ENDLESS WARS, SHOCKING GENOCIDE, RAMPANT CORRUPTION AND CRIMINALITY, HUMAN-MADE POLLUTION DESTROYING THE PLANET, NATURAL DISASTERS GALORE, AUTHORITARIANISM ON THE RISE, AND THE NEW, UNABASHEDLY FASCIST, POLICE- STATE U.S.A.: MAKE ART? WHY?
Published on August 31, 2025
by Edward M. Gómez
That sound you hear is the sound of human bones being crushed underneath the rubble of what were once towns, cities, and farms in the Gaza territory of Israeli-occupied Palestine. Urban and rural communities filled with houses and apartment buildings, schools, churches and mosques, libraries, museums, playgrounds, bakeries, markets, hospitals, and nurseries for infants. Places filled with life. That sound is the sound of genocide being carried out.
In Gaza today, the now-useless remnants of all those bombed-out properties — only cowards drop bombs — serve as a testament to the genocidal terror the depraved, murderous Israeli Zionists have unleashed upon the Palestinians, a people whose land they began stealing some eight decades ago. The Zionists have been motivated by a deranged, fanatical, ethno-supremacist ideology that finds inspiration and justification in a barbaric religious tenet, one that teaches them that they’re representatives of a people that has been “chosen” by God — the same deity, by the way, that is venerated by three of the world’s best-known monotheistic religions.
That fundamental religious notion, which the Zionists stubbornly embrace, is inherently racist and dehumanizing of others, just like the self-aggrandizing myths and superstition of the Nazis, which did so much to shape their worldview and inspire their mercilessly destructive actions.
That sound you hear is also the sound of armed missiles being fired and hitting their targets, killing people by the hundreds or thousands at a time. It’s the sound of mothers, fathers, teachers, children, doctors, journalists, farmers, civil servants, and everyone screaming, “Enough! Enough of these costly, stupid, pointless wars! We want to live in peace!”
That sound you hear is also that of the incessant turning of the gears of corruption and criminality in many different forms as they play out in the corridors of power around the world or even just down the street, at lower, more local levels, among police departments, gang leaders, cheaters, liars, con men, and crooks of all types in just about every walk of life.
That sound you hear is also the sound of those who remain silent in the face of injustice, corruption, criminality, mendacity and pernicious propaganda, even when they know very well that they can and should speak up and speak out against what is wrong and, thereby, however humble or helpless-feeling their efforts, help bend the arc of history toward what is right.
Silence = complicity.
How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. When it comes to the means and modes of the evil with which humans are capable of acting toward each other, there are wars aplenty to serve as examples — Israel’s against Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran; Russia’s against Ukraine; the ongoing civil war in Sudan; and many more.
Bigotry and racism, those old standbys, are alive and kicking. Then there’s the everyday, ugly, uncivil behavior of spoiled, self-important, privileged-feeling, irritated and irritating “Karens,” both female and male, who give a common name — and humanity’s, too — a very bad name.
Against the backdrop of all of this dispiriting darkness, in which the U.S.A.’s rapid, enthusiastic descent into full-fledged fascism under the corrupt Trump regime and the rise of far-right authoritarianism in other, supposedly democratic places must not be overlooked, what can or should artists think, say, or do? Does creating forms of artistic expression have any value in a world in which a genocide is being carried out with complete impunity, live-streamed on our mobile phones and electronic devices?
Can anyone forget the German-born philosopher and social theorist Theodor Adorno’s observation, following the revelation of the atrocities the Nazis committed in pursuit of their “Final Solution”? It was Adorno who famously remarked, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”
Several weeks ago, brutjournal began publishing an ongoing series of articles on the theme of “The New Dystopia,” in which artists and other creative types have been weighing in and sharing their thoughts about the state and the fate of the world.
More will appear in the online magazine as the world’s contemporary crises continues to unfold. Hold onto your hats!
