Heirs to the Wreckage

Let’s retreat from the binaries of good and bad for a moment, try and live in that world we call objectivity. Liberalism is riddled with the problems of “doing good”, which in the US nowadays amounts less to recognizing the problems within the project and more with checking boxes. The worst kind of American liberal lives in constant fear of an ever-evolving blacklist of words, beliefs, and topics, subservient to either moral or social validation. We fail to produce reflective individuals and produce conformist ones on pain of alienation- though Conservatives seem infinitely worse in this regard. In any case, for the purposes of this post I’ll try not to resort to those tempting labels of good/bad, and only comment on what is necessarily, verifiably true.

In certain conversations about Gaza, conversations with people who (like myself) have lived far removed from war, I’ve heard this recurring justification: “Wars and genocides happen all the time, why should we care about this one?”. And after giving it some serious thought, despite how cynical it sounded, I came to the fact that multiple genocides have likely happened before contemporary memory. Modernity and the age of interconnection is tiny in the grand span of human history. The Holocaust has probably happened 10 times over, perhaps not as systematic, deliberate, or technologically streamlined, but certainly equivalent in malicious intent. Humanity, call it the neuroses, an unfortunate predisposition towards violence, an ontological lack-in-being that no amount of power can fill, is riddled with violent episodes. So what’s the difference between the crimes of then and the crimes of now? Perhaps the answer lies in interconnectivity.

The atrocities of the past were random, sprawling, unconnected events (relative to how intertwined political actions are today). And for some, maybe those sacrifices were necessary to bring about the imprints in history those empires made. No community (or civilization, to use the more phallic term), ever enjoys its ascension to greatness without being trailed by some form of sin. America was largely built on bodies, and I live in it now, awkwardly caught condemning that crime while reaping its bounty. Good or bad, this is a fact, and both the conservatives and the liberals in this country are struggling with that reckoning. Nowadays the world is too connected, too intimate with itself for atrocity to go unnoticed. Thanks to technology, we are all too painfully, acutely aware of one another to kill each other in peace. We do it live these days, streamed for all to see. Maybe, in response to the question given in the first paragraph, we should care about stopping genocides because we have the modern means to do so.

Israel is an established genocidal state, by every definition possible; and perhaps it isn’t that the genocides of the past were excusable but rather that we didn’t possess the unity or means to stop them. Technological advance hasn’t distributed its benefits consistently or equitably, but what it’s crucially done is open the pathway to global self-governance. We have the reflexivity and the technological ability to act as a collective (although that potential isn’t fully realized, we are still split into different polities with different agendas, and the UN is a poor mediator for those competing interests). A million Gazas have happened before, but we haven’t been able to see it in real-time as we can today. Now obviously seeing has not been enough in this case, as Israel continues its war against Gaza despite multiple condemnations. But seeing is better than not knowing at all- it’s a start.

To those who are simply blind to the loss of human life, or argue that a certain margin of atrocity is acceptable in the overall calculus of civilization, I would scrutinize that line of thought. Justifying any crime against humanity is a dangerous game; it’s not just to play with the rights of other people, but with your own. It is the socially agreed-upon precedent to protect everyone that also protects you. Not to mention that age-old justification of “all Palestinians are Hamas” doesn’t even make sense, nor does it follow that children or innocent lives should be taken in an effort to eliminate reported Hamas operatives. Once again, whether or not this is good or bad I leave to you, although I admit I’ve already abandoned my objectivity and made my own views clear. And all of it can be confusing. It’s difficult to pick apart what is truly discriminatory and unfair towards jews, and what is a legitimate critique of Zionism (although I know for certain the Republican party has every interest in equating the two).

Especially now, when it’s been put to the test, we’re seeing just how much influence over the United States Israel really wields. I’m still relatively young, so growing up I didn’t understand Israel’s place in the world, or why so many sensitive jokes were made at its expense (jokes way ahead of their time, in hindsight). The likes of Ted and Rick Sanchez (from Ted and Rick and Morty) would feign satirical fear at criticizing Israel or the pro-Israel establishment in this country. This is obviously not meant as anti-semitism, and I reject the asinine right-wing suggestion that to question this genocide is to question the rights of jews (I mean it borders on propaganda at this point). Nor is it anti-semitism to note that certain historical events and values have been subtly baked into our cultural normativity by the establishment. For instance, the Holocaust is rightly held in sacred remembrance while other genocides are rarely given the same attention. Armenia, Cambodia, Kosovo, Sudan, colonial genocides and other well-documented genocides are practically invisible to daily cultural life. Perhaps this is changing now with recent events, but the undue influence persists. We see it now in the protracted smear campaign being conducted against Pedro Pascal, a stream of online hate that decries his reading choices, his close and intimate manner with co-stars, his overexposure in modern media, etc. The fact that this wave of criticism seemed to materialize from nothing, coupled with its bizarre objects of critique (him reading a Dostoyevsky novel for instance), indicate that it’s likely an army of paid trolls. And despite his immaculate reputation, the campaign seems to have impacted his career, with a substantial role in the next Avengers movie reportedly being cut down. The cause? Likely his outspokenness on Gaza.

I wanted to talk about James Gunn’s Superman, because the reaction to this film has been divisive (though perhaps not as divisive as some parties were hoping). Let me preface this by adding this film was going to be divisive from the beginning, and not solely because of its commentary on Israel-Gaza. It followed in the wake of the DCEU Franchise, which was of course led by Henry Cavill in the role of Superman. Cavill’s Superman was an attempt to give the character the Christopher Nolan treatment and deconstruct the comic book element of him. He was gritty, realistic, wrought with moral ambiguities and internal struggle. Suffice it to say, there were many people unwilling to move on from Cavill’s era. The new, hopeful, appropriately comic book Superman was seen as too woke, too kind, and too soft in comparison to Cavill’s gray rendition of the character. In the theater where I was watching the film, there were a few audible groans and complaints as the credits rolled. Many of the red-pilled and self-proclaimed alphas could be found throwing tantrums online in the hours following the premiere.

The very concept of a Superman is complicated. An all-powerful flying being who metes out justice, and has a pure, justifiable, and irrefutable moral compass is very particular in its symbolism. It was Slavoj Žižek who convincingly characterized it as an “authoritarian wet dream”. Couple this with the general trend of superhero stories leaning towards antiheroes and gray characters, and you get figures like Omni-Man and Homelander. Those two were perhaps the most prevalent Superman-like characters in the limelight before this film. Omni-Man, basically a walking power fantasy bent on conquering Earth by merit of being the strongest; and Homelander, a narcissistic superhero obsessed with validation as a reward for his strength. Regardless, suffice it to say Superman was a welcome shift against this backdrop, a return to the basic hero values of kindness and respect for all human beings- with appropriate critique for the political lenses that distort those values.

The film received a lot of backlash for this and for its extensive commentary on Gaza, proving once and for all, and perhaps somewhat obviously, that Superman would never tolerate a genocide, even if it meant disagreeing with authority. I mean, it’s Superman, it takes a lot of mental chicanery to conclude he wouldn’t stop a systematic mass-murder. In the film he prevents the fictional nation of Boravia from invading the neighboring country of Jarhanpur (obviously meant to parallel Israel and Gaza) despite political scrutiny from the world. The accusations of anti-Israeli propaganda, anti-semitism, and being too woke indicate that some in this country can’t agree with the basic premise of Superman (of all people) saving lives. Even a Superman film can be boycotted on the grounds of criticizing Israeli-sponsored genocide. Someday I hope to see a global movement flying flags that say “No Empires, No Genocides”, even if it sounds like bourgeois liberalism. But of course, if we could completely change the cultural model that produces empires, established orders, oppression and genocides, what would replace that? That’s the million dollar question of our time.