Punching Nazis Isn’t Enough

They come out in Dresden, they come out in Leipzig. They take a stand in Munich and Cologne, they stand in Berlin. They reject the populist, they reject the nationalist and the racist. They reject, loudly and proudly, the Nazi, screaming for the exclusion of them from Germany’s politics.

It reads like a strange reflection of times past… because you do not come out in force and protest a thing if the thing isn’t a problem, do you?

Germany is by no means alone, or this time the epicentre, of the blossoming of right-wing extremism. Poland, France, Italy, UK, the States, Russia, Denmark, and not least of which Sweden, just to mention a few, suffer the rot of neo-nationalism. And though speaking loudly in opposition to right-wing hatemongers is by no means unimportant, I fear it also misses the point.

Because it is not sustainable to keep fighting right-wing extremism every generation or two. Its virulent spread is not a natural state of things which democratic nations should ever have to get used to battling. If all you do is fight populism, protectionism, and nationalism where it crops up, then you’ll sentence yourself to a Sisyphean task. One must, not instead, but also, labour at understanding why it spreads at all, and combat the roots of the cause.

No; the root isn’t immigration or crime. None of the reasons that the demagogues repeat like broken records, century after century, are the real reasons for the virulent spread of their ideals.

The real reason is fear.

Sure; on the surface it’s fear of the other. Fear of opposition, fear of being wrong; fear of appearing weak. A layer below, it’s the fear of not having enough. Enough space, enough money, enough jobs, enough food, enough shelter. It is fear of losing grasp of privileges, of losing touch with what was when things inevitably change, fear of muddied identity when different kinds of identity crop up.

The root problem is Fear itself. Because like Herbert wrote, fear really is the mind killer. Fear really is the little death, the death of reason, which brings total obliteration, of sanity and clarity. Fear makes you dumb. Fear makes you cruel. Fear makes you callous and ruthless and heartless and mean. Fear is the problem, and people’s lacking capacity to manage their fear.

We live in a fearful age. Even if it weren’t for the fear-mongers of the 24-hour news cycle, scientific realizations that we’ve lived on borrowed resources and the bill’s coming due, or all those soulless cretins playing on people’s fears to gain power through politics. We’ve spent decades, centuries, at making people dumber and dumber, less and less resistant against fear, and now all the myriad lurking catastrophes are making the kettle literally boil over. And large parts of the population are absolutely incapable of meeting those fears, rational and not. Of course they turn to simple, dumb, responses to that fear, like building walls or ejecting the other.

We live in a fearful age. The caps are melting, sleeping deaths are reviving, climates are changing, deserts are spreading, our garbage is coming back to choke us, the blood of the earth is boiling, and things we’ve held dear are coming to an end. None of all those hundreds of reasons to be afraid are likely to automagically go away any time soon.

So if you really want to get rid of Nazis, punching them once they’ve sprouted just isn’t enough…

/Sebastian Lindberg 23/1-2024

Every Tool in the Box

They sit there, in their comfy seats, with their chilled Piña Coladas, wearing their designer-label clothes woven by underage Asians, in a world where the greatest tangible threat to their existence is an uncomfortable bowel movement. They preen and coo and prattle about the nature of human morality. Right and wrong. And in their cozy soirée, they have the nerve to claim that there isn’t a question on this earth to which violence is the answer.

That’s the common conception perforating my sheltered Nordic corner of the world. That violence is something filthy. Something dirty that only the primitives and the under-developed partake in. That the civilized human should rise above such behaviour. But you’d think that with the ever increasing amount of violence going on in the world, that even the entitled discussion on the subject would evolve into something more complex than the impressively meek ”It’s never okay”.

It’s an awkward thing. Listening to privileged people claiming that one of the most prolific human behaviours in the history of mankind is inhumane. It bespeaks how ill equipped many people are to face such an integral part of human nature. How relative security, illusory security, have managed to inhibit the frail, the pampered, and the timid.

For violence is nothing greater or lesser than any other measure of human interaction. It’s just a tool.

We have plenty of them in our collective box. Argumentation, reason, compassion, manipulation, master suppression techniques, to only mention a few. We have for thousands of years developed, expanded, and refined our toolkit. There’re even whole humanist sciences dedicated to the different methods, different tools, with which we interact with one another. And every which one of us wields these tools with varying skill and proficiency. But violence, our trusty old hammer as it were, is one of the oldest.

And isn’t it grand, to have a plethora of tools available for us to tackle any one problem? If we need to pressure our landlord into fixing our shower, we use the screwdriver. If we need to excise a toxic influence in our lives, we use the pliers. If we need to mend a relationship, perhaps try the scotch tape? Or the superglue? Every tool in that box of ours has a purpose. A proper place and time. And if we need put that nail into the wall, you wouldn’t use your screwdriver, would you?

The problem with violence isn’t that it exists. Or that it has the greatest potential for physical harm. Not even that some people use it with abandon. The problem is, in today’s civilized society, that we aren’t taught how to properly apply it. We’re rarely taught how to use it efficiently. Responsibly. Of course you’re going to smash fingers and toes trying to hit that nail on the head if you’ve never been taught to use the tool for it.

Because the merit of any tool lies only in how you use it, not in the tool itself.

There’s a saying. That there’s nothing so civil as the uncivilized barbarian. Because if a barbarian let’s his mouth run away with him, if a barbarian speaks ill, he knows that he will have his head cut off. The civilized man fears no such thing. He can be as uncivil as he’d like, without dire consequence.

And there’re scant few things that disgusts me more than a civilized person believing itself above reproach. Above consequence. Above the hammer.

/Sebastian Lindberg 26/6-2018

The Prison

I am the captive, I am the bars
I am the warden, I am the walls

I am the guards, the barbs, the jagged scars
The armour, the arms, the hostility and alarms
I am them all
and I have waived it all
that I can heed your siren’s call

Though all in life is learning
and you cannot blame the wind from turning
Those wicked thorns are once more surging
fed by fears, fell dreams, ever urging

And so the ramparts rise times two
To ward myself from you
I become it all anew
The armour, the arms, the hostility and alarms
The guards, the barbs, and the freshly opened scars

I’m become the patient, become the bars
My own nurse, and the ragged walls

/Sebastian Lindberg 19/5-2018

Cui Bono

This week introduced the world to another country where a large portion of the population has proven willing to throw out some of the safeguards to their civil liberties in favour of despotic power. Last year we saw a reality show host and world class pussy-grabber take the American throne. Not to mention a poorly informed population buckle under the weight of oppositional shitposting, and cripple their country’s ability to tackle the longest lasting economical quagmire since, perhaps, the end of the Spanish War of Succession.

You know what? Fuck it, fine… It’s fine! It’s their prerogative to cast away the protections and privileges that their ancestors fought and died for. It barely even annoys me. What does annoy me, however, are those that dare to act surprised and shocked at the spreading decadence.

What did you expect? What did you think was going to happen when you troll your population with scaremongering, anxiety inducing terminology and building a voter foundation on fear and distrust? When you fling around words like “war on terror” and “nuclear threats”. When you, day and night, listen and tolerate people depicting the world as dangerous, feral, mad and hostile.

We live in a world where we are supposed to be fearful. Where every leader and spokesperson and media outlet is hell bent on making us feel afraid. From the right we hear about bombs and foreign incursions. The Huns are coming! Lock up your wife and daughters! They’re coming to rape you, your family and your way of life! From the left, we hear about disease, societal collapse and hundreds of environmental disasters that are already too late to stop.

Why do you think that is? Why would your leaders, your media and your neighbour want to make you so afraid? So terribly terrified? What good is all this fear that’s gushing into your mind on a twenty-four hour cycle? Well, you need not look much further than the results we have before us today. A fearful population is much more inclined to throw away their rights to anyone bodacious enough to claim that they can protect them. From the Kurd. From the Muslim. From the Immigrant. From the American, the Russian or the Chinese.

Who has benefited? Who is more powerful today when you feel terror, than they were yesterday when you felt stronger?

Cui bono.

/Sebastian Lindberg 18/4-2017

Stupidity and Pride

Once upon you must have
thought this important too
While our lives intertwined,
just breathing seemed so new
And thus when we split,
I forgot myself with you

I feel lost,
I feel lost,
I feel lost

Once we shared every word,
every sentence, every thought
Now, my attempts to make
words heard are for naught
Instead they seem to jar,
like puzzle bits from another box

But I try
and I try
and I try

When I see you I ask
how you are, and you just lie “fine”
That answer doesn’t change,
even when my voice turns to whine
Could it really be true
that this concern is only mine

Only mine,
only mine,
only mine

Do you feel the same,
confused as what to do
Or are you just tired of trying,
and want to carry on anew
How should I know,
with ’tis here wall ‘twixt me and you?

I try
and I try
and I try
I’ve knocked on this wall
’till I’m about to cry

I fear
and I fear
and I fear
That if I punch through,
there’s nobody there

Should I even try to break through?
Will you still be there if I do?
Or have you lost interest and moved on?
How should I know, with ’tis here wall ‘twixt me and you?

/Sebastian Lindberg 28/8-2016