🔮 Only the Impossible Is Possible Now

In the late nineteenth century, a young Jewish intellectual called Lev Shestov was kidnapped for several months. Every day he thought he would be killed. When he was finally released, he spent the rest of his life ridiculing the liberal illusion that we can know anything for certain about anything.

Or, as a climate scientist recently put it in response to the “dead as a doornail” 1.5C target, “You shouldn’t ask scientists how to galvanize the world because clearly we don’t have a fucking clue.”

In other news, Trump has been re-elected. The outgoing Democratic administration oversaw the greatest-ever increase in US oil and gas production. The devil and the deep blue sea, as you might say.  Over in Valencia, 100,000 scrap cars are clogging rivers after the floods, and 100,000 people in the street protests are understandably getting angry. Meanwhile, in The Guardian, the ever-cheerful Ed Miliband tells us we need to “keep 1.5°C alive.” Good luck with that, Ed.

Here’s another statistic to chew over: 52% of Hispanics voted for Trump. The only group to vote in greater numbers for the Democrats this election, compared to the last, were white college-educated people. Telling, isn’t it? I’ve been saying for a while now that people need to get out there and do some door-knocking. But very few people—especially white, college-educated ones—want actually to talk to real people. Much better to stay on social media and moan about Trump. Depression can be delicious, can it not?

And that’s all you need to know about why, at present, the fascists are going to win. And when they do, a lot more people are going to be kidnapped like Lev Shestov—and worse.

When I get out of this place (prison, that is), I’ll be straight on the road, speaking to people around the country. I might call it The Fanatic Tour. The judge at my trial called me a fanatic for giving a Zoom talk on why it’s not a good idea to let the elites destroy the birthright of our children. And who am I to argue with a British judge? I’ll tell people it’s “door-knocking or death.” Not quite as catchy as “Liberty or Death,” but just as fundamental. Unless we get out and listen to people’s anger—and create spaces where that anger can be expressed without judgement in local assemblies—then the impossible is going to happen.

As the great AIDS activist Larry Kramer famously shouted: “If you don’t get on the streets, you’re gonna fucking die.” What’s new?

Except this time it won’t just be emaciated young gay men dying in their shit along hospital corridors. It’ll be everyone. Me, writing this—and yes, you, reading it. I’m 58. By the time I’m 75, my generation will be nicely entering the time of their dying as we fly past 2°C and up to 3°C. According to the science papers, a billion people will be on the move. The NHS getting even more ‘overstretched’ is a reasonable prediction, don’t you think? Even more bodies in the corridors. Our bodies.

Here’s the thing about the climate crisis: it’s going to hurt you. Physically. As someone who’s been on two hunger strikes, I can report that not having food to eat hurts—a lot. Then there’s the nausea. Friends of the Earth won’t tell you about that bit, will they? Not great for the revenue stream.

And then there’s the matter of the fascists getting into power. Less said about that the better. Pass the tea, please.

The difference between Trump and Harris is that Trump takes you over the cliff with joy for making America great again, while Harris takes you over the cliff with joy for reasons she never made clear. Are you surprised people opted for fascism?

Saying that “only the impossible is possible now” wasn’t some clever bit of messaging to get you to read this article. All futures are now, actually, impossible. The impossibility of fascism. The impossibility of creating an alternative that isn’t Harris. The impossibility of getting people to do that door-knocking. So, which impossibility is it going to be? What will happen?

Shestov’s generation had to deal with liberalism’s sick joke of the First World War: the trenches, the body parts, the doomed youth. All of it. We are about to face our own sick joke of liberalism—and our own sleepless nights.

The forgotten thinkers of the dark valley of the interwar years will come back into fashion. And we’ll find, as that generation did, that only those who face the world as it is will make it through.

Well done, by the way, to those of you who’ve got this far in reading this article. Those who bury their heads in the sands of social media silos won’t see the boot coming when it smashes down on their face. That was Orwell’s image in 1984—what happens when you ignore your moral and political responsibilities? When you can’t get off your arse and do your sacred democratic duty on a drizzly Thursday evening and listen to your fellow human beings on their doorsteps.

So, as I say: it’s door-knocking or death. Not old-style door-knocking—a quick transactional pitch to get out the vote at election time. But door-knocking where you listen, and they talk. And a bunch of other things to create the “impossible” world we want rather than the “impossible” world we don’t want.

I’ll go through more details about this in next month’s piece. In the meantime, I humbly suggest you don’t avoid your own dark night of the soul. In the deepest depths of your despair, remember: only when you go through the burning of your entitled ego will you be useful in the struggles to come. And only then will you be of any use to yourself.

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