we are tethered.

a note about good & bad propaganda | + a review of "I'm Your Venus," many reading recs, a perfect country song, + more <3

Dear friends, 

Something I struggle with is feeling pulled to the romance of propaganda while also being stubbornly committed to rigorous nuance. Propaganda has a bad rap, and many think it suggests some inherent un-trueness, but at its foundation, propaganda is simply a tool to galvanize, used by people and groups across (and outside of) the entire political spectrum. Certainly some propaganda is patently false — that immigrants are the reason white Americans are poor, for example. This is a lie that covers for capitalism. False propaganda about weapons of mass destruction enabled a massively deadly decades-long war. I am glad to say that I wasn’t tempted to buy into either of those lies, nor many others like it. 

But some propaganda’s worst fault is being hyperbolic, or vague, or—and this is when the truth part becomes a bit murky—aspirational. I am thinking of those sayings we hear that could be understood as generally true if we apply the right specifics to it; for example the mutual aid agit-prop: “We take care of us.” Who “we” is gets to be decided by the audience; most of us can think of the ways “we” (an activist group, a family, a group of college girlfriends) have taken care of each other, and the implication in this particular phrase by the types of people who share it is that we do we so without the state. But we can also think of many times “we” have not taken care of each other; in that way, it’s suggestive, encouraging us to live up to the possibility.

I like aspiration, it’s really the basis of my values and political orientations. I feel so desirous for a more liberated world that I nourish myself on the sayings, songs, illustrations, and messages that suggest it’s possible. Adrienne maree brown’s “what you pay attention to grows” has been my borrowed mantra for years, and created a seismic shift in how I approached my work in the world.¹

a version of “we take care of us” prop. beautiful.✓ aspirational. ✓motivating. ✓ (could be true). art by Lovesome Dove.

But I am also trained in a kind of critical thinking that rejects the simple. I am inclined to think of the monetary motivations of those calling for war in a particular region for example, just as I am to push on who “we” might be and what is meant by “care.” After news like yesterday’s about the passing of Trump’s horrific social safety net-shredding bill, my heart wanted to remind everyone that the failure of the state to protect the most vulnerable is nothing new, and that indeed we can take care of each other! But my guts wanted to mangle up and admit defeat. I was torn between confronting the reality of the new kind of violence the cuts and spending would enact on the poor (which always means a disproportionate impact on women, immigrants, people of color, and people with disabilities), and also being a cheerleader for the idea that we can (and must) find ways to survive without these systems anyway (and that that can be a good thing). That’s a long way to say, I am sitting with my critiques of electoralism, my fear and grief, and also my hope. Rejecting one kind of propaganda and clinging to another. 

Here’s one propagandistic saying that I actually don’t think is a lie or a stretch or in need of much nuance: “No one’s free until we’re all free.” It sounds trite, but if you are a human being with a pulsing heart who has ever tried to celebrate something after watching a video of children in a hospital getting bombed to death, you will understand it. Psychically, spiritually, and materially, we are tethered to one another’s well-being. I think of Paolo Freire a lot who writes that the supposedly “violent” overthrow of oppressive regimes is actually an act of love: 

"Yet it is—paradoxical though it may seem—precisely in the response of the oppressed to the violence of their oppressors that a gesture of love may be found. Consciously or unconsciously, the act of rebellion by the oppressed (an act which is always, or nearly always, as violent as the initial violence of the oppressors) can initiate love. Whereas the violence of the oppressors prevents the oppressed from being fully human, the response of the latter to this violence is grounded in the desire to pursue the right to be human. As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized. As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression."

Having access to medical care while others do not robs the “privileged” and the oppressed both of humanity. Excess next to scarcity is a scourge of soulessness. No one is free—-whether that’s Bezos not being free to have a wedding without righteous protest of it, or someone literally behind bars—-until we are all free. That’s not only a truth, but it’s a threat and a promise. 

I actually got some good news this week, and I believe in being present in moments of joy, but my “wins” are necessarily duller in a world like ours. Bezos still had his wedding, I have my good news, and incarcerated people absolutely still have moments of joy, but none of us is free, not really. 

This is what I’m thinking about on this terrible holiday. I hope you are indulging the kind of propaganda that gives you strength for another day, words that motivate you to not check out or give up. I hope you are finding the balance of sober confrontation and also aspiration. I love you.

— 

Below! So many good reading links (fashion! gender! a heartstring-tugging essay about what we lose with AI! two feminist memoirs! and more); my review of I’m Your Venus, the documentary about the Paris is Burning’s star, Venus Xtravaganza; a perfect country song; and a bunch of good things from my week, despite it all. 

love & solidarity,

raechel 

Reading.