Why we need to talk about the myth of Western goodness
By Tania
Hello everyone. This post is a little different than what you may have grown used to on PTK, but I urge you to read it. Also, there is a poem at the end.
It is the duty of the privileged to use their privilege for justice. PTK has granted us a tiny soap box and a small community of followers, this is a privilege. To have an audience, to have readers, to have you and your attention here is a privilege. We must make use of this privilege today, tomorrow, always, to platform issues which matter. Poetry, like all art, is always a political act.
With these things in mind, PTK reached out to our friend to offer her the space and platform you have given us.
Please engage with this post in any way you can and please consider donating to Tania’s family’s on the ground efforts to help displaced families in Lebanon.
CW: This post refers to Palestine, genocide, war, censorship, and violence. We encourage you to take the necessary self-care steps while engaging with it, but above all we urge you not to look away.
It’s not my job to make you feel like a good person, it’s your job to question your goodness.
Why we need to talk about the myth of Western goodness
By
There is something I keep being confronted with, something very important that Westerners don’t seem to understand. So when PTK reached out asking if I would like to write something related to what’s currently happening in Lebanon, my home country, I decided to write a short post about this phenomenon instead of wasting my time replying to individuals.
One year into the genocide in Palestine, which has also now escalated into a full scale war in Lebanon, I still get this question from Westerners:
“Why do I need to post about this on my social media? What will it change?“
And another bonus question:
“Won’t this create more polarization?“
They’re not always presented as questions. Often, they also land in my lap as statements, something that I shouldn’t question or even debate about—a closed door. But having spent my entire life forcing closed doors open, I immediately see this for what it is, a flimsy and flawed cop out.
Why this statement is inherently flawed
When presented as a statement, it’s meant to absolve the person of any personal responsibility and to present neutrality and inaction as a morally superior stand.
Essentially, what the person is saying is:
“By not engaging I won’t get labeled as either good or bad, I won’t make things worst or better. So let me stay in this little safe nook where I’m not taking any risk, because I don’t have to.“
When presented as a question, the asker is requiring me, a POC who’s already doing a disproportionate amount of emotional labour, to do the labor of explaining and educating them on why they should be engaging and using their platform to inform their group about information that is actively being kept from them.
While I would argue that it’s our shared responsibility to understand our role in this new landscape of blatant Western propaganda and the silencing of Global South voices, be it through censorship or actual violence.
More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in any war in the last three decades1. The UN has personally condemned this2. Insiders from prestigious news organizations such as CNN3 , BBC4 , and the New York Times5 have been voicing their concerns about bias, malpractice, and the withholding of vital information.
Many alarms have been sounded around the constant dehumanization of Palestinians6 and Arabs. And Western media has been accused of manufacturing consent for genocide7
Isn’t it then our collective moral duty to do what we can with what we have to fight against our own manipulation? Unless, we’re ok with the manipulation.
Why it’s imperative for Westerners to share about the Palestinian genocide
As a Lebanese person in diaspora, who for over a year has been witnessing just how systemic and unashamed this dehumanisation campaign really is, and as someone who lives between two realities; one that is raw, horrifying, and unfiltered, and one that is controlled, calculated, and manipulated, what I have to say is this:
If you’re not intrinsically motivated to share and repost news that humanizes Palestinians and Arabs, so you can create safety for an ethnic group going through an active dehumanization and extermination campaign, then no amount of “I’m still a good person” mental gymnastics can absolve you.
If you don’t think of risking your own safety to create safety for another group as a possible “successful outcome”, then your safety is built on their lack of safety. You’ve accepted this as part of the terms of conditions of existing in the world—you’ve accepted that you’re more worthy of safety and dignity than them.
So you’re not really a good person, you’re just another selfish Westerner who always starts from a place of “I” instead of “I in relation to other”. You’re not asking yourself “how can I be useful?” or “how can I extend my privilege and safety to others”. You are saying “this is not important enough for me, it will not benefit me directly, so why would I risk or disrupt anything for it?”.
Why so many Westerners don’t question their morality, bias, and world views
Whatever little safety and privilege we have as POC and people of the Global South, we try to actively extend to others. Palestinians for example have been able to draw a circle large enough for Lebanon, Congo, Sudan, and more while experiencing genocide. They don’t question their role, they don’t waste time talking about polarization, outcome, usefulness, etc. they just act, they show up.
Why can’t Westerners draw the same compassionate circle? Why can’t they take risks with their platforms and public lives? Why don’t they see every Global South issue as their issues when it is extremely obvious that so many of these issues are direct results of policies created in their countries?
I think the answer to this riddle might be this:
Because no one questions their goodness in the same way they always question the goodness of others.
Westerners have always been told that they are inherently “good”, so they don’t have to work for it. In every story, movie, video game, historical narrative, etc. their goodness is reaffirmed and ours is questioned.
If you grow up and exist in a world where you’re always the good one, the one who’s “brining civilization and democracy” and the “enlightened and rational one”, you don’t have to actively do anything or question your own morality or thinking. It’s just granted to you by default. You can just exist without participating.
But the Global South knows, we have always known. Our bloodlines ebb and flow through the deep cuts of Western blood-thirst, theft, and supremacy. We have always paid the cost of Western “goodness”, be it through genocide, colonial extraction, or active exclusion.
The oppressed must know the oppressor, for their survival depends on it, while the oppressor can afford ignorance. Especially ignorance to their own nature.
I don’t like talking in polarities, I don’t like the over simplification of good and evil. But I will point out that we are talking about extreme circumstances, we’re talking about genocide. Which is also a consistent and repetitive pattern of Western colonialism.
Western empires are literally built on the bones of indigenous folk and their history is written in blood. And although the majority did not participate in the atrocities that led to the creation of these empires, they still stood by and watched, silently, not interfering. And eventually, when all of it was done, benefiting.
You are the new ancestor
Dear Western reader,
Have you ever questioned why are you allowed to exist in a world that doesn’t restrict your movement? One full of opportunity and safety? One where you don’t have to prove anything to us while we have to continuously prove something to you? Prove that we’re worthy of your visas and documents? Of your respect and attention?
Why do we have to invite you to our causes? Measure every word so it doesn’t offend or repel you? Beg you to draw a circle large enough to contain our fear, anguish, and grief? Why do we know so much about your culture and history when you barely know anything about us?
And why are you ok with this set up? How can you live with yourself knowing that you’re still benefiting from the relics of a world created for you by your colonizing ancestors?
Not being actively harmful doesn’t immediately make you a good person. That is the bare minimum we owe to each other as humans. There is another layer of harm far more insidious, and that is wilful ignorance, apathy, and selfishness. It’s the inability to sacrifice any personal space, comfort, and privilege for the wellbeing of the collective. Especially when you represent the more powerful group.
I want you to understand that when you exist in a system designed to actively benefit you, being an ally to those who don’t have you privilege is the bare minimum. Everything less makes you complicit or a predator
Now that you know, my dear Western reader, you can no longer claim ignorance. And It’s up to you to decide what kind of ancestor you’re going to be; one who will create a legacy of freedom and liberation, or one who will continue benefiting from the oppression of their fellow human beings.
Between us
Between us is a war and another war and another one and your ancestors ignoring the news about the slaughter of my ancestors like you are ignoring the news about us. But I still made it, I’m here, among you; a testament that your deadly (silent) violence has always been weaker than my blood’s will. I have traveled to you, sent to deliver a message from my people. It says: Our blood is on your hands. Our blood is trickling down your closed throats and shut mouths, it fills your beds every night, and you will either start moving or your humanity will drown in it. I come from a place that brings God into everything: Elhamdellah, Inshallah. We still talk to the divine, we still feel cycles, heed calls, and everything is raging. In my dreams the moon falls into the Mediterranean up becomes down and down becomes up. I no longer think of them as dreams. It’s you who are still dreaming.
TLDR: My family, primarily my sisters, are still in a relatively safe and privileged position in Beirut, and they’re using it to deliver donations to displaced families in Lebanon. The money goes to necessities like food, hygiene products, baby products including formula, medicine, and clothes. Families who escaped the carpet bombing campaign in the South left without anything and a lot of them have nothing to return to due to domicide. A lot of them are left unhoused. Every penny counts, especially with winter approaching.
https://cpj.org/2024/10/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/, https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/israel-has-killed-more-journalists-gaza-any-conflict-30-years
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/02/1146132
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/feb/04/cnn-staff-pro-israel-bias
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/23/as-israel-pounds-gaza-bbc-journalists-accuse-broadcaster-of-bias
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schwartz-october-7/
https://www.newarab.com/analysis/numbers-uk-medias-pro-israel-bias-gaza-war-coverage
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-the-western-media-is-manufacturing-consent-for-genocide-18216178
Thank you so much, Tania.
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