoritarianism. We can call it by different names in our history. But the Nazi's, the British Empire, Stalin, and all the others can be reduced down to their real ideals. Authoritarianism. Tyranny.

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.

Remember this, Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. [...]

Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.

• Nemicks Manifesto – Andor Season 1 – Tony Gilroy [1]

Authoritarians want us to be so overwhelmed that we just look for the quiet life. They want us cowed, authoritarians want us to be afraid. Willing to just work for a pittance, while they pillage our cultures and our peace of mind.

To those who can hear me, I say – do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed – the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…

The Great Dictator Speech – Charlie Chaplin [2]

The way to start is to find solidarity with each other. To help others, to hold the hand out when they can't get up. To give mutual aid, to shelter others and ensure they are fed. The politics of the status quo may have failed us. But the past fifty years were never about the people. You need to start by recognising the humanity in the poor, the ignorant. Recognise the Humanity in queer folks, in those who come to our countries because they are displaced by our governments policies of war.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness – not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

The Great Dictator Speech – Charlie Chaplin [2]

It's not enough to vote only in National Elections. You build solidarity, go to each election, even if it's for a parish council. Gain the experience of organising, learn the joy that comes from being a part of community. Help to build community.

Build those bonds of friendship and respect. Choose to support parties that aren't the status quo of Conservative/Slightly less Conservative. Vote. Join the parties that you vote for and spend time getting to know the people in those parties. If you're in those parties and some folks can't attend meetings because of disability make those meetings accessible. Make remote access to those meetings available. We can't have a true democracy unless everyone can participate.

Freedom is a natural thing. It is also a responsibility. Power is also a responsibility. But what we should take from this is that we should share our Freedoms, share our power. It shares the responsibility and lightens the burden on us.

For our democracies to function, we must actively engage in them. We must make our democracies accessible to everyone. We must extend the social safety net to everyone.

Not distribute power and our largess to people we think are most deserving. Humanity tends to fail at that. We tend to believe in the glamour of the rich and them being good people. As if amassing enough money to be a billionaire is a virtue rather than being a robber baron.

When you go around the world, people surprise you with hospitality. We've been given free cups of coffee in Spain on a wet day on our motorbikes. We've paid that hospitality forward in cafe's for other bikers or giving a hitchhiker a ride. We're been to borders at the edge of Europe. I've been given a large apple bigger than my hand by a kindly old man for free while on a rope ferry in Hungary. People can be generous with each other, but in order to do so, we have to recognise each other's humanity. We have to recognise each other's human rights to exist and be in our places. We need to ensure everyone can live in freedom and safety.

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world – to do away with national barriers – to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

The Great Dictator Speech – Charlie Chaplin [2]

People are kind. In that kindness is resistance to Authoritarianism.

Be kind, be responsible, share what you can and don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Building a community safety net, starts locally. But gradually it expands. While some people want a solution at scale. Most folks care about local issues. We aren't built to understand the contexts of millions or even billions. But brick by brick we can build our communities, we can share the responsibility of power and understand the contexts of issues that make a local communities life harder.

It's why local communities supporting each other is how we counter the far right. We make our local communities our beacons in the dark.

That as well as protests is how we fight authoritarianism. By not succumbing to it's seduction in the first place. We find our resistance in each other. In our communities that we build by finding solidarity with each other.

[1] https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Trail_of_Political_Consciousness

[2] https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/synopsis/articles/29-The-Great-Dictator-s-Speech