Living in the Fog: Israel, Gaza, War, and the Worsening Trauma and Information State
War destroys information and context. And it's only getting worse by design.
The situation in the Middle East is changing and complicating by the minute. This particular article is going to address an aspect of that crisis, the context in which it is all happening, and a specific set of concerns I have and I believe you should share, but if you are interested in my thoughts about the developing political and geopolitical situation unfolding, here are some places you can go:
The most recent episode of The Muckrake Podcast is just me breaking down recent developments while also outlining the potential scenarios that are coming into focus.
My initial reactions can be found in a previous Dispatches From A Collapsing State article titled “A Cycle of Endless Tragedy.”
Relatedly, I released an audio article entitled “The Burden of the Moment” which discusses the psychological toll on the individual and how that is playing out politically and culturally.
Finally, for the larger context of what is happening here, and how the developing crisis is part of the larger, historical crisis that I have been warning about for some time, I’d advise you check out my book THE MIDNIGHT KINGDOM: A HISTORY OF POWER, PARANOIA, AND THE COMING CRISIS.
All that being said, what I want to discuss today is an aspect of this that is always present in crises and flashpoints, an aspect that is absolutely crucial for participants, belligerents, but also individuals. You. Me. All of us.
We begin in Gaza City. Or, more specifically, the Ahli Arab Hospital. Or, even more specifically, what remains of it.
All we know for sure right now is that, on Tuesday, an explosion rocked and damaged the hospital, killing and wounding a still-unknown number of people. Initially, the tragedy was blamed on an Israeli airstrike. Then, it was blamed on a failed rocket attack against Israel. During his trip and meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Joe Biden has already made the statement, “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears it was done by the other team, not you.”
On social media it has been competing floods of information. Well, maybe that’s not right. Not necessarily a flood. Not necessarily information. More like machine gun rounds of semi-information. Posters comparing crater sizes in photos. Claims of intercepted audio with Hamas admitting responsibility. The space, as has been said, is flooded with shit.
Again. Here’s what we know: there was an explosion at Ahli Arab Hospital. Scores of people were killed and hurt. Innocent people attempting to heal others, heal themselves, or simply living their lives and working their jobs.
This is hardly a new phenomenon, this is hardly unprecedented. In war there is a worsening cycle of destruction and tragedy. Occasionally an incident rises to a point of notoriety, but most often there are terrible, unnecessary moments that are either lost in the fray or ignored. Compounded tragedies.
We got a taste of how these things work with the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. The initial moments were filled conflicting accounts from the ground. Ukrainian sources, Ukrainian-friendly sources, Russian sources, Russian-friendly sources, and an unknowable number of sources spreading disinformation for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s about changing narratives, carrying out psychological operations, other times it’s simply about flooding the aforementioned zone with so much shit.
This was already very, very bad before sites like Twitter got not only worse but intentionally worse. Now, in this developing space of crisis, the problem is compounded in so many ways that it’s almost impossible to properly put it into context.
In other words, we are swimming in it.
Our mornings and days are punctuated with conflicting reports. Sensationalized claims. War crimes and atrocities that are either unthinkably awful and tear us to shreds or else constructed and fabricated to create that effect. The fog of war, or fog of crisis, or fog of trauma (these are all the same things), has engulfed us. Naturally because this crisis, on top of all of our crises, means we are going to suffer the consequences. But also because rising authoritarianism, mixed with our consumer / exploitative economy’s capitalization process, requires anxiety / precarity, we are kept in a state of building terror.
This is the baseline condition of the current moment, and in times like these it is only going to ramp up and ramp up. Geopolitically, this is how world wars start. Personally, this is how we can be utterly consumed.
What I want to talk about is that global scale, for sure, and how these situations get out of control and how they build to something the size of a world war. But I also want to talk about you, your experiences, and how that builds and compounds and ultimately affects the world at large.