Dear Clementine: Issue #6

When society accepts the unacceptable

📝 Before We Begin

It’s been a few weeks since I posted a newsletter here, and once again I find myself apologising for the lateness. My son had Influenza B a few weeks ago and his convalescence led straight into two weeks of school holidays. Normally I’d try to work through that, but past experiences have shown me the only thing I manage to achieve is to make both of us agitated and upset. I decided to surrender to the flow instead, and we had two weeks of gentle days and relationship nurturing.

But holidays finished over a week ago, and I’ve still been hamstrung by some kind of block. The truth is, it’s been difficult to focus on anything beyond Israel’s genocide. I’m sure so many of you feel the same way. I sit down with the intention of writing something meaty and thoughtful only to find myself consumed with rage and helplessness at the never-ending display of abject horror that Israel and its ghoulish allies are inflicting on Gaza. Instead of channelling that rage into something cogent here, I spend hours frantically sharing posts and fury to my Instagram stories while screaming at politicians to fucking find their fucking backbones and DO SOMETHING.

Every day, it gets worse. And the distance we travel into the abyss of depravity grows exponentially bigger, far beyond the point now of no return.

What we are seeing in Gaza was not inevitable. For almost two years, a rising tide of people around the world have been marching, protesting, advocating for and speaking out against the western imperial forces and their corrupt ‘leadership’ teams, all of whom have colluded deliberately and without shame in one of the worst violations of moral responsibility humanity has ever seen. Israel is now forcibly starving the people of Gaza as a means of delivering their “final solution”, murdering children and adults alike via the slow torment of hunger their depraved Zionist terror regime wants people to believe is being inflicted by Hamas.

I know what death by starvation looks like, because it was how my cancer-riddled mother died. But as undignified as her death was, she was at least surrounded by care. She at least knew there was nothing anybody could have done to save her, even though we all tried.

Watching someone slowly starve to death is painful. But watching an entity wield starvation as a weapon is barbaric. Israel is a barbaric state, one that weaponises ancient persecution to deflect condemnation of that barbarism. You cannot accuse of us targeting babies! That’s antisemitic blood libel! That Israel is determined to wipe out the population of Palestine - starting with their children, so that no new lineage is allowed to prosper - is not a “blood libel” but a fucking fact.

And now the same individuals, organisations and imperial players that facilitated this genocide are placing their each way bets on the outcome. It was fine for them to stand aside while Israel was shredding children’s bodies with weapons supplied by the US (and partly powered by Australian components). That was just Israel ‘defending itself’ in the way any reasonable person would agree was justified - by carpet bombing a population comprised mostly of young people and children, targeting their healthcare workers and journalists, and killing entire families in their sleep. But now Israel is starving them, something no one could possibly have seen coming despite the fact Israel halted all aid into Gaza back in March and every reputable human rights organisation warned it would lead to this.

HoW cOuLd ThIs HaVe HaPpEnEd?

It’s a question a lot of useless influencers and devotees of capitalism have been asking this week, posting temporary slides to their stories and making sure not to specify any details about whose responsible. Most influencers aren’t good for anything much at all, but they do love to tick their boxes when it comes to recognising the moments when vague support for the social good has become unavoidable. We saw it back in June 2020 when they lined up to post black squares to their social media pages, making sure not to veer too closely to anything resembling a definitive statement. They stopped racism that day. Yay! And now, almost two years into a genocide they cannot possibly have ignored any harder despite it being unavoidably present, they’ve risen from their crypt to cry pretty tears for their combined millions of followers while observing how heavy things feel for them in this world that they just can’t understand.

I’m going to write a longer piece on that for Write To Revolt (my free-for-everyone-to-read newsletter). Also in the pipeline are pieces on:

• Why some women actually deserve to be ‘torn down’

• Maintaining hope in a hopeless world

• The incompatibility of human rights with capitalism, and why fighting for a just world means accepting the loss of comforts we were taught to value

• When kink goes mainstream, it stops being kink and becomes sexual conditioning

And just to make sure there’s some levity breaking through, I’ve been working on a piece about what I see as the real problem with And Just Like That… (you know, for those who still like to watch trashy tv - an indulgence we may have to give up if we abscond from capitalism! Complexities, layers, difficult decisions.)

Anyhoo, today’s feature piece is on a defamation case brewing in Hollywood and the destruction of creative joy. Bite Me is about one of my earliest experiences with editorial silencing. It’s not really about what’s going on in the world today - but it’s also not not about that. You’ll understand what I mean when you get to the end. I’ve got Run, Don’t Walk recommendations for podcast, film and reading, and this week’s giveaway is for five subscriptions to Deep Cut News. Scroll ahead if you want to learn who won the two Bricks!

For those who hit the paywall and would like to keep reading, you can support my work by becoming a paid subscriber. It’s cheaper than a single cup of coffee once a week, and infinitely richer in taste and energy! If you can’t afford to subscribe, you can still read the previews here and everything activist and politics related at Write To Revolt. Paid subscribers get access to the comments, as well as the private chat threads. Your paid subscriptions will also help me to commission other writers, as well as pay invited experts to join me each month for a Substack Live conversation series I’m calling “What’s Your Strategy? How To Save The World (Or Die Trying).”

Until then, on with the newsletter!

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🧠 The Think Piece: Rebel Without Applause

I’ve never liked Rebel Wilson. I think she’s a talentless hack who can’t sing, can’t act and isn’t funny. It’s painfully obvious to me that her success so far has relied almost solely on her willingness to play up to Hollywood’s ‘funny fat girl’ trope, despite the fact she’s not funny. Given she’s also no longer fat, I suppose the only thing left is the bored monotone she insists on speaking in, hoping like hell that her Australian ‘kookiness’ is enough to keep fooling audiences into thinking she’s doing anything other than just barely showing up.

I’ve never hid my dislike of Rebel Wilson. Having heard a few insider stories about her, I feel confident my read is correct. But because we live in a flattened realm of tediously undercooked feminism, we’re not supposed to ‘be mean’ to other women and we’re never allowed to be petty. Whoops!

Earlier this week, I posted her name in response to a question on Threads asking which celebrities instantly tell you a movie will be bad.

Yes, there are bigger issues in the world. But amidst the work I do speaking and writing about them, I reserve the right to sometimes be a bit basic. I reject the ‘solidarity at all costs’ approach to feminist liberation some women have embraced, especially given how frequently it works to protect women with extraordinary privilege but a complete lack of will to do anything with it. The idea that feminist liberation must include closing ranks around every single woman in existence is absurd. It also works very hard to uphold capitalism, reinforcing the idea that success within that system is something we should celebrate despite the fact it can only maintain itself by excluding the majority and oppressing the most marginalised.

I’ve been working on a longer piece about how the phrase ‘stop tearing women down’ is a Trojan horse for white supremacy and capitalism, but I wanted to say that my hatred for Wilson isn’t purely subjective. I’ve been following this particular story for some time now, and it completely tracks with my impression of her and other industry chat I’ve heard.

The Deb is based on a musical written by Hannah May Reilly and scored by Megan Washington. It premiered last September, but has since failed to find distribution, evidently because of the ongoing dispute between Wilson and the production company.