30/07/2024
Co-opting Solidarity: trivializing movements in order to thwart criticism
Last weekend I visited Berlin to attend two q***r demonstrations: The D**e March and the Internationalist Q***r Pride. Motivated by my curiosity, I also attended the CSD (the Christopher Street Day, also known as the “Pride”). My presence in the CSD was short. I promptly left when one of the first blocks, one called “Q***rs for Israel”, marched in front of me. I was left shocked and reproachful. How could I have attended such an event, where the apartheid state of Israel was officially endorsed? The “Q***rs for Israel” block was not marked in the CSD’s layout published in its social media. How can a “Q***r” organization, supposedly meant to protect and represent a vulnerable, oppressed population, solidarize with an official apartheid state, which has systematically and continuously destroyed Palestinian lives?
To justify this text's argument, I want to draw parallels to the situation of other discriminated group in Europe: the Muslims. In her book “Tangled in Terror”, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan exposes how Islam is being sacrificed for patriotism, particularly in the context of the United Kingdom. Manzoor-Khan exposes the states’ strategies to “fight extremism”, which rather conceal the old toolbox of domination: colonialism, capitalism and surveillance. But the darkest strategy is to redefine the relationship of Muslims with Islam. In this regard, the state upholds the need to support “moderate” or “reform” versions of Islam in order to “fight extremism”. A “westernized”, “secularized” Islam is possible in the “advanced”, “democratic” societies of Europe (because, you know, Europe civilizes), so that Islam must be promoted to fight the “backward”, “dangerous”, “non-western” Islam. This strategy of rethinking Islam comes to the expense of Muslims and in the benefit of the state. The objective? To create uncritical Muslims who, on the words of Manzoor-Khan, are rather to be called by a divine authority to stand and fight against any form of oppression.
Your beliefs must stay in your house, in the private realm, so that the police state can roam freely outside.
I draw a lot of parallels from Manzoor-Khan’s arguments to our own Q***r movements. Our solidarity and ideals have been coopted by the state and state-supported organizations which use all the gay-related paraphernalia to distract our attention and redefine our ideals. Police (but very democratic) states want movements devoid of their basic principles. The movements are coopted and given back in the form of trivial, consumable products. We ultimately fight for same s*x marriages, a gift from the state that will send us to enjoy our union in the “privacy of our bedrooms”, just as the state wants to send Islam to the “privacy of their altars”. No wonder why the police presence in the D**e March and the Internationalist q***r Pride was heavy. Several people were detained for showing solidarity with the Palestinians, among them, a 16 year old Palestinian minor who was carried by the Berlin Police as if he was a terrorist with a gun. Meanwhile, the Berlin Pride has no problem in giving "Q***r for Israel" a space to march, blessed by the police and the state's ideological machinery.
We, as q***r persons, are responsible for knowing the history of our own struggle, and must be able to draw parallels to the struggles of other oppressed people. In such a way, we can create bridges and fight the common evils that affect us all. You are Q***r, do crime!
Written by Marco A. Lopez Marin
