How do we keep going?
Posted on 16 October 2024 by Jedidjah de Vries — 4 min
How do we keep going in a world full of unbelievable suck? The philosopher Walter Benjamin described history as “one single catastrophe that unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before [our] feet.”1 Sounds like 2017 2024.
The question of how to keep going isn’t new. I imagine my grandparents faced it while in the underground resistance during the Second World War back in Holland. Of course, as Jews—and I believe they would say, as people of conscience—there was no alternative. Today we once again find ourselves in a historical moment where naked fascism is stepping out into the foreground of our collective psyche.
I hope we all agree that it must be stopped.
I keep hearing “We’ve beaten them before,” as though the military defeat of the Nazis in the second World War was the only time fascists were a threat. It wasn’t. For example, just ask the Spanish who suffered under Franco’s rule until the mid-’70s. Or, as if that somehow ensures the invincibility of “Western” Democracy forever. It really doesn’t. The truth is, there is no sure path, no eleven point listicle, to stemming the rise of fascism.
But what actually scares me the most these days is that when I wake up every morning the sun is still shining. Fascism, while apocalyptic, does not arrive with a swarm of locusts or a blood red moon, and does not lead to an inevitable showdown at high noon between good and evil.
The struggle against fascism cannot be reduced to a struggle for normalcy. For many—let’s call them ‘white men’, for short—normal may never be disturbed. And for others, “normal” has been shitty for a while now. To stand with the oppressed is a choice, a choice to actively put oneself into confrontation with the forces of fascism.
This is true at the grand political level; when Antifa faces off against white supremacists they are seeking out conflict because you can’t wait for the neo-Nazis to show up at your door. And it is true in our personal lives, where we must constantly interrogate our own beliefs and behaviors. Or, as the French philosopher Michel Foucault put it, the deepest enemy we need to defeat is “The fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”2
Personally, I cannot think of that confrontation without thinking of my grandparents and what they faced. My close friend Katie once described protest as a ritual to appease our ancestors. That makes sense to me. Of course I carry the memory of Oma and Opa with me everywhere. But, I hope to do more than appease them. I hope to complete their work.
I want a revolution, but not one driven by the desire for utopia but as a gift to the past. Revolutions break the flow of history. They rupture that progression of “catastrophe that unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble”.
I guess you could say I’m not wondering “how do we keep going?” so much as “how do we make it all stop?”
Because through that rupture we can reach back into the past. I know that the past can’t be fixed. But, it could be reoriented towards a new future, made part of a new story, and in so doing redeem all the struggles of our ancestors.
In the meantime, I wake up everyday and greet the still shining sun with a prayer:
Good morning. Today… I train my heart to desire revolution I teach my mind to think of love I shape my mouth to speak resistance, and I discipline my legs to stand in solidarity.
Because we must practice the world we wish to see.
A slightly different version of this was first published in 2017 as the backmatter to issue #4 of Steve Stormoen’s The Pros. This version, that I put here in 2024, has been lightly edited—mostly so that it makes sense without needing to have read Steve’s excellent comic.