Howdy.
So this week my girlfriend, who I had been getting very close with and we were beginning to long term plan together, had a moment of deep realization about the kind of blowback possible being openly communist, in favor of direct action, and pro-palestine can be. I've not hid any of this over the last several years of dating, but there's a difference between understanding and understanding, you know? She's thinking about calling it quits because she doesn't want to risk her own career which she has worked very hard to develop in a very competitive and innately unstable industry (performance art). She's dealing with some self admitted cognitive dissonance over the matter because she agrees with me politically, but can't bring herself to committing to resistance and solidarity in the face of blowback.
In a certain sense I understand. It's the same discomfort I first felt when I realized how fucked we were with climate change and rising fascism to begin with. How was I supposed to live a normal happy life with that? Well, obviously I wasn't, not unless I wanted to be complicit--by inaction if nothing else--in the self-annihilation of the biosphere and the genocide of people in the global South that would be necessary to enforce borders in the face of climate catastrophe and migration. It seems like she's choosing to try and live out her fantasy over solidarity or just confronting the material reality that is worsening conditions for all of us, even in the imperial core, so in another sense I just want to shrug at this and call it the same moral cowardice that most labor aristocrats have chosen in the core.
My family is not taking the news well, and thinks I'm throwing away my one shot at love because I can't compromise on my extreme politics. This is an absurd framing of events to me. I've been nothing but forthright about my commitments and beliefs this entire time. My parents clam up and get resistant with even milk toast hypotheticals like, "would you personally kill Hitler if given the chance?" So it feels impossible to have a sensible political discussion with them. They're that squeamish and averse to any and all violence that they can't imagine resisting genocide or fascism. So to a certain extent it feels impossible to make headway on any kind of informative discussion. But they continuously weaponize pity as shame it feels like, and say things about how sad and lonely life is going to be if I don't compromise on politics for relationships. It almost reads as a veiled threat at cutting me off too, sadly enough.
I guess I'm just looking for feedback and an opportunity to externalize my thoughts. I am a fairly gregarious and well liked person. I have a good social life, I've dated successfully before this and I'm sure I will again, but dang. It sucks having my parents harangue me for genocide being a hard line in the sand. I'm the beneficiary of a great many privileges that make it seem all the more imperative that I take a stand on these kinds of issues. I find myself feeling closer to people than ever when I'm involved in organizing work or political work, so their doom and gloom about how lonely my life will be I'm tempted to read as ignorance only a liberal mind is capable of. But like, am I actually the asshole? Do I need to check my power level? I guess I'm just baffled at how anyone thinks they're going to live a "normal" life, much less WANT to, when the West's rapid decline into the third reich is in full swing. Do they all imagine themselves as good little Germans, showing up to work and paying taxes, while tut tutting at the news? As far as I'm concerned the only good Germans under Nazi Germany were partisans.
I don't want to get too ranty here. I'll likely delete this post after a few days. Just wanted to hear some other perspective, maybe from people who have been through similar, or maybe just some commiseration. Whether I'm right or not it still sucks, you know?
What is the point of an artist who doesn't have conviction in their beliefs? I don't know your girlfriend, I don't know her art, but art is actually the best positioned "job" to have a stance on something. That is the point of it, and you can always continue to do it even if certain funders get squeamish.
To prioritize a position in the arts "industry" over the expression of an actual truth, your real beliefs, is pointless. It's hollow art, it's meaningless money-laundering, and artists in that position aren't worth whatever it is they think they're trying to say with their art.
No advice or opinion about your relationship, just a thought about how useless "art" that cowers rather than fearlessly expressing the self is. Actually, I would go farther and say that the cowardice is an honest and true facet of the self, and that the profession of a belief in a value that you aren't willing to live is the true performance.
You need food to live. Art doesn't bring a steady income, so the fear of losing connections or even being blacklisted is very much real.
I have lived as an artist. And I would never have prioritized my "career" in art over the principled stand against literal genocide. Do you know what's a very much real fear? Bombs. Sanctions. Western military intervention. Losing pay in a settler society doesn't compare.
Art that doesn't reflect belief in something better isn't worthwhile, it's a direct and active participation in the replication of bourgeois culture.
Yeah and I just want to avoid doxxing otherwise I'd be very specific, but it's not what I'd call courageous or expressive art. It's something much more conservative, professionalized, and bourgeois in coding, ya know? She genuinely loves the art form and is very talented, so I'm not here to hate on the class connotation. It just isn't immune in the ways we might typically think of. She's also pursuing residency in a country where it's de facto illegal to be pro Palestine now. Hooray for the enlightened liberal EU! It was as we moved to discussions of how I would move my career that way that the blowback became a more clear concern for her, you know? She was curious as to what direct action actually looked like, and I was talking about Palestine Action in the UK. Then the article about the Elbit Factory in Czechia getting torched came out, and I think it all just became too much for her. Imagining the legal repercussions of being associated with that, even if indirectly, made her entire life and dream flash before her eyes.
It sucks but I don't know what else to make of it. Liberals like leftist talking points until we dare imply those of us in the core might have to burden some risk too. I don't want to be the guy in leftist groups who hits on the women there, but at this point I know better than to date someone who does not understand politics robustly. Someone can nod along and agree with every marxist rant you can produce, but it's all just nice ideas to them. The going gets tough and people retreat to their comfortable bread and circuses, even when they're one of the circus performers I guess.
Your post and this comment have bolstered my moral courage in the face of exhaustion