I’m embarrassed to write about “the genocide” because it unclear how to write about it when we are involved in it. (We write it weekly, daily and hourly in secure chats and to make article correction letters to mainstream media, to make sure the word is used and killings made explicit. But this is not writing to express anything, its writing to survive as a human while witnessing a genocide)
A genocide has to be stopped, but writing “after” it feels worse. This is what “post-” is for, to make space for something which is current but too close to fully observe. We have arrived at post-genocide and have to come to terms that it occurred with institutional approval. Legal and institutional frameworks rooted on an idea of a common good & rational have been invalidated.
Post-democratic leaders have lost their mandate to rule and they will work to change definitions to meet past criteria. This is producing “humanitarian ethnic cleansing” and “geopolitical gentrification” as a reality. To continue in power our post-leaders will have to radically alter what is in living memory.
Words changing meaning is generally good. For example friendships becoming love and political dreams becoming humanitarian duty. But people get hurt when the technocratic mainstream media is applying market logic to popular discourse. Today our national broadcasting company Yle published an article explaining what “a famine” is, or explicitly how UN defines it. A definition of a concept has become news.
We the people are mostly fine with post-truth, it does not concern people who believe and hear each other. The more propaganda we get served the closer we listen to our peers and the more sense it makes to organize demonstrations, to come together for staying in truth. But institutions in the public sphere, which are in dialogue with mainstream media and use it to access public discourse are weaker than people. When the Sumud – Finnish Palestine network sent a complaint to the justice counselor on Finland’s complicity in the genocide trough arms-trade, the government included a citation from BBC News to downplay the concern.
If there is no-one trying to make sense of things, our state becomes a vessel for capital interests. This is not the communist in me analyzing life post-covid… This is me, in my moderate SDP-pants, expressing myself in a blog as a university graduate petite bourgeoisie. A “sivistysporvari” with a three-wheel moped and mid-career issues. This me was shocked to learn that a senior researcher of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs Timo R. Stewart, moderate but firm in issues related to settler colonialism and Palestine, got sacked yesterday.
This is how our state will proceed to erase living memory, it is happening today. Radical individuals get hurt and moderate voices sidelined. The best option conservative leaders imagine is getting used by an empire. They scrambling for the protection of oligarchs east and west.
Democratic post-war institutions of Europe, which we the citizens commit to and under which accords have granted state control over our education and privacy, have failed in their duty to prevent a genocide. The foundations of the EU are torn apart and its mandate lost, existence ungrounded. To establish a new base post-leaders are scrambling to present war and preparation as a valid agenda. To cope with their inaction institutions turned to suppressing freedom of speech and silencing folk. To top this off Chat Control, an espionage directive might pass in the parliament.
There is no memory organization to sustain an understanding of what has taken place post-October 2023. The truth persists in the assemblies, bruises and DIY. It’s weak but has piercing current. To change where we are headed we need to halt the common good agenda, seeking a good life is not an option.
In Finland we can say anything but there is no one to listen to us. We talk sense to each other through direct democratic action, and take comfort that all traces get automatically deleted for security. Resistance efforts get archived as 2D and slogans on Instagram. We represent a generation which does not have enough assets to become a fossil.