saw some German guy saying that Merz is like, always has been an arrogant twerp, and I wrote this whole rant about like, structural racism, 25% AfD, the decay of public discourse, the Stadtbild daughter thing as the masks-off of pervasive xenophobia and that pervasive xenophobia isn't down to individual character flaws, how the country is full of Nazis and being a Nazi isn't about being "uneducated" or "stupid" and so on and so on.

but then I deleted my entire reply cos I am thinking again of Sara Blum's discussion of the politics of complaint in Western progressivism in contrast to martyr culture in Rojava (https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co/episode/5a8ef855/martyr-culture-and-the-revolution-in-rojava-pt-i )

like of course the citizens of a country where a majority of people are voting to send the brown people home are going to think like that, if your own thesis is correct you should expect that exact attitude. calling out people never works, it gets them defensive; they start going like, but what about this or that, not everyone is like that you're being unfair…

the example Blum gives is in the context of feminism, like once you understand that patriarchy is a thing then there's no point complaining to men about it, men aren't going to do anything, that's like, the entire point. feminist demands have been around for a while, if men were going to liberate women they'd already have done it by now. the question is how to organise women to survive and resist patriarchy, so that when you face the men, you don't face it alone. women in Rojava don't complain to men that they should treat women better, they demand it, collectively. also they have assault rifles. the assault rifles really helped with changing attitudes.

like "consciousness raising" used to mean that women would gather in a C-R group and talk about how their fathers and husbands treat them, with the goal of dispelling the impression that their issues were down to individual conflicts or character flaws. with the goal of undoing this sort of normalised ambient gaslighting, "you must be imagining things, it's not that bad, they can be nice too, you're exaggerating". reportedly just getting women in a sewing or craft circle to listen to one another was effective at highlighting the structurality of it. when did "awareness" become about marching with signs, shouting at the void, hoping that if you complain enough at it patriarchy will change its mind?

the same applies in other axes of oppression, if you're an immigrant in a country that hates immigrants and is trying to get rid of us, if you *know* that over 50% of the country is currently voting to get you deported, you should expect defensiveness and denial from the other half, if they were going to do something about it we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with. so your energy is better devoted to connecting to other immigrants, validating their experiences, building networks of resilience.