Ugh! I have a consuming dilemma. So consuming that I have had a constant nagging headache for 3 days and I can’t sleep and every moment I am still I am ruminating. I am not sure I have ever felt so morally conflicted!
So Sunday is the Pride parade here in Belgrade. Now I have been an active gay rights activist in the USA for nearly 20 years, so on the surface it is a “no brainer” right? But here’s where it gets complicated…
The last time they tried to hold a Pride event in Belgrade it became horribly violent with the right-wing nut-jobs beating the demonstrators with bats, etc. Many ended up in the hospital and one nearly died. Fast forward to now…one would think from our own lifetime of experience that cultures progress, but that does not seem to be the reality of things in the world today.
Even in Budapest, where on several occasions in the last 10 years I have attended and enjoyed fun and festive Pride parades, this year’s event was marred by violence and several people I know personally were beaten bad enough to be put in the hospital.
But that is there…as far from me in Belgrade as Chicago is from New York.
OK, but much if not all of Europe (and maybe the world) seems to have an increasingly loud and violent far-right neo-Nazi-esque movement. And honestly, Serbia is the rule rather than the exception…I would even argue the “trend setters” in this capacity.
Here you have a country dripping with machismo, which a largely snickers at if not glorifies organized crime, where residual post-war travel restrictions in conjunction with post-war poverty have made it nearly impossible for Serbs to travel. Add to that a strange mytho-historical dominant discourse that is propagated unchallenged from kindergarten through adulthood and reinforced in media an pop-culture and as a result you have younger generations who seem increasingly myopic and small-minded.
People are getting ever more religious, girls are getting pregnant younger, young people are not finishing school, etc. All of these factors make for a certain population of angry, despondent, hopeless, uneducated youth who, while not truly ideological, are happy to unleash their anger on whatever they are pointed toward.
Now within this mish-mash you have a loud and prevalent national attitude toward homosexuality that at best views gay-ness as an illness and at worst a sub-human perversity against nature which should be wiped off the planet. All of this makes for a pretty scary and aggressive right-wing movement – to say the least. One that makes O’Reilly and Glen Beck look like banal toothless kittens, Ann Coulter & Sarah Palin look like Mrs. Brady and Mrs. Clever, and Dick Cheney look like a doddering old fool!
So….like I said, I have actively worked for gay rights in the USA since I was like 17 or 18. Naturally it would make sense that I would support the Pride activities here in Belgrade. After all most people I know who are progressively minded are participating, and the cause is something I totally believe in. And quite honestly, most people here, even if they believe homosexuality to be a sin or an illness, they still do not want to kill gay people. But the problem is that loud, vocal and violent minority – which is not actually a small number!
As the Pride events draw closer, these groups have organized an equally public campaign for a counter-protest and have openly promised to be violent and aggressive toward both the Pride demonstrators and the police. I have heard promises of baseball bats, oranges stuffed with razor blades, gang rape, tear gas and other unspeakable horrors. They are advertising in the newspapers, on the internet and through graffiti in the streets.
Now, the president here has promised thousands of police and most politicians, even if not in open support of the GLBT community, have voiced support of their right to demonstrate. Further, a large community of artists, journalists, actors and other public personalities have been very public and open about their support.
Still, this violent opposition seems very well organized, and who knows what the police will actually do when it comes down to it.
Will they protect the GLBT supportive demonstrators? Will they use live ammunition if necessary? (In that case I can only think of Kent State in the 60s – who knows who will get hit). Will they step aside and let the right wingers attack?
At the same time, how can I even question my participation? I mean it is easy to sit home in the USA and state that I support (or don’t support) something when the worst I can expect is some harshly wounding words. But when it really counts, when it really matters, when there is a real risk, shouldn’t it be more important to stand up for my beliefs? Shouldn’t it be more important to turn-out when there is a real threat to the values I hold dear – people’s right to live free from the physical fear of violent death? It is reminiscent of the US Civil Rights Movement when people really took their lives into their hands to advocate for justice and equality. And if it wasn’t for those people, just imagine what our country would look like now.
Still there is the argument that this is not actually my country. And then there is the fact that I actually need my full brain for my living. And honestly I am really scared…maybe more scared than I have ever been. I can’t sleep. My head aches for 3 days now…like a mouse is in my skull eating away at my brain. My conscience tells me that to demonstrate is the right thing. It is a human rights issue. It is dear to my heart. And quite honestly, with no kids and no husband, I am actually exactly the person who should be out there. But the fear is like nothing I have ever felt.
I also believe that each individual is responsible for creating the society that s/he wants to live in…that we are all responsible for what our communities and by extension our world looks like. You can pick up your feet and go with the current, but then you are really just a cog in the machine. A leaf on the wind. If not you, then who? If not now, then when?
ARGH! I am so conflicted! I keep going back and forth between deciding that I am going no matter what and hoping I come down with a horrible fever. This may seriously be the most conflicted I have ever felt. I know what the right thing to do is, but I am selfishly afraid to do it. Afraid to risk my one stupid precious self for the greater good. A braver person would not be in conflict! A braver person would be able to commit to the fact that no individual is greater than the collective good.
You know, I talk to my students about this a lot. Each of us imagines that we would have been the one to have saved our Jewish neighbor during the Holocaust. Or that we would be the one to have stood up against Apartheid in South Africa. In fact, if you are American and you are old enough, you may have even taken part in anti-Apartheid actions in the USA. Oh how easy and black-and-white things seem from far away. From far away the RIGHT and WRONG choices are so easy to see, and we all imagine that we would have been able to see it, and would easily have been strong enough to do the right thing.
Well…sorry to burst your bubble, but the truth is, 99% of us would not have stood up and risked ourselves to save the Jewish neighbor. Genocide is not made possible by the tiny percentage of people who actually engage in violence - it is made possible by the majority of people who look the other way...the bystanders who are too afraid or too selfish to or too stupid to think for themselves!
And while for most of us, the betrayal of our Jewish neighbor would have been simply self preservation, many would even have bought into Nazi ideology to rationalize their ugly choice! (We would have bought into the argument that Sadaam had Weapons of Mass Destruction for example, and that our government always has our best interest in mind).
I mean think of the Stanley Milgram experiments people! (If you don't know about it...look it up!) I think like only one person refused…and he was a Dutch guy that learned certain lessons from WWII.
Seriously…our self-preservation mechanism is sooo strong! Ever tried to wax your own bikini area or pluck out your nose hairs? Some people can do it no problem. Most…well after the first few strips their arms will no longer obey their brain…they just cannot inflict any more pain on themselves.
So at this point my thinking is that I am going to go to the demonstration…but I am going to wear running shoes! I wish I had a helmet and pepper spray, but I don’t. I want to bring a sock full of rocks to swing just in case or a mini-hair-spray with a lighter to fashion a blow-torch, but since I am going as part of an anti-militarist peace organization, I am not sure that would go over very well.
But here’s the naked truth…it is Friday night and I cannot guarantee that I won’t change my mind by Sunday morning. I also cannot guarantee that I won’t pee my pants and run away in fear once I get there.
On the other hand…they cannot possibly beat all of us down, and how can I pursue the things I care about and write about if I am not willing to live it – to live what I believe. How can I live a “nerf life” just “sittin’ on your biscuit, never having to risk it” and still advocate for larger global social justice if I am not willing to put myself out there for something I believe in?
Why should I be safe and fat and happy and live in my little McDonalds/Walmart bubble while others are suffering just b/c I had the fortune of being born in a certain place? Why should my life and safety (or any one person’s life or safety) matter more than anyone else’s? “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…or the one”… right? “No one is free until all are free”…right? It may not be my country, but we are all human and I am living here…I am alive here…and I owe a debt to my principles if not to my host nation, right?
So that is the dilemma – risk my biscuit for what I believe in and perhaps get hurt…or stay safe at home and hate myself for being weak…for basically being the person who turned my Jewish neighbor over to the Nazis.
What would you do?
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