the radio news that wakes me up
Yesterday it was Russian drones over Poland and what that means for Europe, today a right-wing influencer shot dead in America.
I recently read "A Woman in Berlin" a diary kept during the occupation of Berlin by the Russian army towards the end of WW2, published anonymously. It's publication after the war was controversial because of the frank discussion of sexual violence and mass rape committed by the occupying Russian soldiers. The diary is shocking because of what the author goes through, and the apathy she develops in order to survive. The woman who wrote it was a journalist, and her writing is remarkably sharp and clear-eyed - she captures moments in a few lines and reflects on her mood and the mood in the city around her.
It's also shocking and controversial because we're talking about civilians in Nazi Germany and how they suffered - while being aware of the suffering and death they and their countrymen inflicted on millions of others. It reinforces the reality that a nation of normal people can do terrible things. What does an individual person deserve to suffer, if they are part of a fascist state. I left the book thinking deserve doesn't even come into it - people endure what they endure.
I'm not sure how to link these things. If I think about why the diary comes to mind it's because it's an account of living through history, which is what living at the moment feels like too. It also brings to mind the uncomfortable questions of my own complicity and complacency. No matter my personal politics, everything on a larger scale grinds horribly on. What do opinions matter if they're not action, and what does action matter on a tiny scale? I can see why people are attracted to definitive acts of violence such as political assassination, but even that can have minimal impact in our current manic news cycle.
Michael DeForge wrote about this in a patreon piece he published and I read yesterday - see his bluesky post about it - "maybe i should have waited 24 hours before publishing a piece about political assassination". The patreon post is for members only but there's some discussion on the bluesky thread (I'd recommend his Patreon - great cultural analysis of comics and other media and great art).
How to sign this off? As I speak I'm in my office at work and listening to 2 co-workers arguing with another about the definition of genocide (in the context of Israel's genocide of Palestinians). Got to keep pushing back.