don’t look

there’s a frustration as I write this. “don’t look.”

it’s been a refrain I’ve said to so many people. “don’t look.” don’t. do not.

what does knowing do to you? what would looking have done? I know since I have looked, and I can tell you that it doesn’t do much except make you question. why is the world like this. why am I like this? why do people hate us?

when will we find peace?
when will we find peace?
when will we find peace?

don’t look, because if you witness, if you watch, you won’t be able to tear yourself away.

I was once tasked to find images of this horrible, horrible fire that ripped through an animation studio. The billowing smoke from a place 5,000km away from my desk; knowing its significance the studio and the artists who worked in it, and their contributions to culture. The desperation as I tried to telegraph my empathy to people who did not speak my language even as I sought eyewitness video at that distance. The horror as I watched the (apparently really expensive) live helicopter footage of the raging fire that we purchased from a local TV station. The viscerally detailed story and graphics written up and drawn by Western newspapers (including the wire news agency I worked for) the next day. The speculation as to why the arsonist did what he did that followed.

don’t look.

don’t look at the politicians rushing to criminalise our existence to make a political and religious point. don’t look at the fellow journalists who have joined them in vilifying our existence. don’t look at the parents who spent so much money to force their daughter to detransition. don’t look at her suicide note. don’t look at the meeting note that says “we’ll follow police attribution with regards to the shooter’s gender”. don’t look at the comments saying that he is proof that trans people are mentally ill. don’t look at the story where his friend told a reporter they were concerned that he was about to kill himself. don’t look at the faces of the children and adults he shot. don’t look at TikTok. don’t look at Facebook. certainly do not look at Twitter. don’t look at the personal stories of pain that people have written on Discord. don’t look at the pleas for help from domestic violence. don’t look at the conspiracy theorists who try to incite violence against all of us.

don’t look.

don’t look at the people screaming in the crowd as they get crushed in a narrow street. don’t look at the police officer frantically yelling and screaming to stop people from inadvertently joining the crush. don’t look at the horrified faces of people seeing their brethren falling from a plane. don’t look at the soldiers marching into terrified towns. don’t look at the soldier gleefully shooting an injured enemy in the head. don’t look at the surveillance video of a rocket destroying a city hall. don’t look at the people who are desperately protesting for freedom only to be shot at by security forces. don’t look at the hills on fire. don’t look at the charred bodies of animals that couldn’t escape. don’t look at the police officer using his knee to crush another Black man’s head. don’t look at the last moments of desperate, scared people as they were shot by a livestreaming white supremacist.

don’t look.

I used to think that the very act of witnessing was worthy. That my job as a reporter was something that in itself held significance because we were writing down things that would be recorded into history. I remember toggling the wire stories in the internal portal to Oldest First and marvelling at the newsreels digitised from the early 20th century. I remember thinking that some day centuries from now someone would find the significant news stories I covered or uncovered and study them, just like how I was watching these newsreels. I remember walking past actual stacks of magnetic tape on shelves, archive upon archive of the region in the 20th century.

now I wonder - what is the point of witnessing? of reporting? of being in this century when my existence as a person is barely guaranteed by a centrist neo-liberal state that sees us as economic units? why watch, why see, why listen, why record, when the fascism that lies latent within them will seize these stories, seize the research, burn them in big piles, and then erase what they were even burning?

It is 1933. Don’t look.

It is 2023. Don’t look.