I made a mistake. This mistake only hurts me, but it was a mistake none the less. I looked at a discussion about Covid-19 on the internet. I should know better, and I usually do. I have no social media accounts, but we all know that sooner or later someone’s going to send you a link or an article or something and you’ll allow curiosity to click it.
And so, I looked over what was a thread of Facebook screenshots from a loosely associated group of right-wing propaganda pushers who call themselves “prayer warriors”. There were a lot of screenshots. On one side, there would be a post someone made containing vile, genocidal propaganda proclaiming all sorts of anti-vax, anti-mask, conspiracy nonsense. Juxtaposed was a recent post from the same person asking for prayers because they and/or their loved ones were sick, in the hospital, or dying from Covid.
I scrolled down. There were so many. Over and over, the same dangerous proclamations of ignorance and hatred next to desperate, panicked pleas for love and support. They were in the hospital. Their kids were dying. Their husband. Their mother. ERs turning them away because there are no more beds. Separated from their loved ones in ways that they have called for and inflicted onto others.
But that wasn’t what got to me. I kept scrolling. Audience, I did the very silly thing. I read the comments. And thus I was plunged into a sea of schadenfreude that left me nauseated to the point I had to take medication usually only reserved for when I am forced to deal with software devs and white supremacists (and those two often overlap).
The glee. The smugness. The sheer contempt dripping from the calls of “fuck around and fine out”, “doing a Darwinism” (I don’ think that word means what you think it means…), and gifs of laughter and mockery made me despair in a way that the genocidal right-wingers have never been able to. Am I supposed to relate to or be allied with people who want to argue for universal income and healthcare while simultaneously celebrating the deaths and disabilities of victims of a genocide?
Sure, I’m angry. I’m angry every day. I’ve written about it already. I fear for my life every day. Not just because even with the vaccine, Covid is more likely to kill or damaged me than healthy people. But also because I’ve already fled one country due to Nazis trying to have me killed in my own home. I’m far from ever feeling safe from plague or fascists, and the fascists are currently fueling the plague. So believe, I have nothing that looks like sympathy for collaborators. It takes all my strength to not whack people with my shopping cart when I leave the house once a week for groceries because someone isn’t wearing their mask, so I certainly have no qualms with beating the shit out of fascists. (Unfortunately fascists may now be potential covid biohazards, so best to beat the shit out of them from a distance if possible.)
But to revel and delight in the pain of entire communities of people who are themselves victims of a system that functions entirely on brainwashing people into harming themselves and others for the profit of the elite is something I cannot stomach. Giddy giggling in response to the success of fascism is obscene. Those in power are the ones truly laughing, and to join them feels as though it would require a piece of my soul or humanity or whatever it is that makes me who I am. The people in power who want us dead or labouring while we squabble are getting what they want, and I find no joy or solace in that.
I don’t want to piss on the grave of Nicolas NoMask who was given more access to Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson than to a proper history lesson. I don’t delight in the death of Annie Antivax as much as I mourn the creation of a dangerous person who just needed a health or science teacher instead of a predatory pastor or priest. I do not grieve their deaths, but I do not find joy in them, either. There are people to blame, and I reserve my urine for proper targets.
