The lie they tell, is the truth about them
Yesterday I woke up to the horrifying image of a man holding a decapitated baby. An encampment in Rafah had been bombed, and we continue to witness the ruthless assault on the Palestinian people. The murder of children, the elderly, women, men continues before our eyes. And then we must watch as our government continue to send billions to Israel to enable this ongoing genocide. It makes it difficult to function on a daily basis.
Many of us will recall that Hamas was accused of beheading babies, and that misinformation was used as a catalyst to support Israel, Netanyahu, and the IDF. But today we have the photographic and video evidence that it is in fact Israel who commits this crime. And to be clear- Israel has long targeted and harmed children. The IDF has raped, tortured, imprisoned, and intentionally maimed Palestinians and specifically Palestinian children for decades.
Below are just a few articles on the topic.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestinian-children-killed-idf-israel-war
https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2024/01/26/palestine-is-disabled/
pnews.com/article/6035b1d3293c4a298145afbff50ab844
There are two dynamics at play that I wanted to discuss in this post.
When they talk about “THEM” they are talking about themselves.
I talk about this dynamic a lot when I train on white supremacy.
Whenever whiteness accuses a group of being something… they are telling on themselves.
They are describing who they are.
For example, for a long time white folks have perpetuated the stereotype that Black people are lazy. This from a group of people who literally institutionalized into the founding documents of this country the lifelong enslavement of African people, and their children, in perpetuity, so that they could be used for free labor. Whiteness was so greedy it created a new form of slavery that was never ending and passed on through birth. Who is lazy? The people who worked uncompensated for their entire lives, or the people who created an entire society dependent on the disgusting use of enslaved labor?
When slavery ended whiteness reinvented it, through sharecropping and incarceration.
A stereotype that whiteness likes to perpetuate about Black folks is that they break the law and commit crime at a high rate. But whiteness has simply written their stealing, exploitation, murder, and violence INTO the law. So that it can be committed daily, without consequences.
A fear narrative perpetrated by whiteness is that Black men are a threat to white women. This was prevalent in Jim Crow south. But it is white men who spent hundreds of years raping enslaved African women with impunity, and then raised their own children as slaves.
White folks talk about family values, while literally systemically and legally, breaking up Black and Indigenous families, making it legal to steal their children.
Whatever whiteness says about others, it is revealing about itself.
Whatever the oppressor says about those they oppress, they reveal about themselves.
Let’s bring it into the present. Here’s a little Trump quote from April 2024.
“ The Republican presidential candidate, appearing with several law enforcement officers, described in detail several criminal cases involving suspects in the country illegally and warned that violence and chaos would consume America if he did not win the Nov. 5 election.”
But who actually incited an insurrection after he was not re-elected? Trump. Who encouraged violence, and created actual chaos in the capital? Trump. The story he tells about immigrant, is the truth about himself.
Whiteness accuses undocumented people of committing crimes and stealing jobs from Americans. But wealthy men from the US, steal the most money, evade the most taxes, contribute the least to the collective good of society, exploit the most labor, and destroy the environment - because they have written the law, and the laws do not regulate their corporations. All the loopholes are created for them, and they will never be held accountable. Jail is not for those who break the law, it is for those who are Black.
When they said the college students were violent- they were talking about themselves
When they said the college students were breaking the law- they were talking about themselves
Whe say that the Palestinians are terrorists, they are talking about themselves.
Because they also said that Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, BLM activists, and so many others were criminals and terrorists.
So.. point one, the oppressive regime, system, institution will always create a narrative about those they oppress. But that narrative is actually about themselves.
Their Agenda is power
People spend a lot of time trying to convince the oppressor that what they are doing is wrong. Y’all they know. They don’t care. Progressives often get so preoccupied with the idea that we need to convince them that they are wrong that we lose sight of their actual agenda. Power.
We are distracted by the myth.
Progressive folks are often distracted by their own sense of having the moral high ground, and the myth that those in power are at their core concerned with doing what is right. But for systems of power, the end goal is always- maintaining power. They have always rewritten the laws to maintain that end. The agenda is always dictated by that end. But progressives have a preoccupation with feeling righteous, and it can really distract from the work. ( This topic deserves its own post.)
Oppressive systems will, absolutely, destroy an institution the moment it no longer helps them maintain power- the supreme court, voting, term limits.
I say- systems of hierarchy, or systems of oppression, because I have found folks from the United States can get rigid or distracted when they see something happening and it doesn’t exactly fit into the language and frameworks they have been given for what is happening in the United States. I understand this, because I also did this.
A helpful pivot for me was when I started reading the book, The Trauma of Caste. When you read about a system of oppression that you are totally outside of, it brings clarity. My first reaction was, “Wow, how terrible! People are born into a caste and it shapes so much of their lives. How devastating.” But then I thought about Confucianism and what it has meant for women in Korea for hundreds and hundreds of years, and suddenly I could see it more clearly for what it is. Not with the blurred lines of a system that I was born into. I could see how being born a woman shaped the entire lives of Korean women. And I looked at the United States and the tolerance for people’s destiny being shaped by whether or not they are born Black or Native.
I started evaluating each situation, crisis, institution for the hierarchy it was creating, enforcing, and committed to. Whose destiny is set to oppression and death, simply by the group they were born into? Who actually has power in the system? How is the story being told to distract from that? When we look at Palestine and Israel, we see that Palestinians are destined for displacement, oppression, apartheid and likely, death.
The story of the oppressor is always that they are ethical, even benevolent, towards the ones they murder, rape, maim, and kill.
White people told this story about enslaving, raping, torturing African peoples in this country.
White people told this story about genociding Indigenous people across many continents.
Japanese people told the tale about occupying Korea.
England told this story about India.
White people told the story about incarcerating Japanese Americans.
Germans told this story about Jewish people.
Ok- this post has gone on way longer than I intended.
I simply wanted to make the point that
1- The story they tell about those they oppress, is the truth about themselves,
2- Power is the end goal. Getting it and maintaining it. We need to be more savvy and less distracted in our understanding what we are up against.