The Bloody Pillow

The fanfare of the oppressors is at work. Everyone tears their clothes, faced with yet another slaughter of a girl perpetrated by the ex-boyfriend tormentor. Everyone is climbing on the bandwagon of the Good: polished fascists, very chic and not very radical leftoids, movement activists always ready to ask the state to do something, pious souls who aren’t able to understand how the children of this society can be as possessive as they are brutal.

This whole bandwagon, in every one of its gestures, in every one of its moments, in every one of its steps, always brings us back to reality: this is certainly a rotten world, but without a bit of slavery, a bit of war, a bit of weaponry, a bit of nuclear power, in short, without the authoritative authority of the institutions, how would we go on living? It goes without saying that possession and brutality are a constant of this way of being in the world. Isn’t the state the organization that keeps its subjects in line with taxes and truncheons?

Haven’t all the court jesters, all those who are now horrified at gender violence, noticed that in Palestine we are facing the new Nakba, an ethnic cleansing (with many precedents) financed, caressed, coddled, by themselves?

Even though for sensitive souls the state (whichever one it is, without “exception”) is always still a state of threat, suddenly an unexpected agitation has generated on social media and through the internet – thanks to the words of Giulia’s sister? – which has materialized initiatives of every sort and which still shows no sign of dying out.

For Giulia don’t do a minute of silence, for Giulia burn it all down – these words are the only sensible ones we have heard since yet another body has been found torn apart by the rotten swill of the culture of possession, of jealousy, of rape, of oppression. The same putrid values that we hear in the language of almost everyone, in the gestures of so very many, and unfortunately in the life of each one.

These very heavy words must in some way be recuperated by those in power on the right and on the left, with their vulgar democratic propaganda, to put an end to the poetic and incandescent noise. No one can dare to undermine the work of domination, unless … we actually begin to love without reserve, like when life burns. And when life burns, the only possible horizon is to make a clean sweep of whatever prevents us from living as we desire.

“The flag goes with the filthy landscape, and our jargon drowns out the drum. In the centers we will feed the most cynical prostitution. We will massacre logical revolts. To the lands of pepper and water! — in the service of the most monstrous industrial and military exploitation. See you there, or no matter where. Conscripts of good will, we have a ferocious philosophy; ignorant of science, experts in comfort; a flat tire for the world that goes by. This is the true stride. Come on, on our way!”
Arthur Rimbaud (“Democracy”, from Illuminations)