Revolutionary Grief
Let your broken heart be your guide
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News that has been coming out of Gaza since the ceasefire was broken has been nothing short of horrifying. The largest single day massacre of children in history, the bombing of tents, of hospitals. Just this week, the journalist Hossam Shabat was murdered, and subsequently news came out that the co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land” was lynched (though luckily not killed) by settlers in the West Bank and abducted by the IDF when he called for help. The genocide that started 18 months ago hums on while most of the world continues as normal. But this isn’t normal. This is most hideous crime against humanity that has happened in our lifetimes. While you’re ordering a pizza, or laughing with your friends at trivia night, babies are being blown apart by your tax dollars and students who dare to object are being disappeared by the American gestapo. Democrats and Republicans alike are making excuses or ignoring it altogether. The media is whitewashing the crimes, running endless cover for Israel. Policymakers are transforming the US in Israel’s image and removing our rights to speak out. 18 months of protests failed to stop it. Self-immolations failed to stop it. Occupations of college campuses failed to stop it.
Every single day that you log on you are bombarded with images of mutilated children and grieving, screaming parents. At the same time, you have to listen to the endless, solipsistic whining of American Zionists and their feelings of “unsafety” while they have the entire brutal arm of the state oppressing anyone who disagrees with them. It’s enraging, it’s devastating, it’s terrifying. Your heart is broken. Your words fail you. You have shed too many tears to count. Your mind cannot resolve the callous inhumanity displayed by so many prominent people. You cannot make sense of the fact that we live in a world where we can stare evil in the face and the perpetrators will never see justice. You feel powerless. Like a stranger in a strange land. How can the statements “genocide is bad, bombing babies is bad, bombing hospitals is bad, apartheid is bad, ethnic cleansing is bad” be contestable?
You start to feel as if you are going mad. You are completely surrounded by an utter lack of humanity, and those who display it are rewarded. They are the wealthy, the thought leaders, the political leaders, the media figures. They eat their wagyu steaks and drink their $200 bottles of wine and write their little articles in prominent papers about how killing innocent people is justified. They win awards and receive presidential medals. They do this while you feel something break deep inside you. You knew the system was evil before this genocide started, but you have never felt it so acutely. It has permanently shattered something in the way you understand the world. It has shaken you to your core. Every cell in your body screams out for this to end. For the killing to stop. For the perpetrators to be punished. And yet nothing that looks like justice seems to be coming. In fact, those with any sort of moral center are being fired, assaulted, stabbed, detained, deported, disappeared, censured, sidelined, blacklisted, murdered. You feel like you are in a perpetual state of grief and disbelieving. There are no adequate combination of words to express the emotions that consume you.
I’m here to tell you that this awful feeling burning inside you is a good thing. It is a powerful reminder that you have held onto your humanity under a system that wants nothing more than to strip you of it. Your grief, your empathy, is your greatest weapon against those who have none. You grieve because you believe that it doesn’t have to be this way. You grieve because you cannot accept this as normal. While so many are able to tune out and close their hearts to the immense suffering in this hideous world, you are not. You feel compassion for those the world wishes to forget and you let that drive you.
There are, of course, those on the left who are not motivated by empathy and compassion, but they are not the ones who make history. A vision for a better world starts with the refusal to accept the barbarity of this one. In this society, it is much easier to fall in line, self preserve, and close your heart off to the misery all around you in order to survive. It is easier to make a million dollars when you have no regard for the human cost. With enough avarice and ruthless ambition you might even become a Senator one day. To refuse to to become what this world wants to make you is a revolutionary act. To reject the urge to numb yourself to the horrors is to reject that this is something you are supposed to get used to. As the saying goes, “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society”. When you feel the aching in your heart for the injustice that surrounds you, know that this means that you have held onto something precious and rare, something that is capable of being the driving force for radical change.
Humanity will only stand a chance if enough people of conscience, motivated by a desire to end this needless suffering, use that motivation to remake the world. We are in an existential battle against forces that would wipe out every soul on earth for their own, temporary comforts; empty husks who would sacrifice countless innocents on the alter of their insatiable desires. But we possess the one thing they do not have. That is not to say that “love is all you need”, it’s going to take a lot more than that to defeat this, but any movement worth a damn needs to be motivated by love if it is to have any hope of succeeding. The world they have created for us is one that rewards venality and opportunism, that wants you to forget that the human experience is collective and that we belong to each other. When you feel a deep grief in your bones for the pain of people you do not know, you flip this orthodoxy on its head. This system will try to steal every single thing it can from you, but the one thing it cannot take without your permission is your soul. So hold onto that grief, honor it, and let it be your guide. Let it serve as a testament to the fact that the rot that you are surrounded by hasn’t succeeded in smothering deepest and most human parts of you. Let it spark a loving anger that unites us. The barbarians may have their hollow gods, but they do not have us. And in our refusal to concede — in our stubborn, visceral humanity — we can forge a weapon capable of felling these giants and transforming this world.
"If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine." - Che Guevara
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This really hit home. That idea—that our grief, our disgust, our refusal to acclimatise to injustice—isn’t failure but resistance? That feels like oxygen.
So much of the world asks us to numb ourselves just to function. But when we still feel—even when it overwhelms us—it’s proof we remain part of the pattern. Not the one imposed on us, but the deeper weave of care, rage, memory, and defiance. Thank you for naming that truth so clearly.
This was an incredibly thoughtful and meaningful read Scarlet. You both validate the abject horrors we’ve collectively witnessed and how that makes us feel, while also providing a worthwhile and constructive direction to channel that grief into. I think for many of us, it’s been rather paralyzing to wake up everyday to fresh new horrors that simultaneously demonstrates the abject lack of humanity that so many people seem proud about boasting. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to put my head in my hands and just weep from the overwhelming nature of it all. Nothing has been more fundamentally and profoundly radicalizing than witnessing these last 18 months of genocide, and I don’t imagine I’m alone there. As you simply yet perfectly say:
“You knew this system was evil before this genocide, but you never felt it so acutely.”
A part of me feels shattered in a way that I may simply never be able to repair, and I’ll hold that against this crumbling empire until the day it finally falls — likely after as well.
On the flip side, emphasizing love may sound cheesy to some but I genuinely couldn’t agree more. We’ve been subjected to so much barbaric cruelty and complete and utter disregard for human life, that love needs to be a central core of what our movement is all about. So many people are suffering and drowning in their own grief — we need to provide them that off-ramp into something more dignified and humane. I love the inclusion of what feels like a flagship quote for you but works perfectly in your analysis:
“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society”.
We don’t have to accept this as normal and this genocide is showing just how many people feel and believe that to be true. From the ashes of grief arises hope, love, compassion, and empathy, and with those we can forge a movement that leads to a better world for us all.
“The barbarians may have their hollow gods, but they do not have us.”
Fantastic read as always Scarlet. I think this piece in particular will be rather meaningful to anyone whose felt the same ways we have watching this genocide unfold.