Hashtag Artillery: the New Frontline
Oh, Robert. Here we go again. An another prophet of doom from the golden hills of Hollywood sounds the alarm of the impending Trumpocalypse in November. There he was, held at camerapoint and spelling it out for everyone to hear: if the orange goblin gets his hands on the nuke codes again, you can kiss all of your freedoms goodbye. He’s been very vocal about politics before, just like many of his peers in America. Naturally, it caused a major reaction on social media, with either/or opinions, once again reiterating the depth of the ideological division in the most powerful democracy in the world. They voted as if their lives depended on it four years ago. It’s a bit more complicated this time.
One might say, if Twitter is anything to go by, they’ll be voting as if the lives of people in Gaza depended on it. According to the White House, the atrocities in Rafah are still within the borders of Washington’s political gag reflex. Nicki Haley added fuel to the fire by writing “finish them” on the IDF artillery. Of course, they were meant to sprinkle the ground with even more Palestinian blood cells. Joe Biden is walking a dangerous line that’s getting thinner as we speak due to his ambivalent attitude to Israel and crimes committed by Netanyahu’s regime. Palestine was recognized as a state by Ireland, Slovenia and Spain but that’s merely a drop instead of the whole waterfall needed to stop the rain of shelling above the Gaza strip.
The reluctance to put his foot down may very well cost Joe Biden the victory at the upcoming elections. It’s absurd that Robert de Niro is simultaneously supporting the Democrats while their leader is doing everything in his power to keep Americans off the ground in major crisis points like the Ukraine and Palestine. You can pump as much artillery and money as you like, but it won’t really matter until American soldiers risk their lives in the battlefield. This way, all you get is activists, celebrities and their fans trying to win a war with hashtags instead of bullets. The Weeknd donated to the Palestinian cause, Taylor Swift’s under attack for her lack of engagement. People are reselling the tickets they bought for her shows.
I’ve questioned the audacity of celebrities dabbling in politics several times already so there’s no need to dwell on it again. When the American elite puts on their usual hat of relatable sympathy with mere mortals on the wrong side of the tv screen, we get to the place where we’re at right now. The students protesting on American campuses have turned a major humanitarian disaster into a fucking hashtag. If you can afford the tuition fee for Princeton don’t be surprised if I don’t buy into your virtue signalling. The closest they’ll come to danger is getting arrested for the disturbance they created while the bodies lying in the rubble of Palestine are slowly decomposing. Armchair activism is nothing new, this is just a step above it and it’s ridiculing the victims they allegedly support. Paul Celan wrote words that could soothe a sore wound. Words, not hashtags.
The way things are currently going, two things seem unavoidable: Trump’s second term and a further escalation in the Middle East. Zelensky will keep traipsing around the world, collecting more help to win a fight he’s unlikely to win. No one defeats Russia. Not because of Putin. They had Stalin and others before him too. The Cold War is still alive and well, so it’s unlikely Biden will go the whole nine yards and trigger them into expanding the frontline all the way to their own borders. Canada’s Justin Trudeau is under fire for approving 5000 visas for Palestinian refugees. How and why they came up with that particular number is beyond me. Naturally, certain parts of the Canadian public were horrified. You may or may not agree with them yet it doesn’t change the fact it’s controversial. In this age of constant availability we’re all hostages of someone else’s pain and it’s tiring.
It’s not really a surprise many of those who were adamantly pro-Palestinian didn’t seem very eager when they were confronted with the option of hosting some of them in their own homes. There’s not enough place, they’ve got kids, blah, blah, blah. Time and time again we prove how pathetic human kind is. You’ll gladly kick a police officer trying to stop you making a fool of yourself once again. You can handle handcuffs. But should the problem come closer to home turf, your enthusiasm might deflate. Why can’t we just stop killing each other? It never ceases to amaze me. Animals don’t kill unless under direct threat. Sometimes they even create bonds between seemingly unrelated species to protect each other from harm. Like monkeys who alert deers about approaching tigers, enabling them to escape into safety. I still can’t grasp why they do it, but it certainly works.
I really wish you could copy-paste this into Washington. But at the moment, it’s more likely for a deer to be scooped up by that tiger than people agreeing upon a common political and humanitarian goal. It shouldn’t be so difficult. Netanyahu oopsing in discomfort after a horror like the one unleashed in Rafah isn’t good enough. It won’t do. The only thing that will do is a ceasefire. Almost all the trees in this forest are on fire and there’s nothing to gain but hubris beyond reason. This mess comes at the worst possible moment for Biden and his oponent must be enjoying the fact that for once, his trial isn’t front and center. It might change soon but in his case, every moment outside the spotlight is good news for Democrats. Headline real estate has been Trump’s brand from the very start.
There’s no such thing as bad PR in politics, we’ve been proven time and time again. It’s tragic that in Hollywood, criminal behavior or a foul mouth can make you blacklisted while the same principle doesn’t equally apply to parts of our society where it really matters. Like the Capitol Hill, European Parliament or the Oval Office. Fortunately, come November, it’s not the showbusiness elites who’ll be calling the shots in American voting booths. It’s one of the last vestiges of equality: whichever tax bracket you’re in, you don’t get an advantage over anyone else in your ballot box. If anything, whatever happens, it always comes down to classism: the rift goes through our wallets, not ideological preferences. Yet we pretend we don’t understand what it’s all about. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Those on the Walk of Fame in Los Angeles like to wear lots of different badges on their glamorous attire to show support for all sorts of victims: there’s the ceasefire button, little bows in varying colors for each cause, and with the victims of Harvey Weinstein’s casting couch, bows and buttons weren’t enough. Instead, they decided to take their token activists as the plus one for everybody to see you’re not a cold-blooded bitch but an ally of your wronged, traumatised and backstabbing sisters. With the current situation in the Gaza strip, the famous model Bella Hadid went even further, wearing a sexy red keffiyeh-style dress wrapping her tits in the very thing that makes activism look cheap, to say the least. If not for the aesthetics, most definitely due to the fact that the clueless model completely missed the mark by donning the wrong kind since this one was actually Jordanian. But in order to recognize this mistake, your brain needs to be bigger than your tits. Sometimes that’s obviously too much to expect.
