We are nearly 170 days into the seige on Gaza and every day is a never-ending loop of death and destruction. For just as many days, I have been trying to craft a coherent analysis of what exactly this moment in time represents. Thus far I have been unable to do so, frozen by my own feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness.
I want to understand what exactly this moment is. I want to understand why it feels tangibly different. I want to understand why past liberation movements often united the political Left, while the movement for Palestinian liberation has fractured the "progressive" party in ways that feels irepperable. It’s a fracture that has laid bare the deep covert racism that has always boiled just below the surface of Liberal politics. It feels as though society has cracked in two, finally revealing the bloody core of historical violence as envisioned by those who intended to create a world based on white supremacy and a capitalistic hierarchy of oppression.
As the genocide in Gaza continues unabated, the discourse around it in online spaces has shifted from righteous activism to an economy of suffering. Seemingly no one learned the necessary lessons from 2020, when instead of divesting from white supremacy, white people read books. They cried white tears. They co-opted the movement for Black lives. They profited from it. And then they politically threw Black folks under the bus and backed over us twice. I am increasingly concerned that my Palestinian brothers and sisters are about to learn the limits (and the dangers) of white allyship.
For months I have watched white women in particular engage in a familiar pattern of performance…infanitlization of the oppressed, saviorism, centering, tearful diatribes given straight to camera, monitization of suffering, social clout chasing disguised as activism, co-opting of culture, sewing division between marginalized groups.
White women have become skilled at turning online liberation movements into their entire personalities, and while they are certainly loud, their "activism" is almost completely devoid of self-reflection. Of course what non-white people in movement spaces have always known is that white allyship in general is largely a virtue signal and a means of aswaging white guilt. White people are inherently complicit in colonial violence....white people who occupy space in liberatory movements KNOW THIS...therefore the only way to center themselves is to prove that they are the wokest of the woke. In the process, they further sideline marginalized voices, thus continuing the cycle of oppression. If there is anything I learned from the years I have spent educating white people on anti-racism and allyship, it's that while they are (sometimes) well intentioned, most of them do more harm than good.
As the current iteration of the Palestinian liberation movement continues to be the cause du jour among those on the political Left, cracks are beginning to emerge in regards to solidarity between marginalized groups. As is always the case, the movement for Black liberation has been sidelined...this time out of accute necessity. An active genocide on par with the darkest chapters in the modern history of "war" must take precedence, particularly when its victims are disproportionately children. But what those of us who center our lives around activism know is that if movements are not principled and intersectional, they are doomed. So when I began to see an increase in Black voices calling out the presence of anti-Blackness within the movement, I became concerned about its long-term sustainability, especially given the ways in which white “ally’s” seem to be accelerating these divisions among marginalized groups.
Some weeks back, a young Sudanese woman was nearly driven to the point of self-harm when she was harassed on Twitter for calling attention to anti-Black comments made by Palestinian journalists. When I and several other Black advocates posted in support of her, we were also met with vitriol and were accused of attempting to divert attention away from Palestinian suffering. This blatant misogynoir was also on display in the conversation around the United States abassador to the UN, who just happens to be a dark skinned Black woman. When she shamefully cast her veto vote against a ceasefire in Gaza, instead of expressing legitimate outrage, supporters of Palestine filled comment sections with vile racist insults. One white commenter referred to her as a "house slave". Another suggested that perhaps she should be thrown into an oven given that her skin already looked like ash.
And then there was the tragic death of Aaron Bushnell. Bushnell, an active duty US service member set himself ablaze in protest of America's complicit role in genocide. He immediately became a focal point of discourse in all corners of the internet and was *mostly* heralded as a hero among white Leftists. When non-black people began to honor him with posts using language co-opted from the Black Liberation movement, Black activist correctly pointed out that Black liberatory language should not be used to honor white allies. The response from white Leftists was a stomach churning display of white entitlement and smug sanctimony dripping in anti-Black rhetoric. No doubt some of these same "allies" had BLM profile pictures before replacing them with watermelons and Palestinian flags.
But none of this should have been surprising.
Black folks learned in the years after 2020 that white allyship is conditional and people of color are largely disposable (particularly in online spaces). Cries of "Black Lives matter" are replaced with "Save Gaza". There is no attempt at true collective solidarity because for white people, this is all a performance. Eventually the curtain will close, and they will move on to the next show. They consume the trauma of marginalized people and then discard them when they grow bored of exploiting the pain of people they inadvertently oppress.
Perhaps the only thing worse than the MANY white allies who have gained social capital from the suffering of brown people are the financial grifters who have monetarily profited directly off of the death of children. This basket of deplorables includes lots of white allies and a handful of non-Palestian POC who sell courses, community meet ups, or merchandise in pursuit of fattening their own bank account. One anti-zionist "ally" tripled his following and then used it to sell his woodworking projects. Another white Leftist wrapped herself in a Palestinian flag as an advertisement for her OnlyFans. And then there is Shaun King, who I can only presume is currently busy counting his millions of dollars in blood money.
Understandably, many in the Palestinian liberation movement have declined to criticize this obvious exploitation of the work they have been building on for generations. A friend privately expressed her exasperation over this circus of grifters, but also voiced her hesitation over any public pushback. For her, any attention shed on the suffering of her people is worth having given the ways in which Palestinians have historically been silenced. I get it. I also want to tell her that these people are not her friends. In fact, they endanger the legitimacy of our collective cause. She wants her people to have basic human rights. I want the same for mine….but over the years, I have learned the hard way that our freedom will never be won by aligning ourselves with our oppressors. In fact, when we refuse to gatekeep our movements from people who aren't deeply invested in the fight, we are allowing rot from the inside.
I am not Palestinian, but I have listened to the anguish of my friends who are. Our fate is linked because their children are mine, and my children are theirs. We carry similar wounds and a legacy of generational trauma. We desperately want BETTER. That feeling lives in our chest. It's suffocating. There is an authenticity in that shared experience that cannot be replicated. Those of us who are committed for the long run remain so because we are deeply personally invested. I question whether that can ever really be true for white folks unless they are somehow tied to the cause in an intimate way.
Countless Black educators, writers and activists have spent years of their lives teaching white people to be better allies. As a person who is half white....half colonizer...I know most white people are simply incapable of understanding anything other than their own experience. Their motivation in regards to liberation is almost entirely external. They cannot fathom what divesting from harm might mean because it would require an ego death that they are often incable of.
White women will continue to post selfies in kufiyahs until their feeds are no longer filled with images of dying children...and then they will tuck their scarf into the bottom of the drawer right next to their pink pussy hat and Black Lives Matter tee.
To be clear, it is possible for white people to be in loving community with marginalized people. There are many white women who I consider to be allies...even sisters. What they have in common is humility. They understand that the primary role of an ally is SUPPORT. They understand systems of oppression and how they intersect. They remain open to new information and incorporate their learning into their advocacy. They do not infanilize, tokenize or engage in saviorism. They listen more than they talk. They are incredibly hard to find.
That said, one thing remains clear: marginalized people should stop investing energy into building allyship with white folks. We should invest in building networks of solidarity across marginalized communities. We should invest in moving beyond these miopic liberation "trends". Slogans, symbol and hashtags serve a limited purpose. Social media is a powerful tool of movement building, but it ultimately results in movements cannabalizing themselves.
I largely feel like the collective work of Black & brown activists has been undone over the course of the last four years. Black thinkers have noted that the Biden years can be defined as a “return to whiteness’’. The fact that white leftists are indulging in "anti-wokeness" rhetoric is yet another manifestation of this return. The Left is now indistinguishable from the Right and the smugness of internet culture leaves little space for building community rooted in care. Whatever this moment represents, it certainly feels like the last gasp of something.
There have been other moments in history where the world has died and was made anew...I'm just not convinced that most humans are capable of the tenderness and cooperation that would be required to dig ourselves out of a hole of despair so deep it threatens to swallow all of us. I guess the true measure of “allyship” is the willingness to suffer alongside marginalized people in tangible ways…to insist on staying despite having the privilege to turn away….to say that if my sister is in despair, then I will help her carry that burden no matter the cost.
This is beautifully written and gave me a lot to think about. Thanks, Amanda ❤️