#(to some leaders in western universities: decolonizing does not stop at “allowing grammarly to write essays”)

[blanket-hugger]

as the iof is continuing its campaign of extermination, i have trouble understanding how life can go on here, in the belly of the beast. but i keep thinking about the attitudes of adults around me about world war 2 and geopolitics when i was growing up in the 2000s in sort of nowhere on the continent.

that teacher that took upon herself to educate us about the shoah among other things. she very much leaned into the center-left mainstream takes of the time (rosy view of the resistance, little talk of collaborators, communism, the eastern front, no talk whatsoever of colonialism, etc (i may one day recover my memories related to the genre of shoah movies and have a rant)) - a mixed bag overall but she tried. even with that i feel we should have a deep seething hatred of nazis, their enablers and anyone enacting the same policies instilled in the popular culture, but here we are.

i remember my father, who has been voting center-right and has tried to play (unsuccessfully) stocks, yet he would (often?) ramble to me about resource extraction in neocolonies and how they're kept down by debt.

he told me he did not know what he would have done during the war. "i may not have joined any resistance you know. hell i might have caved under the pressure and collaborated". i am grateful for the honesty i suppose. it worrying, also for him. (that's certainly not the only fucked-up thing he might say; guess he only sees himself working as part of the nuclear family in a big bad world and that fucked him up)

a couple holidays i was dragged to in maghreb thanks. without even a keen awareness of the horrible colonial history, you can guess something is fucked up when we see what us middle-class fucks can afford and general interactions with the locals. it made me deeply hate tourism (i have let go enough of that not to be an asshole when my friends want to visit the local church) (ngl, i also resented being dragged around when i did not want to, it was not solely disgust at colonialism.)

"we won't go to algeria there is too much terrorism". I remember hearing for the first time "algeria war" being said by someone irl when i was 16 by an airforce veteran - he defo was ashamed of that part of his past. beforehand i would only hear of "the algeria events"

many years later, hearing my PhD advisor tell a colleague that you can always stir up the most reactionary shit from someone by just suggesting something of theirs is going to be taken away. No matter how minuscule, no matter justice. (ww2 and palestine were also things he thought about a lot back then. seeing bus drivers bragging about their guns in tel-aviv)

it probably tracks that the 50 shades of "fuck you got mine", a measure of in-group identification and our material interests leads to the asinine stances of those who claim to be progressive but follow the "apolitical" or the "liberal" line on settler-colonialism (or immigration, or ....).

EVEN THEN. anyone can see the current level of atrocities. committed by humans. the flimsy propaganda and lies, for so many years. i dont see how these ppl can't feel the hurt of directly participating in structures that support this