Finding Our Way
For the generation of the 1960’s, WWII was an active presence in our political imaginations. We knew of it from the lived experiences of our parents, grandparents, and community. It was present in public celebrations and popular culture. Its lessons were many. We learned that propaganda could sway masses of people to do awful, inhuman things; that all it took for evil to triumph was for good people to remain silent; that we are responsible for the actions of our governments; and that democracy was worth defending. We learned that the extension of the battlefield into cities, towns, and hamlets was a crime against humanity; and that our weapons were greater than our wisdom or compassion. And we learned governments lie. These lessons were crystalized into powerful slogans: Not in Our Names. We will not be silent. If not us, who? Democracy now. Never again.
These lessons gave us a moral compass that pointed to direct actions in the 1960’s fueling energies that erupted into Black liberation at home and abroad, civil rights, and the humanizing movements that followed. They were the touchstones that compelled resistance to the war in Vietnam and inspired struggles against military interventions and nuclear weapons.
Fascism had a clear face, and its most vivid expression was the holocaust.
Today, the lessons from earlier struggles in the 20th Century are less sharp. Three generations have come to political awareness since then and WWII is as farther away from today’s young activists than the Civil War was from those in WWI.
Today’s generation has grown up with war as a backdrop, terrorism alerts as normal. They have endured mass shootings, mass pandemics and governmental inaction in the face of climate catastrophe and glaring injustice. They have been shaped by a militarized way of life that has increased their vulnerability and seen democracy twisted into a crude and cruel protection of power and privilege. They have seen corporations granted citizenship while children are herded into cages. They have organized some of the largest mass movements in history, sought justice, truth and reconciliation with expanded understandings of our common humanity and shared responsibilities.
For today’s activists, the brutality of this time has taken on a vivid expression. For them the holocaust is not a distant memory. They are witnessing it in Gaza. This Nakba is forging a new moral imperative to act, to stand up against the brutality and destruction that is happening on a scale that was almost unimaginable just a few short years ago.
Just as WWII was a watershed in shifting the world’s understanding of reality, this moment has broken the moral anchors of the past. As we witness the horrors of this moment, many people are wondering if there is any way forward. Is mutual destruction the best we can do? After all we have endured, all we have imagined as possible, all we had hoped to create, is this how evolution ends?
The lessons emerging now are profoundly different than in the past. They are lessons that question the very premise of State power and the use of force. They are lessons about the horrific imbalance of power in a world where nation states pour billions of dollars in military firepower to destroy a place the size of Detroit. And they are lessons about the responsibility of the US Government and the corporations it protects. A new understanding of State violence is evolving. State violence is never in the interests of people. It does not make anyone safe. It only accelerates our collective destruction. Only by turning away from war and the violence that feeds it, can we find our way toward living together in cultures that cherish life and the earth that sustains us.