Freedom fighters

The partisan (Leonard Cohen)

When they poured across the boarder
I was cautioned to surrender
This, I could not do
I took my gun and vanished

I have changed my name so often
I have lost my wife and children
But I have many friends
And some of them are with me

And one woman gave us shelter
Kept us hidden in the garret
Then the soldiers came
She died without a whisper

There were three of us this morning
I am the only one this evening
But I must go on
The frontiers are my prison

Oh the wind, the wind is blowing
Through the graves the wind is blowing
Freedom soon will come
Then will come from the shadows

What does it mean to be revolutionary in our time and age? I know, this is another cliché question, but it torments me as I listen to this old Leonard Cohen song, redone by Noir Désir. What does it mean for someone of my age (roughly) to say ‘freedom soon will come’? What kind of freedom do we strive for? We are all so wise and disillusioned, nothing will ever change, everything is predetermined (by the powerful of this world, alas not by God). Rappers might believe in Barack Obama, and turn his ‘yes, we can’ speech into a song, but can we afford to believe? Can we afford to believe in him, when the first thing he did when he became the presumptive nominee is to address the Jewish-American association claiming that Jerusalem will be the eternal capital of Israel and claiming that Iran indeed is a threat? I mean, who are you, man, to vouch for the eternal anything?

Again, the Germans give an interesting take to all these questions, in the film ‘the edukators’. In that film, the young gang of modern communists, broke into houses of the rich and rearranged furniture in obscene manner, writing on the walls ‘your days of plenty are numbered’. A nice oxymoron, you must agree. It makes me think that activism is not dead. Perhaps, new ways of expressing our disagreement with the way things are at the moment should be attempted. Perhaps, we should stop thinking that our short-lived stint in a communist party when we were young can suffice. As Churchill noted ‘if you are 20 and you’re not a communist, you don’t have a heart, if you’re 40 and still a communist, you don’t have a brain’, it tells me nothing that we were all leftists, when we were young. What happens now though? Can voting for an obscure left party be enough to keep our conscience clear? Is it enough to make me sleep well at night? I don’t think so…

I haven’t decided what I need to do, in order to be happy with myself, but there must be something out there, some form of activism that will make me sing ‘the partisan’ in a loud and proud voice and not like now, feeling like a phoney: ‘I was cautioned to surrender, this, I couldn’t do. I took my gun and vanished’…
Oh my god, the horror, it makes me cringe…