The Burden of Knowing: Navigating Life in a System Built on Inequality

Calling Out Western Hypocrisy While Living in the Aftermath

Talofa reader,

Get ready for a long rant, with a lot of swear words.

I started writing this piece after reading about the Israeli terrorist attack on Lebanon on Tuesday 17th September, that exploded hundreds of pagers across Lebanon and Syria, killing 12 and wounding thousands.

It had been 12 months already of the genocide of the Palestinian people by US-backed Israel, and now a blatant terrorist attack in two more Arab countries, and all I’m seeing is the sustained and morally bankrupt western media, continue it’s agenda of lies and propaganda, straight down the camera, for the world to see.

To watch the western world - politicians, media, pundits, public figures etc. - with a straight face, talk the most absolute bollocks I've ever heard in my entire life, has been quite a thing.

Watching Matt Miller, U.S. spokesperson, repeatedly claim that the U.S. had not found any evidence of Israel violating International Humanitarian Law, even after all videos we’ve seen, and evidence and testimony has stacked up on news sites, has been sickening.

There’s a ghoulishness to how these people lie remorselessly to cover for war crime after war crime, documented for the world to see.

If a real person lied to my face as much as western media and personalities have done in the last year or so, I'd have done what my younger brothers did when they caught up to a guy in high school who did the same shit-talking online.

But that kind of justice seems like it will never happen here.

I've always known underneath all of these rules, laws, norms and "democracy", it was a fraud or cover for (brace yourself) 'white supremacy' - not the lynching black folks kind, but the insidious "everyone play nice so we can maximise legal ways to exert supremacy without the mess, if we can help it" kind that maintains global inequities under the guise of civility and order.

But now, they can't keep it from getting messy.

A Harsh (Re)Awakening

I’ve always known the system was, “not good”.

It wasn't until I listened in on a few of the press conferences recently and watched the U.S. spokespeople dodge, deny and repeat propaganda talking points, to increasingly depraved Israeli war crimes, all captured on video, that I knew that it was all fucked.

The mask is well and truly off.

White supremacy is so baked into western society, we've had to actually delude ourselves into believing the lie that is democracy so that we can get along, but once you peel back all the layers, as has been done on the international stage, we've watched it trickle down into our newspapers and even our government's stance on the genocide.

Should we wait until the U.S. tells us an Arab baby's life is as valuable as a white¹ baby's life, before we can say it?

I know the Crown has its own history of crimes against Māori in New Zealand history (they also did Samoa dirty) so I genuinely don't expect much from the NZ Government, but it is genuinely throw-up-levels of pathetic, watching us fawn over being the U.S. fluffer, like a good little cuck country with a submission fetish.

Yeah, this shit pisses me off, but these events over the last 12 months have just made me think about this reality of the challenge of living within a system you recognise as fundamentally unjust.

The Illusion Unveiled

It's been 12 months of this gaslighting, where we've watched the highest levels of international authority and governance, the ICJ and ICC, the UN and UN Security Council, really show us that there is no international law, there is no world order - just the empire's order and what it allows or doesn't allow.

The puppets and the theatre are finally beyond the pale (again)²

It's not that I didn't know a level of this propaganda, misinformation and disinformation has always been part of the media in western culture³.

The historical context of this kind of propaganda has its roots (obviously) in colonialism and imperialism. African countries always portrayed as "dark" or "uncivilised" in 19th and early 20th century Western literature and media, which was used to justify colonial expansion and the "civilising mission", a political rationale for military invasion of African countries.

Western media will present biased or simplified views of complex situations in other countries e.g. the disproportionate focus on violence and poverty in Haiti, while completely overlooking the U.S. history of military occupation and political assassinations in the country.

Western media then teamed up with political discourse in the west to exaggerate Iraq's weapons capability in the bullshit that was "Weapons of Mass Destruction", and how we all ate it up hook, line and sinker and paraded western invaders right into that country to murder its citizens, lay waste to cities, and then occupy, terrorise and torture the Iraqi people (Abu Ghraib anyone?).

None of these are even controversial!

It's in the history books (i.e. Wikipedia). There are photos and a whole wave of retrospective articles and analyses about how bad it was, after the fact, to say "oopsie, my bad" about it all.

The Terrorist State of Israel

Apparently, however, that (points to sub-heading) is controversial to say, today.

Maybe it's just the age I'm at, or the fact I've lived long enough to finally understand everything and see it for what it is, that the latest incident of Israel violating yet again, international and humanitarian law, that I just can't go back, mentally to the world how it was before.

Ignorant bliss.

It's been 12 months of genocide against the Palestinian people, and I've watched every western country (bar a few, shot Spain, Ireland, Belgium) tell us the mass graves, the bombed hospitals, the sniped babies, the ICU rotting babies, the torture camps, the raped until they were dead prisoner, the refugee tent bombings, the burning families alive, the children bombed to pieces, and family members' remains gathered up in plastic bags - either didn't happen, as we watched the videos or live streams, or that it was justified as defence, even though Israel is an occupying state.

The other week thousands of pagers blew up hundreds of people in Lebanon - and the same western countries don't want to call it terrorism!

Every spokesperson, political figure and western media outlet has bent so far backwards in apologising and cowing for not only Israel, but the complicity of every western nation still sending arms and trading with the terrorist state of Israel, long after the ICC had ruled it was in violation of international law.

Countless headlines in papers and websites saying Palestinians were "dying", but Israeli Occupation Forces were being "killed". Mysterious outbreaks of famine and disease, but the papers were at a loss to know who was causing these things, they just seem to be magically happening to the Palestinians.

There were airstrikes that were killing Palestinians taking refuge in tents, and buildings, but no one seemed to know whose planes these were? The headlines were equally clueless, it really was a mystery.

But every utterance of "Health Department" had the very explicit "Hamas run" prefix, branded solidly on every headline.

Every one, bar none.

The media had no clue who was dropping the 2000 lb bombs on tent cities in Gaza, but were somehow always 100% confident of every Hamas or Palestinian fingerprint on all the atrocious crimes like... throwing rocks at their occupiers, or not getting out of the way when Israeli settlers turned up to evict you and your family and help themselves to your family home.

The answers during press time with Matthew Miller, the official spokesperson for the State Department, and Vedant Patel, who currently serves as the Principal Deputy Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, have been particularly mind-blowing in watching the western propaganda machines' spokespeople weasel and "lawyer" the English language out of any integrity of what any word means.

Western media and its spokespeople bullshit and gaslit so much it was pretty much its own language.

The list goes on, it's been 12 months of this bullshit, and anyone with any level of humanity can see it for what it is - absolute hypocrisy, blatant disinformation, disregard for international and humanitarian law, and the mostly unchallenged belief that these Zionists are the chosen and superior people.

You mean to tell me the terrorist state, on the American titty to the tune of Billions and Billions of dollars, committing war crimes since its inception, who believe that raping non-Jews is not really rape, and harbour the western world's paedophiles and sex traffickers…

…are the superior race?

Have you lot gone spare?

What’s the Point?

Here's the thing: this whole section of information, at this point in life, "is what it is". Every time I have to think about it—in this instance, while crafting this piece—it rightly pisses me off.

But that's just the way the world is right now. There's nothing I can do about it, at least not on that scale.

The real crux of writing this is what comes next. Yes, everything I've written above is just how the world is: western hypocrisy, white supremacy, imperialism, the treatment of the Global South as perpetually "less than" the Global North.

If that's just how the world is, how are we supposed to live with it?

Especially those of us who are from the Global South and, evidently, not white?

The Weight of Knowledge

What do you do with that knowledge?

With that knowing?

It's hard to ignore the fact once it dawns on you: you're participating in a system that is flawed and not in your favour.

I guess it's not too different from living in New Zealand as a Samoan man.

You basically live multiple identities: one as a Samoan person with that worldview and values, the other as "whoever NZ society is comfortable with in that moment."

And I do mean, "What version of Samoan man are you comfortable with?"

Is banter acceptable?

What if I question you right back?

Would quiet and smiley be more to your liking?

The mechanism for fitting into a contrasting environment is to adapt, to change yourself.

Therein lies the dilemma (and the mental illness) of living somewhere you have to construct a persona.

You do this in order to "play along" with everyone else joking about thousands of pagers blowing up, affecting medical staff, children, and people going about their day.

The only "opt out" button is when we're safely back home. There, we don't have to tiptoe around the majority demographics' philosophies and beliefs to avoid becoming a target, being "identified" as difficult, or making things "awkward" for the group.

Everyone knows about microaggressions, code switching, and all that good stuff. That's all "cause" - the effect is constantly remaining vigilant. Not to the question "What is good and right?" because that would be easy and natural, but "What is good and right, according to these people?"

The "effect" of living like this is the emotional toll. It is exhausting.

Sure, we could solve or at least alleviate this by going full cognitive dissonance - but again, that's mental illness.

Secondly, why the fuck do we (or anyone for that matter) have to do this?

Why can't we all just agree that killing children, no matter whose children, is bad actually?

Why can't we all agree that anyone who says "they're all terrorists, even the babies" is actually fucked in the head?

You would think this would be a no-brainer.

When something has been documented so much, with scores of experts, scholars, and eyewitness accounts, and that knowledge is available for everyone to educate themselves on, you would need a lot of wilful ignorance to absolve yourself of knowing what's going on. Or worse, if you do know, to be transparent about why you choose the propaganda over the facts.

I think we would all be burdened with the knowledge, the knowing.

I think people who choose to "not know" either deliberately or by cognitive dissonance are doing so because they can't deal with the reality. Remember Mr. Reagan (aka Cypher) from The Matrix, who betrays everyone so he can be plugged back into the Matrix? People who avoid this knowledge because deep down they don't want to deal with it are a bit like Cypher. They would rather be blissfully ignorant than have to carry the burden of knowing.

What do we do to get through this?

Strategies for Survival and Resistance

Often when I'm overloaded with news of utter injustice and unchecked depravity going on one-sided in the world, I have to consciously take a step back, mentally and physically, from that stark reality. It's like unplugging from the matrix, so to speak.

Just because this is true, and this is reality, doesn't mean you have to stand and face the fire-hose 24/7. It doesn't help anyone to burn out, to despair and lose hope about the future. Sure, it doesn't help disassociating and living in la-la land either, imagining these things aren't real.

So how do we survive?

If you're Pasifika, you already know how to "go along to get along" in the face of the mainstream culture and value system. You know how to don the persona that allows you to blend in and not stand out as different. So the weight of knowledge that there is a terrible injustice happening in Palestine, and the Zionist world order is exposing western society and values for the fraud that it is - as a Pasifika person, it'll be the same playbook.

First, you want to carefully pick your battles. You don't have to be all things to everyone; you just have to make sure you and yours are safe and taken care of.

You'd do well to build and maintain your community connections, through which you can decompress and be reminded you're not experiencing this reality alone. It helps you have a safe space to just say how things really are for you, without having to explain it to folks who could never see your point of view and reasoning.

The group can do a lot for you, but it can only do so much. The rest of the survival and resistance comes from self-care and setting boundaries. You don't have to explain shit to anyone, but you do have to take responsibility for your boundaries and always enforce them.

Everything you do beyond this point is bonus.

You want to show solidarity with the cause? Protests and marches, writing online and flying the Palestinian flag, have at it - but understand what these evil shameless bastards are capable of, and there is no low they will not sink to.

Envisioning a Different Future

I would like to think of the future with hope.

I imagine we would see new social structures far beyond the current white supremacy that exists today. I even consider how this phrase, "white supremacy," might sound to white people.

I know a fair few white people who have expressed the sentiment, "Where's my white privilege? Has it kicked in yet?" This basically shows me they have no clue what "white privilege" actually means. They would rather reject the idea outright than try to understand it. This is what the dominant culture does when faced with criticism or feedback - reject it if it threatens their superiority.

We have to re-imagine a future social structure where the "superior" of the species is the one that takes care of the most people. The superior race would be those who fight for everyone's right to shelter, food, education, and healthcare.

Like, how truly superior would that be!

I do believe the role of indigenous people and indigenous knowledge is one of bringing the human race back to its humanity. We need systems built on indigenous values and traditions of community, of looking after our planet, the animal kingdom, and each other.

Conclusion: The Struggle Continues

I think what does my head in so much about this reality is that there's no resource or justice for it.

Israel's actions against Palestine, and now Lebanon, Syria, etc., is like the "boy with an influential family getting away with raping multiple women" analogy for me.

The public is in the courtroom hearing how it's the women's fault this is happening. They're told that the boy either didn't do it, or did it and didn't mean to, or that she was actually asking for it and the boy was entitled to do it.

This is where I've felt this sickening, enraging feeling before.

Having to listen to these kinds of bold-faced lies. To allow a pervert, an absolute piece of shit of society, say them and get away with it.

All because the "system" we're in says, "All of these rules and punishments for thee, but not for me".

How do we get there? I don't know.

This essay was a big rant about the state of the world right now. The international rules-based order and humanitarian law are falling. The carnage in terms of values and principles that we all held so high in western society is pretty much all down the toilet.

There's no coming back from what's been done.

We can't un-see and un-experience the depravity of Israel, the U.S., and Europe in genociding the Palestinians. It's been live-streamed and documented, one gruesome blown-up child after another.

We carry on, but the weight of knowing how things are is heavy. The pain that exists in the world that we see every day on our screens is overwhelming⁴.

We would do well to take good care of ourselves in the meantime.

I don't have a good conclusion. I could rant on forever. When you can see your own child in the faces and pain of the children of Palestine, I think you'd want to rant about this injustice forever too.

Thanks for reading,

🇵🇸 "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"

P.s. Fuck every Zionist shit-bag and the systems that support them.

1. I say white because you can substitute any white country in here, Ukrainian, British, German, and you'd get the same result.

2. Could be argued it was long beyond the pale with Iraq & WMDs, but just like the abusive husband continues to beat his wife and children when he feels like it, the same analogy is apt to understand how this ends - when we're all dead.

3. Yes, yes, we're not the only ones who do it, but it's the fact it's so fucking hard to just admit that we also do this, is what gets me.

4. For the record, none of what I’m experiencing from where I sit, in any way, even in the slightest, compares at all, to what the people in the Middle East are going through and have been going through all these years. I’m grateful for where the lottery of birth placed me, but it sickens me nonetheless that this is happening, and the way it is happening.