I went to a student meeting. I am not a student. It was excruciating, obvs. Not because they were students, but because it could have been so much better but wasn’t, for the usual reasons. We are so doomed.
There’s a scene in George Orwell’s masterpiece (imo, ymmv) Animal Farm. The animals – the chickens, cows, Boxer etc, have just received such a face slap that they can no longer lie to themselves about what has happened to “their” Farm and their beloved Revolution. They can no longer pretend to themselves that they have not exchanged the drunken boot of Mr Jones for the trotter and paws of the pigs and the dogs. They walk down to a meadow and they start to sing what was the revolutionary song, Beasts of England. This below is a very long quote, but I put it in because it captures what Orwell was aiming at so beautifully, and it is worth your time.
The animals huddled about Clover, not speaking. The knoll where they were lying gave them a wide prospect across the countryside. Most of Animal Farm was within their view–the long pasture stretching down to the main road, the hayfield, the spinney, the drinking pool, the ploughed fields where the young wheat was thick and green, and the red roofs of the farm buildings with the smoke curling from the chimneys. It was a clear spring evening. The grass and the bursting hedges were gilded by the level rays of the sun. Never had the farm–and with a kind of surprise they remembered that it was their own farm, every inch of it their own property–appeared to the animals so desirable a place. As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major’s speech. Instead–she did not know why–they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes. There was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days of Jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings. Whatever happened she would remain faithful, work hard, carry out the orders that were given to her, and accept the leadership of Napoleon. But still, it was not for this that she and all the other animals had hoped and toiled. It was not for this that they had built the windmill and faced the bullets of Jones’s gun. Such were her thoughts, though she lacked the words to express them.
At last, feeling this to be in some way a substitute for the words she was unable to find, she began to sing Beasts of England. The other animals sitting round her took it up, and they sang it three times over–very tunefully, but slowly and mournfully, in a way they had never sung it before.
They had just finished singing it for the third time when Squealer, attended by two dogs, approached them with the air of having something important to say. He announced that, by a special decree of Comrade Napoleon, Beasts of England had been abolished. From now onwards it was forbidden to sing it.
The animals were taken aback.
“Why?” cried Muriel.
“It’s no longer needed, comrade,” said Squealer stiffly. “Beasts of England was the song of the Rebellion. But the Rebellion is now completed. The execution of the traitors this afternoon was the final act. The enemy both external and internal has been defeated. In Beasts of England we expressed our longing for a better society in days to come. But that society has now been established. Clearly this song has no longer any purpose.”
Frightened though they were, some of the animals might possibly have protested, but at this moment the sheep set up their usual bleating of “Four legs good, two legs bad,” which went on for several minutes and put an end to the discussion.
So Beasts of England was heard no more.
[end of chapter 7, since you ask].
I think about that scene a lot, whenever I attend (okay, hate-attend) meetings of groups that say they are undertaking the difficult task of unfucking the world. Last night I thought about that scene a lot. “What’s my scene?” as the Hoodoo Gurus used to sing (probably still do?)
”I’m a betting man, but it’s getting damn lonely…”
The meeting started late. While we waited there was no invocation to “turn to someone you don’t know (well) – firm allies once didn’t know each other once, and we need to thicken the webs of loose (and close) ties, because you may have skills and resources that someone else could really use.” Or something warmer. Who cares. Something. Anything.
There was no gentle way to bring silence and commence the meeting. What happened to the chair raising their arms above their head and then other people following? XR used to do that and it was good – far better than tentative and then-more forceful/desperate announcements/shouts, which is what we got.
There was no gentle welcome, asking us to centre ourselves, to think about our responsibilities to make a better movement, and the opportunities the meeting held for that. Instead we were told things we knew, with jargon that would almost certainly alienate a ‘newbie’. Then we had two Zoom connections from interstate. These were mercifully not as long as anticipated, but neither were they in any way surprising. What was astonishing (to me – I am clearly old and out of touch) was that people responded to a guy on zoom who wanted them to repeat the second half of a (carefully chosen to avoid further legal imbroglios) chant. I did not know that was a thing, and – to quote another song – “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”
He left us with the hope that he would see us at a ‘big mobilisation in the future.’ Everyone’s happy place, I guess.
Then – and this still staggers me – it was over to ‘debating’ two motions to some upcoming student congress or conference basically ‘demanding’ (yeah, good luck with that) the Australian Government do x or y that they were plainly, obviously, never going to do. So, we were to debate things that
- Nobody in the room was likely to have any disagreement with (certainly not one they show in public)
- Were never going to be enacted.
And this is how you build an empowered, strategic and competent movement. Oh yes.
So, the speeches to the motion (nobody was asked to specify if they were speaking for or against – it was clear, man, that everyone was, you know, in favour) were all pure Dave Spart. As I said to a friend this morning, I had the fleeting thought that I was in some incredibly elaborate social psychology experiment where everyone else in the room was in on the gig – that this was playacting those scenes in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the People’s Front of Judea you know, like, debate important motions about the Roman, you know, Empire, man. There were, perhaps, people with clipboards and stop watches waiting to see how long I could stick it out (as per that early-ish episode of the TV show Community).
But no, it was all on the up and up. “build a movement”, “class politics” “expose it as a system” “full on orwellian um censorship.” “It’ really important, you know, strength of this movement”
It was mildly interesting that the entire first motion got ‘debated’ with only men delivering their pearls of wisdom. [Audience demographics – 50 people present, 45 under the age of 25, I’d guess. Male/female roughly 50/50. Overwhelmingly white] I wondered how long this would continue- the whole meeting? But then in motion 2 some women piped up. Matters did not improve. Who knew that women could be just as jargon-y and dreary as the menfolk? It’s almost as if it’s the human condition.
We’re so toast. As per Frank Turner
Well it was bad enough the feeling, on the first time it hit,
When you realised that your parents had let the world all go to shit,
And that the values and ideals for which many had fought and died
Had been killed off in the committees and left to die by the wayside.
But it was worse when we turned to the kids on the left,
And got let down again by some poor excuse for protest –
By idiot fucking hippies in fifty different factions
Who are locked inside some kind of Sixties battle re-enactment.
So I hung up my banner in disgust and I head for the door.
What could have been done differently
- Start on time
- Have a gentle way of starting, of centering people.
- Design the meeting not around (non)violent agreement with two shitty motions (lobbying the Labor government is no more ‘radical’ than lobbying the Labor Party, my Dave Spartolescent friend) but around a set of questions that can be answered by a mix of on-paper answers (means good ideas don’t get discarded because they come from Miss Triggs) and small group discussions) around
- What are we doing that we need to do we need to more of and what skills/knowledge/relationships do we lack to do that?
- What are we NOT doing that would be good to do that we are not doing because we lack skills/knowledge/relationships – where do we get those?
- What are we doing that feels good, but actually doesn’t contribute to the likely success (or slower failure) of “our “movement” (‘man’) to like, you know, bring down, you know, the capitalist imperialist, you know, system, man.”
Shoot me. Shoot me now. NOW, dammit.
There is no hope
It won’t be done differently. We lack the absorptive capacity, the impetus to develop that. The incentive structures are all wrong.
These meetings are about managing our despair, about knowing that the pigs and their dogs have won, and that all we can do is soothe-sing to ourselves and each other. We sing Beasts of England. Some of the lyrics get banned, but the song remains the same.
We will never put ourselves under any pressure to innovate, because there is a stable system for the gaining of activist credibility tokens, and why upset it?
Meanwhile, the bodies pile up and the emissions pile up. I wonder what those in the majority world, on the receiving end of the slow violence and fast violence dished out by the Empire and its proxies would think of events like the one I went to last night. Nothing printable. “Building a movement” my very fat arse. No more hate-attending for me, methinks.