Just Protester 5th alterview, where he talks about Identity Politics taking over social media and thinks about other ways to bring forward the Revolution
Just Protester Trevor, Welcome back to The Sewers. How have you been?
Good, yeah, could be better, but good.
What are you up to these days?
Oh, just, y’know, regular stuff.
Your blogs and all?
Yeah, for sure, I mean I’ve been doing less writing lately, more editing and stuff, so my name’s not always up there, but I’m always there.
You didn’t run out of things to write about, surely.
Of course not, but it’s like I feel I’ve been writing the same things in different words for a while now, so I’m taking a step back, just thinking. I mean I know I should be out there saying these things even if I repeat myself, like when you believe in something you never stop saying it. So I mean I strongly believe in what I say, and I keep saying what I believe in, but I’m like, just taking some time to think.
Hmm.
Yeah. It’s not that I believe any less. But I know my texts are circulating in the same places where similar ideas and opinions already circulate. And after a while it makes you stop and think about what you’re doing.
Has it become less gratifying?
Well on some levels, maybe, but it’s not what it’s about to begin with, y’know? And I’ve seen it happening to people around me, they start off strong, non-stop writing, their lives become all about it, like they can’t have a talk that isn’t political. I had a friend whose grandma died in 2013 and he attended her funeral with a sign about Obama Care or something. But then, these people kinda fade, you see less and less of them, til they just disappear. And then three years later they appear in your social media out of the blue with a picture of their baby, ranting about the price of diapers or something, and you’re like, what the fuck man.
Oh, are you scared of becoming like that?
Fuck no. I know for sure I’m not gonna become that. But when I see it, and I guess it’s happened a lot recently, it’s got me thinking just how far are we gonna get if we all end up folding in and crumbling into our little lives every time. I mean you gotta take care of your children, but I mean, urgh, I dunno.
Maybe it’s the way a diaper rant and a passionate political opinion are posted on the same platform, and it all seems of the same importance.
No, no, it’s not that. It’s the fact that it’s by the same people, not the same platform. I mean if you have a child, do you forget all about your political opinions, do you feel any less strongly about them? That’s fucked up. You should feel more strongly about them if anything.
Is this about some old friend of yours who started a family and you get to see less of him? Or her?
No, fuck. My real close friends know better, I don’t worry about them.
What do you mean know better?
They know better that they won’t start a family until after the revolution, y’know?
I see.
For sure.
So you’re about 25.
I’m 26, yeah! Fuck, haha.
And you’re starting to think about being an adult and where it’s all going –
Fuck no, no. no, you really got the wrong idea here, totally. What I want to be is what I am now, I wanna be always ready for when it happens.
The revolution.
Yeah –
But what about the meantime? Life doesn’t happen only after the revolution. It happens before it as well.
Yeah, so as I said I’m just taking a step back now and thinking about it all.
And what have you come up with so far?
Man, it’s like you’re pressuring me into something and I dunno what it is.
Maybe you’re pressuring yourself.
That’s fucking bullshit. I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking about so you’d stop with all the bullshit. Naturally I’m always thinking about how the way I live my life can inspire the revolution and make it happen sooner. But I’m also thinking about the little everyday things, and how to live them in a way that’s like the revolution has already happened, y’know? I mean I wanna be a moral person, I wanna be a kind person, but then I started thinking that being a moral person is something that reflects mostly on social media, and not in your day to day life. Coz our day to day lives, we just live them, they’re fucking mundane and regular. You don’t get to face things when you’re a fucking hamster running on your wheel, and that’s what most of us are. So I figured that blogging and all is my way of expressing the person I wanna be, but then it’s become like a sphere that’s totally unattached to my so called ‘regular’ life. And that’s fucked up. And you know what’s more fucked up? It’s that everyone’s like that. Social media has become like a sphere of ethical debates and moral dilemmas and all the hardcore existential shit you can imagine, but it stays there, in that sphere, and then we all go out to our lives and live them as if they’ve got nothing to do with it.
A cage of gold.
For sure! You asked me if the blogging has become less gratifying for me, but that’s not that point. The point is that it gratified me in the first place, and it shouldn’t have.
you’re saying that basically it’s all a big distraction.
It’s become that, yeah, and when you’re in it it’s really hard to see, y’know?
That brings us back to the same question we’ve discussed many times before: what should be done? You answer has always relied on your blogs and online activism.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And the thing about seeing people having kids now, it makes me think. I mean they dedicate their lives to this now, and I mean what if they had dedicated their lives just as much to a true cause? What if I do? And how the fuck do I do it?
That’s the question!
Yeah, so that’s where I’m at now.
This is quite a crisis for you, saying that it’s all a big distraction.
Look, it’s not entirely a distraction. There are islands of authenticity in social media. And you can’t turn your back on it anyway. I mean I think identity politics have taken over social media, and that’s the real distraction. So I don’t wanna turn my back on my blogs and social media, but I feel like being dragged into this discourse is just taking the edge of everything you can say about stuff that are real, like class warfare, and the uselessness of nationalism and nationality all together, I guess.
You have been doing a lot of thinking.
Haha yeah, for sure. But I don’t wanna write about it yet. I feel like I need to keep thinking about it and trying to understand what I wanna do with it.
Fair enough. You should talk about it with the Anarchist Philosopher.
Ah, I dunno, maybe. Yeah, I mean have more time now so I guess.
Do let us know what you come up with.
For sure, yeah!
Well we thank you and congratulate you here and now for joining us in The Sewers.
Thanks, for sure.
The Sewers 