People feel powerless. Letting them know how fucked up our capitalist hell world is just makes them depressed and mad with you. “there’s no point caring about things you can’t change. All you’re doing is reminding me that everything is shit.”
So what do we do? How do talk about these things with people without destroying their hope? Do you just not talk about it? I don’t feel I’m ever helping anyone by dispelling imperial propaganda, it just makes them sad.
Developing a culture of martyrdom is one way that oppressed cultures keep hope alive. A martyr isn’t a victim of an isolated act of violence. They’re part of a long, historical struggle against oppression. By tying the honored dead of the present to those of the past the suffering of the present becomes part of a long, deliberate struggle. The valor of the past is embodied by those fighting in the present. The deep and immediate awareness of decades, centuries, or even millennia of struggle allow people to view themselves as something bigger than an individual, as part of a great historical struggle. Knowing that many have come before you, fighting and dying for a better future they will never see, provides comfort that even if you fall others will take up the flag after you, and when the yoke is finally cast off you will be remembered and honored, and in a sense you will be present to partake of the cherished victory you did not live to see.
