Only the Struggle Matters
Truthdig
PARISIn the small chapel to the right at the entrance of the neoclassical
Church of Saint-Sulpice is a large mural by Eugène Delacroix. The painter,
at the end of his career and suffering from the tuberculous laryngitis that
would soon kill him, depicted a story from Genesis. Jacob is travelling
with the flocks and other gifts he is taking to his brother Esau in the hope
of appeasing his anger, Delacroix wrote in 1861 when the painting was
completed. A stranger appears, blocking his path, and engages him in a
fierce struggle The holy books see this struggle as a symbol of the trials
God sometimes sends His chosen ones.
Delacroix shows the strangeran angeland Jacob wrestling in a sunlit
clearing in a thick forest. Jacob, bent with exertion, the muscles on his
back tense, attempts to push back against the angel, who stands implacably
upright. The mural, created with layers of paint and bold, thick brush
strokes that would later inspire the Impressionists, was Delacroixs final
testament to the inherent strugglea struggle he was acutely aware he would
soon losewith mortality.
Delacroix asks us what constitutes victory in life. What gives life meaning?
How are we to live? Why struggle against forces that we can never overcome?
In the biblical story, Jacob is crippled in the long nights fight, then
blessed at dawn by the departing angel. He begs the angels name. But that
name remains unspoken. Delacroix painted the inscription Deliver me out of
the mire, and let me not sink, from Psalm 69, over the entrance to the
Chapel of the Holy Angels, which holds two other murals by Delacroix
portraying clashes with angels. On the ceiling is the Archangel Michael
driving the demons from heaven. On the wall opposite Jacob and the angel,
Heliodorus is attacked by angels as he attempts to steal the treasures from
the temple in Jerusalem. A large window in the churchs stone wall spills
sunlight over the paintings.
Painting taunts and torments me in a thousand ways, Delacroix wrote in his
journal in 1861, seven months before completing his work at Saint-Sulpice.
[T]hings that seemed to be the easiest to overcome present appalling,
interminable difficulties. How is it, then, that instead of casting me down,
this eternal combat lifts me up, not discouraging, but consoling me?
Our worth is determined, the painter attempts to show us, not by what we do
in life, but by what we do with what life gives us. It is the ferocity and
steadfastness of the struggle that exalt us, especially when we comprehend
that victory is ultimately impossible. This wisdom would be echoed by Albert
Camus almost a century after Delacroix when he wrote that life required us
to être à la hauteur de son désespoirrise up to the level of our despair.
Three Saturdays ago France experienced its 18th consecutive weekend protest
by the gilets jaunes, or yellow vests, against President Emmanuel Macrons
austerity measures, tax cuts for the wealthy and privatization of public
services. Members of the masked and violent Black Bloc had infiltrated the
yellow-vest protest on the Champs-Élysées. A few dozen Black Bloc people
smashed windows of luxury shops and torched Le Fouquet, one of the citys
best-known restaurants. Police, who inexplicably waited to intervene,
eventually used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons to disperse the
protesters. The images of the clashes and property destruction were
repeatedly broadcast throughout the following week. The police chief would
be fired. Macron, who during the mayhem was skiing in the Pyrenees, would
ban protests on the Champs-Élysées and order 6,000 counter-terrorism
soldiers deployed outside government buildings. The pleadings by yellow-vest
organizers for Black Bloc activists to separate themselves from the
nonviolent protests were effectively drowned out by the states successful
demonizationbolstered by the broadcast mediaof the protest movement as a
threat to public order and security.
As clashes took place on the Champs-Élysées, some 20,000 demonstrators
thronged the streets outside the old Paris Opera House to protest the
governments refusal to address the crisis of global warming. My wife and I
were in this nonviolent crowd, which was largely ignored by the press for
the more colorful scenes of newspaper kiosks going up in flames on the
Champs-Élysées.
The Black Bloc in France, as in the United States, is a gift to the security
and surveillance apparatus. I suspect the French police waited to intervene
until the camera crews could get enough dramatic footage. The goal of any
counterinsurgency campaign is to villainize protest movements, paint them as
violent and dangerous to limit their appeal, reduce their numbers and use
them as justification to ban any dissent.
Revolution is not about catharsis. It is not about joining a masked mob to
get off on property destruction. That is protest as adolescent narcissism.
It celebrates a self-destructive hyper-masculinity that also fuels many in
the police and military. It alienates those within the power structures who,
if revolution is to succeed, must be pried away from defending the ruling
elites. It produces nothing but fleeting protest porn, which Black Bloc
activists watch with self-admiration. And the state loves it.
We are attached to constitutional rights, but weve got people who through
all means quite simply want to make a wreck of the republic, to break things
and destroy, running the risk of getting people killed, Macron said after
the disturbances.
The yellow vests returned the next weekend in Paris and other cities in
France. But the numbers had fallen by half. The peaceful marches were again
disrupted by Black Bloc activists, shattering windows and throwing bottles.
The yellow-vest protesters deride the Black Bloc contingents as the
casseurs, or wreckers. Yellow-vest marchers have taken to waving white flags
as a symbol of nonviolence. It appears to be a losing battle.
France has been in an official state of emergency since the 2015 terrorist
attacks in Paris. The current crisis has only increased the presence of
squads of heavily armed soldiers patrolling the city. The threat of
terrorism, whether from radical jihadists or cliques of Black Bloc
activists, is used by France and other states that seek to crush basic civil
liberties and dissent in the name of national security. Macron, who is deaf
to the plight of the working class and serves as a French instrument for the
global social inequality orchestrated by corporate elites, is pushing
significant sectors of the population off the streets and into the arms of
the neofascist Marine Le Pen, with whom our corporate masters can make an
accommodation, just as they have with Donald Trump. What they fear is a
popular uprising. What they fear is losing power. If it takes alliances with
repugnant neofascists and demagogues to retain control they will make them.
The brutality of our corporate executioners grows by the day. They will stop
at nothing, including wholesale murder, to consolidate power and amass
greater profits. Blinded by hubris, driven by greed, disdainful of
democracy, foolishly believing their wealth will protect them, they will
herd us over the cliff unless they are overthrown.
Delacroix was right. It is the struggle that matters. Not the outcome. I was
where I should have been that Saturday in front of the Paris Opera House.
Yes, our cries were not heard. Yes, it may be futile. But the fight is what
makes us human. It gives us dignity. It affirms life in the face of death.
This eternal combat brings with it, as the painter knew, a strange kind of
consolation that lifts us up to the level of our despair.
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a
New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree
program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers
Chris Hedges
