I read an article some years ago (ten years ago) called “The Pitchforks are Coming...” which has come into my mind again more recently. I might describe it as arguing for the right thing for the wrong reason and I didn’t really warm to the author of it if I’m honest, but nevertheless, he made some very good points…ten years ago.
The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.
With reference to the French revolution, it was a furore on TikTok, prompted by a model outside the MET gala recently who used the quote from the Marie Antoinette film:
Let them eat cake!
which reminded me of the article. The outrage her tasteless video prompted a movement subsequently called the “digital guillotine” as millions of regular people started to block celebrity and corporation social media accounts they were and were not following. The excess on display at the MET gala was juxtaposed next to a march in support of Palestine, hundreds of metres away and the fury at the video using the sound at the insensitivity and deafness to the suffering of people at the hands of a genocide, where internationally agreed, illegal and barbaric tactics of starving a civilian population are being used.
The theme of the MET gala this year was “The Garden of Time“, a short story by J. G. Ballard. it is summarised in one of the comments in the goodreads link:
“The Garden of Time” by J. G. Ballard (1962) is a short story of speculative fiction. It is about an elegant couple living in a beautiful villa. They have a garden of crystal time flowers. When each flower is plucked, it deliquesces (melts) from a solid to a liquid and then disappears. When that happens, time reverses. A mob is coming towards them, and they use the flowers to hold back the mob as long as possible.
The goodreads post has many comments in relations to the story and this year’s MET gala.
Tiktok is an interesting social media app. When I set up as an online tutor a few years ago, I was very reluctant to sign up to it, but my business coach suggested I did and I post short videos solving chemistry problems. What I have found to my surprise, not withstanding the addictive nature of it, is the degree of conversation that goes on. Sure, there are the negative and vicious comments that you see from social media trolls, but it’s not just about leaving comments. Videos can be stitched and dueted. You can replay a section of a video in your own video and comment on it or you can make your own video alongside someone else’s video in a duet. One of the most inspiring examples I have seen of the latter was of one creator who signs to songs, being dueted by other creators signing to the same song in different sign languages – amazing! Regular people all over the world, talking to each other and sharing ideas. The model I mentioned earlier was stitched many times and ctiticised, leading to the boycott of celebrities at the MET gala and those who have been silent on the genocide in Palestine.
Social media content in support of Palestine is being suppressed. I saw it for myself when I shared a video from a pastor in Bethlehem showing their crib at Christmas time. It was blacked out on my facebook page, where other shared videos were not. Nevertheless, my tiktok for you page is overwhelmed by it and I find myself unable to look away. Videos have been posted regularly from the Gaza press, directly from people on the ground, unpolished, raw. We are able to see what it is like for other ordinary people around the world, in real time. Sometimes, when one of the regulars hasn’t posted for a while, there is a sinking feeling that they have finally been killed. It feels so trite to say it so simply like that and it doesn’t convey the feeling of dread, the hoping that today there will be a video from them telling us that they are okay. And at the same time, the same sinking feeling for all of the unknown faces dying every day, including children, Mansour was missing for two weeks at one point, Bisan didn’t post for a few days, leading people to worry and ask what had happened to them. Bisan used to begin her videos like this:
Hey everyone, This is Bisan from Gaza. It’s day #no. I’m still alive…
A mural of her has been painted in Edinburgh.
There is a feeling of relief to see her post with today’s date on it.
The feeling of bearing witness to the genocide in Gaza resonates with the third week of The Spiritual Exercises for me. The grace asked for is:
In the Passion it is proper to ask for sorrow with Christ in sorrow, anguish with Christ in anguish, tears and deep grief because of the great affliction Christ endures for me.
The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius trans. Louis J. Puhl S.J.
Ignatius give additional directions:
I will rouse myself to sorrow, suffering and anguish by frequently calling to mind the labors, fatigue and suffering which Christ our Lord endured from the time of birth to the mystery of the passion upon which I am engaged at present.
The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius trans. Louis J. Puhl S.J.
I am reminded from scripture:
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
It is all too easy to be blind and deaf to the suffering of people in another part of the world, to think that it is all too complicated to understand and it is upsetting, and what power do I have anyway? During the third week of my Spiritual Exercises, I prayed that I wouldn’t turn away, that no matter how difficult and painful it was to walk with Jesus in His passion, I prayed that I wouldn’t be one of those to run away from the garden. In my experience of praying the third week, I came to understand that it wasn’t for me. In my imaginative prayers, whenever Jesus was struggling, and struggle He did, when He caught sight of those who loved Him, those who were walking with Him, He drew courage and strength from them. To stand in solidarity with people is not for us, it is for them. If it is hard for us, how much harder is it for those for whom there is no escape, for whom there is no turning away?
Bisan posted a short video some time ago full of hope. Hope because the voices of the student protests in America had reached Gaza. The solidarity of the demonstrations around the world were providing the people under siege and bombardment in Palestine with hope and encouragement. When so many in the world can see the wrongness of Israel’s campaign against Palestine, when the International Criminal Court has named the war as genocide, what are the governments who are still holding out playing at? When most of the world can see the obvious, why do they refuse?
One of the Tik Tok videos I watched which has disturbed me the most was of a young Isreali woman who had done her time with the IDF and was talking about the fact that she had knowingly killed a young Palestinian boy of around eleven or twelve years old. This young woman was broken: she was filled with dread and fear, like someone standing on a precipice, oscillating between trying to accept what she had done and couldn’t undo, and to feeling pure horror in what she had done. How can anyone come back form such a thing and live peacefully with themselves? Israel is not only destroying Palestinian children, she is destroying her own.
17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”[a
Rishi Sunak, in the first few days of the election campaign has told us that the world is a more dangerous place. What can I say? He is one of the super rich minority and it seems that the chances of his party winning are far too slim. Maybe it does indeed seem dangerous to him and others like him as the hordes come over the hill with their pitchforks. I will let Nick Hanauer close from his memo to fellow zillionaires:
If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when…
Revolutions, like bankruptcies, come gradually, and then suddenly. One day, somebody sets himself on fire, then thousands of people are in the streets, and before you know it, the country is burning… If inequality keeps rising as it has been, eventually it will happen. We will not be able to predict when, and it will be terrible—for everybody. But especially for us.
Vive La Revolucion!
