Detachment doesn't make a person

No one creating meaningful work is gong to let their self-obsession supersede a genocide.

There’s an emotional cavern between those who speak and those who are silent in the face of genocide, those who twiddle their thumbs and wait for the stench of death to blow over, for the killing machine to sputter to a halt. I have to tell myself they operate out of cowardice — a fear of “losing” something – friends or money or status — willingly offering their conscience as collateral.

The same can be said toward those sniveling some indifferent dribble; writers, artists, people I once admired, up in their bubble wrapped offices among their gilded books, penning their arguments over semantics and publishing lukewarm “both sides” takes that hinge on feelings rather than capturing reality, rather than putting the world into words. They toe the line of neutrality as some omniscient observer, one who is unaffected by the gargantuan loss unfolding before us. They are disconnected from the unifying thread of humanity, and instead perch above it, dutiful, cerebral overlords, casting down a vacant consensus from time to time full of analysis and hand-wringing and no heart.

In Zadie Smith’s infamous New Yorker essay, she ludicrously and earnestly argues that “language and rhetoric are—as they have always been when it comes to Israel and Palestine—weapons of mass destruction,” a notion so preposterous, detached and disgusting to me as Palestinians, even then in May of 2024, were facing genocide against real weapons of mass destruction. She argues, in between advocating for a ceasefire, that calling israel a “colonialist state,” a factually correct statement, carries the same weight as saying, “There is no such thing as the Palestinian people,” carries the same weight as the actual killing and murder and bloodshed enacted by the occupation in Gaza. In response to where she stands on freedom for Palestinians, Smith finishes ambivalently, feebly, by writing: “Put me wherever you want: misguided socialist, toothless humanist, naïve novelist, useful idiot, apologist, denier, ally, contrarian, collaborator, traitor, inexcusable coward. It is my view that my personal views have no more weight than an ear of corn in this particular essay. The only thing that has any weight in this particular essay is the dead.” Smith’s argument that the emotions of one faction of people should be taken into account as equally, if not more than, a group suffering mass death is remarkably disgraceful, but she’s inadvertently correct in one aspect: words, and their absence alike, are consequential.

meme from celestialcomrade on IG

In the past five years, there’s been ongoing discourse ad nauseum about “performative” activism, about the weight words like Smith’s carry. She seems to believe they’re irrelevant, meaningless muck despite using over 2000 of them to say so. I’m here to tell you they are in fact heavy, and they are in fact significant, especially in this country where consuming propaganda is only second to creating propaganda as our favorite pastime. Think of the domino effect one single person in the spotlight often makes. Take for example Ryan Trahan, that YouTuber whose content is so saccharine it toes the line between wholesome and unnerving, who is on a cross-country journey to raise funds for St. Jude, a noble cause. Staple Games, an app developer, promised to match a dollar for every download made by one of Ryan’s followers. To date, they’ve contributed $815,642 to his campaign — meaning nearly 1 million downloads on account of Ryan’s passing suggestion. Imagine if that influence, that pressure, was also applied in such mass on our government to end our financial and rhetorical support for israel’s war machine. Sure, it might take years for these cinderblocks in office to budge, but moving the needle is better than stagnation. Furthermore, when the population currently enduring a genocide is asking you to call attention to their plight, to post their GoFundMes, to share stories of their loved ones, to tell the world they existed and have existed for millenia, the entire conversation around performance kind of goes out the window anyway.

I’ve been filled with equal parts disgust and distress watching the world turn, watching people with influence and power either stay silent or crank out some neutral, milquetoast take — squandering their humanity and proving they never had any impact to begin with. They’ve never had what they need to be someone real, to be someone who matters — no teeth, no spine, no ability to see outside of their immediate reality as more than a mere onlooker.

I’m telling you right now, no one worth a lick of your time has remained nor will remain silent about Palestine, about Gaza, about genocide, about occupation, about colonization. No one worth a lick of your time is afraid to use those words, call suffering by its name, give it both credence and a set of eyes to bear witness. No one with a real point of view, one that actually matters, is willing to bequeath their humanity in the name of personal, capital gain. All of these “creatives” who have done so, who have neglected to use their platform, neglected to direct donations, neglected to engage with the real world consequences of generational apathy, have effectively shown they refuse to stand on their own. They cannot stand on their own.

I’ve watched influencers with millions of followers not even allocate one single Instagram story toward fundraisers for Palestinian babies who are being forcibly starved to death by israel, toward women’s organizations on the ground in Gaza distributing pads and tampons, toward some utterly noncontroversial charity providing basic aid and necessities to a population being decimated. I’ve watched institutions water down their coverage, attempt to manufacture the public’s consent for the atrocity unfolding unto the Palestinian people. I’ve watched the people I once looked to for guidance, looked to in order to shape my own taste, my own worldview, look the other way. I’ve watched people, ones who say they’re loving, ones who paint themselves as intellectuals, put their vanity and their wallets first, have greed control their tongues, let apathy be their guide.

No one who is able to distill the world, parse and disseminate it any meaningful way through words, fashion, food, film, whatever, is going to let themselves and their self-obsession entirely supersede a genocide. No one who is able to give you a worthwhile looking glass intrinsically or out into the ether is going to loiter in silence or passivity. The work that results from detachment is not worth merit, not worth absorbing, not real. That work and the hands and brain and mouth and eyes behind it are utterly untethered from the reality that you and I live in. They are not driven by the same human impulses as the rest of us. They cannot show you the way through a world that undoubtedly exists, the one you and I can touch, only whatever fake one they seem to inhabit.

Call your representative here. Donate to Palestinian relief below.

• Healing Our Homeland

• The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

• Grassroots fund for displaced Gazans in Egypt

• Watermelon Relief