FUGUE PLAGUE

BONK

Hello and welcome to Fugue Plague, the weekly newsletter where I translate the incoherent screaming/tinnitus that runs through my brain on a near-constant basis into something resembling a thought. This week, thoughts on Gaza and the exploding protests against genocide and immediate institutional backlash.

It’s been over 200 days since 10/7/2023 and the beginning of the so-called “Israel-Hamas War.” In that short span of time, nearly two million Palestinians have been displaced inside the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces have systematically razed the occupied territories. Roughly 34,000 people have been killed, 78,000 wounded and another 8,000 missing. This is barely a glimpse at the total devastation being wrought and cannot even come close to containing everything that people in Palestine have lost in just six months. Looking at it has rendered me speechless. I feel about as angry and as upset and as lacking efficacy about the situation in Gaza as I did when I was a teenager and the so-called “War in Iraq” was winding brutally down. Even now the Iraqi death toll is nearly incomprehensible to me. It is an historical black hole that threatens to devour me whole every time I look at it. Its horrific energy alone has propelled me to label myself anti-war and anti-military. I would bring it all to a crashing halt if I could, but I can’t, so I donate.

But six months of stunned silence hasn’t really sat well, especially when genocide deniers and Israeli/US state bootlickers take no opportunity or hints to shut the fuck up. Watching a bunch of smug safe suburban motherfuckers from the US or the UK crawl all over social media with their whataboutisms and attempts to deflect conversations away from, for example, considering the images of dead children or of exhausted journalists trying to escape bombardment or of once-vibrant-if-struggling communities leveled to the ground, has been unfortunately life-changing for me. Currently, we’re hearing about a “rampant wave of anti-semitism” sweeping college campuses across so-called “Western Civilization,” and oddly, weirdly, strangely, every single fucking time you zoom in just a bit it turns out these crybully shitheads – some of whom occupy positions of power in state and national governments, or media organizations, or even academia itself – are talking about young adults sitting on their campus quads with signs like “The school must divest from Israel” and “No more support for genocide.” Sometimes these kids even bring tents with them, oh no!

Digging deeper, the claim is that at these protests, which have been happening in fits and spurts since 10/7, individuals have been recorded holding signs with Nazi iconography and slogans, shouting anti-semitic chants, and getting into fights with Jewish protestors and counter-protestors alike. Whether these folks are supposed “leftists” taking their opportunity to be as openly anti-semitic as possible, right-wing agitators who have decided to try and slander these protests and their participants toward a broader aim of delegitimization, or even state agents-provocateur trying to help justify the eventual police repression, I certainly don’t think they have any business being at these protests. But also, I’m not an organizer for one of these protests. I have no idea how this kind of fuckery is actually being combatted on the ground. And I have my doubts that various shitheads in the media and political office wouldn’t just make up the claim of anti-semitism whole-cloth even if the protestors were all on their best behavior.

Essentially, in short, a bunch of just-barely-no-longer-kids currently in the process of developing their moral character have decided that they can’t sit idly while a genocide is committed using their tax dollars and with the support of their educational institutions, and their acts of defiance have made a lot of people mad – to the point where politicians are openly slandering the kids and administrators are sending the cops after them with tear gas and rubber bullets. As these protests escalate, it’s been heartening to see faculty join in on the fun too. I just watched a video shot at CUNY where professors held a big banner reading “CUNY Faculty supports the demands” and chanted “To get to our students, you’ll have to get through us!” Shit brought a tear to my eye, even though the cynic in my brain knows that the fuckboys in Eric Adams’ Army genuinely would have no problem plowing through those professors.

Truth be told, there’s been a lot of resistance to US complicity in Israel’s campaign of genocide since 10/7. Some of that resistance has taken the form of the individualistic, spectacular (as in the Situationist sense) and tragic, like the self-immolation of a protestor in Atlanta back in late 2023 and the more widely-covered suicide of Aaron Bushnell at the Israeli Embassy in DC a couple months ago. A lot of it has been collective, disruptive action, from highway blockades to pickets at shipping ports and weapons/materials manufacturers designed to prevent workers from entering and keeping the shipping pipeline to Israel from working at its intended capacity. A small portion of this resistance has even taken place at the ballot box, with voters marking “Undecided” on primary ballots where President Joe Biden was supposed to be a runaway shoe-in, with the intent of sending a message. I don’t typically place a whole lot of stock in electoral protests but I will admit to giggling a little when “Undecided” turned out to make Biden furious. Good! Fuck you, buddy.

Anyway, here’s a roundup of reporting, commentary and reportbacks from major protests against genocide that have happened since April 15 or so.

CrimethInc.

It’s Going Down

Unicorn Riot

Now Listening: I RESIGN

When I was a baby punk I was faced with a critical choice: go see Teenage Bottlerocket and Cobra Skulls at the Conservatory, or go to I Resign and No Man’s Slave at the local Infoshop. I made the wrong choice. Now I pay penance.

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About the author

Kaile Hultner has been writing about politics in some form since 2012. They live in Oklahoma City.