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The horrors

The One Fight Theory

Janina Matthewson

• 7 min read
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Illustration of an old-timey boxer in white leggings, with a red sash and black boots. He stands with his fists raised. His moustache is impressive.
Image sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive / Library of Congress

Fairly regularly in the modern world there is a Happening™ that takes over for a few days. I'm sure you're familiar. In the wake of a Happening™ there are endless takes, jokes, questions and analyses, and then it all dies a way and we wait for the next one. And one of the things that routinely forms part of this discourse is a commentary on supposed hypocrisies brought to light.

I don't think these hypocrisies are actually hypocritical. In fact, the more I think about a lot of these events and the wider issues we're all currently, constantly watching in horror, the more I think absolutely everything is, not only consistent, but part of one ongoing fight.

The podcast If Books Could Kill jokes a lot about how there's really just one book. I think there's really just one fight.

This week's Happening™ is that terrible musician but solid man, Macklemore, got dropped from his support slot on terrible musician and terrible man, Ed Sheeran's current tour for saying Free Palestine. This was at the behest of dyed in the wool asshole Robert Kraft, who owns some of the stadiums the tour is set to hit. The hypocrisy here is that those same stadiums are also playing host to Kanye West, who's released merch and music and statements that are best described as Full Nazi.

Obviously this is not particularly original. We are flush with dipshits who decry objecting to the genocide currently taking place in Gaza as anti-semitic in one breath and suggest that Hitler was right in the next.

There are dozens of little inconstancies like this, spread across any number of discourses.

Racists trying to burn down hotels holding asylum seekers, claiming that they're more likely to be rapists, then being found guilty themselves for committing acts of sexual violence.

Terves insisting that trans activists think all butch lesbians are really trans men, then harassing any masculine presenting woman for not being cis enough.

A third thing, probably.

It's not that hard to understand what's behind each of these things within their own, small contexts.