My consciousness consists of the fiery and the thoughtful part. The fiery part helps me speak out against injustice and stand up for my political beliefs. The thoughtful part helps me not to see my political beliefs as absolute, but to put myself in the other person’s place. I consider myself lucky that these two parts complement each other nicely. That explains why I can express myself extremely critically (the fiery part), without pushing my hearer or reader into a corner (the thoughtful part).
But lately a fierce battle has been raging inside me. My fiery part believes that my thoughtful part can sing a little lower. Because a lot is happening in the world. More than 820 million people who go to bed hungry every day, an aggressor from Moscow who continues to harass the Ukrainian people without consequences, refugees who cannot count on decent shelter in the Netherlands, members of the LGBTQ community who for their safety and fear their lives. The fiery part in me is tired of these and other forms of injustice seeming normalized.
The fiery part in me is therefore gradually opening the door to activism. Due to my thoughtful part, I have always found it difficult to be associated with this. Not because I am without principles, but because I am in favor of a struggle within the institutions. If only we strengthen the institutions and make the procedures fairer, then we can settle differences between people in a healthy way and protect citizens against the excesses of the market and government.
That’s what I thought. But it is extremely difficult for my fiery part to support institutions that put short-term and private interest above the common good. For example, that part of me still has a hangover from the fact that the climate summit was hosted by an authoritarian regime and sponsored by Coca-Cola. The fiery part finds it incomprehensible that Dutch climate negotiators have collaborated with the business community to undermine climate finance for poor countries, such as research agency SOMO recently revealed. And although everything conceivable has already been said about human rights and the World Cup; my fiery part wonders what would happen if the KNVB, along with other European federations, did not succumb to FIFA repression. Don’t give up from the OneLove bandbut threaten not to play.
The bottom line is that my fiery part is winning. We cannot afford not to be activist in times when extremes are normalized and institutions are corrupted by short-term interests. That’s why the thoughtful part in me is increasingly starting to sing a little lower, and I’m increasingly expressing color about which values are worth fighting for for me.
That fervor is reflected not only in the conversations and books that occupy me and my friends, but also in the initiatives we undertake. Instead of just tapping bits and shouting on social media, we form organizations, organize protests, and bring allies together. After all, not being an activist is a privilege, destined for people who have no heart to feel the injustice that is happening around us. If the public interest and human dignity are under pressure, then we are of no use to people who operate within corrupt institutions. We actually need more activism in our society to protect fundamental values and the public interest.
Kiza Magendane is a political scientist and writes a column on this site every other week.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of November 25, 2022