Stalinism Deniers | Clarissa's Blog
There’s a certain sense in which people are allergic to the real world — and I don’t mean this in the same way as right-wingers do, when they throw around the expression as a means to condemn you.
It’s more that people are addicted to their idealism, and they won’t let historical fact get in the way. They create imaginary friends and imaginary enemies and the enemies can never be allowed to win, but the friends must always be allowed to win, even if they commit atrocities. They have a lot of excuses available for their atrocities, because “they were oppressed”.
Is it any wonder that I had so much difficulty understand my own history when this black and white schema was constantly being applied?
Only Marechera’s work made clear to me the real lay of the land. I would have had no idea, without him. All the other writing that has come out of Zimbabwe has expressed some form of idealism, as if the color of one’s skin made one’s actions good or evil.
I think most people really struggle when challenged with the idea that this isn’t so. They think it must be a trick, to suggest to them that the world isn’t neatly demarcated along easily readable moral lines. Life is kind of dirty in that way. Also, it is necessarily so. You can’t get rid of your own dirt, and neither should you wish to, if you want to remain breathing on this Earth. Best thing you can do with it is to make your “evil” and your malice work for you. Write searing critiques of the real exploiters. Donald Trump is not your friend. Throw your excrement around in a more merry way.
What I cannot stand are the hyper-moralists who target and condemn those who are most similar to them, in bizarre moral purification rituals. I had a run-in with someone who had recently turned radfem. She used to be much more normal, but then she went nuts and I had to shoot her.
There’s a certain sense in which people are allergic to the real world — and I don’t mean this in the same way as right-wingers do, when they throw around the expression as a means to condemn you.
It’s more that people are addicted to their idealism, and they won’t let historical fact get in the way. They create imaginary friends and imaginary enemies and the enemies can never be allowed to win, but the friends must always be allowed to win, even if they commit atrocities. They have a lot of excuses available for their atrocities, because “they were oppressed”.
Is it any wonder that I had so much difficulty understand my own history when this black and white schema was constantly being applied?
Only Marechera’s work made clear to me the real lay of the land. I would have had no idea, without him. All the other writing that has come out of Zimbabwe has expressed some form of idealism, as if the color of one’s skin made one’s actions good or evil.
I think most people really struggle when challenged with the idea that this isn’t so. They think it must be a trick, to suggest to them that the world isn’t neatly demarcated along easily readable moral lines. Life is kind of dirty in that way. Also, it is necessarily so. You can’t get rid of your own dirt, and neither should you wish to, if you want to remain breathing on this Earth. Best thing you can do with it is to make your “evil” and your malice work for you. Write searing critiques of the real exploiters. Donald Trump is not your friend. Throw your excrement around in a more merry way.
What I cannot stand are the hyper-moralists who target and condemn those who are most similar to them, in bizarre moral purification rituals. I had a run-in with someone who had recently turned radfem. She used to be much more normal, but then she went nuts and I had to shoot her.
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