Marwa Osman: Zero trust in American activism

I have reached a point where I have zero trust in American activism that claims to be fighting the foreign policy of its own government while doing little or nothing to confront the machinery of repression at home.

This is not about demanding that every American become a full-time revolutionary. It is about something much simpler known as political consistency.

For more than a year, the U.S. has continued to wage, enable, finance and politically shield policies that have produced devastation abroad, while simultaneously expanding the language and machinery through which dissent at home can be surveilled, criminalized and treated as a threat.

The presidential memorandum passed last September on “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” is particularly revealing. Its language casts an extraordinarily broad net around political opposition, including people described in terms such as “anti-American” or “anti-capitalist”.

And that raises a very basic question: What exactly is an “anti-American” American supposed to be?

Someone who opposes the policies of their government? Someone who believes their economic system is unjust? Someone who wants to change the political order of their own country?

If merely opposing the ideology, economic system or policies of your own government can be rhetorically pushed toward the territory of “domestic terrorism”, then what are Americans actually defending when they talk about democracy and political freedom?

And there is an even deeper contradiction.

The United States has spent decades intervening in other countries, attempting to reshape governments, destabilizing political orders, imposing sanctions, supporting military campaigns and participating in wars whose human consequences are borne overwhelmingly by people who had absolutely no say in Washington’s decisions.

Yet some American activists will tell the rest of the world that they are doing everything within their power to oppose oppression abroad, while rarely confronting the political structures that make that oppression possible at home.

That is where I draw the line.

You cannot credibly present yourself as someone fighting to liberate other people from the consequences of your government’s foreign policy while refusing to seriously challenge the political system that produces, funds and legitimizes that foreign policy.

If you cannot lift a finger against the machinery of oppression when it operates in your own name, your claims to be liberating others begin to sound less like solidarity and more like self-image.

Solidarity is not a moral costume you get to wear once a month. It is not showing up at a protest when the cameras are rolling, posting the right slogans, condemning someone else’s government, or expressing outrage over atrocities committed thousands of miles away.

Solidarity requires confronting uncomfortable truths about your own side, your own government, your own institutions and, when necessary, your own privileges within the system.

Otherwise, what you are offering is not liberation. It is a form of political outsourcing. You are telling us that you will condemn oppression everywhere except where you have the greatest responsibility and the greatest capacity to challenge it.

And that is why I remain deeply skeptical of declarations from American activists that they are “trying as hard as they can” to stop their government’s aggression abroad.

Perhaps some genuinely are. I am not interested in dismissing individual courage or sacrifice.

But I’ll just say this: good intentions cannot substitute for political consequences.

If an entire year passes while the machinery continues operating, while dissent is increasingly securitized at home, while foreign populations continue paying the price, and while those who claim to oppose it cannot meaningfully challenge the system producing it while effectively being branded “terrorists” in their own country, then eventually we have to ask whether we are witnessing resistance, or merely resistance as performance.

Before claiming to save others from oppression, confront the oppression committed in your name.

Before demanding political change abroad, fight for political change at home.

And before asking the rest of the world to believe your promises of solidarity, demonstrate that you are willing to risk something to make those promises real.

Because hypocrisy does not become solidarity simply because it is wrapped in progressive language.

And ultimately, it is not only a lie told to others. It is a lie people tell themselves first.

So, forgive me..or don’t, it does not really matter, but I have zero trust in everything and everyone.

Good day🌹

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