Never Again — Thomas Azier

#365Songs: December 14th

These are days of destruction
And days of loss
The children in the frame are looking down on us
They don’t have a name
There’ll be hurt
How can there be truth to this?

We learned, so young, that to understand history is to ensure it doesn’t repeat itself. A statement so obvious as to warrant brushing it off, not setting it to memory. A rote thought, evergreen to all contexts. And yet, and yet, and yet, here we are. Again, again, again.

I’m at a loss these days to make sense of anything, and though every instinct within me urges a layer of numbness, I continue to fight off the apathy. That’s not to say I haven’t tuned out a fair bit of noise in the six weeks since the election. I’ve deactivated Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, the algorithms that got us here, that frayed our neurotransmitters, that caused us all to call into question what’s true about anything, everything. And while yes, it was a wise choice, and one I urge others to follow, I refuse to fall into the void. Though I’m always an avid reader, I’m reading more these days, mostly books from the “Never Again” days: never again will we sit idle during a genocide, never again will we elect a Trump-like figure, never again will we allow basic rights to be stripped from the most vulnerable. And yet, and yet, and yet, here are we are. Again, again, again.

Dutch avant-pop singer and composer Thomas Azier dropped a track, Never Again, a few weeks ago. In the press release, he said, “We’ve never shown so little empathy, and it’s never been easier to look away. This song, Never Again, is my way of confronting this hideous moment in history. Stop sending weapons. Stop the bloodshed. Never Again means Never Again for anyone.”

A clear reference to Israel’s relentless, genocidal suffocation of Gaza, the song is applicable to so many aspects of our modern life — from the demonization of queer and migrant families to post-pandemic public mask bans for even those still at risk, from the senseless murders of unhoused people to the legal rollbacks of body autonomy in a post-Roe America. The list goes on and on, and Trump hasn’t even been inaugurated yet.

Never again
Never, again

I’m swapping bodies on my phone, it’s a busy day
Today I’m feeling less and less running late
Do I want to see the news or look away?
Clearly I can live with this

Our memories might be short, but our bodies hold on to dark truths for far longer. As soon as it was clear Trump was winning the election, my nervous system reactivated those early mornings in 2017 when I’d open Twitter with sleep still in my eyes, and the “what now,” “omg he said what,” “that’s beyond awful” gut punches came back all at once. You can’t fight when you’re living in a constant state of shock, can’t seek out order if you let the chaos take over.

“We’ve never shown so little empathy” might be true for a Dutchman — though also unlikely, given their history of colonization — but it rings a bit false to my American ears. Over a million Jews had already been murdered before the United States joined the Allies, and even then we did so out of reaction to the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor. The Jim Crow Laws were in place for over a century after slavery was abolished, and since then we’ve found innovative ways to sustain layers of systemic racism — from incarceration to educational funding, housing discrimination to voter suppression.

“Never Again” means stop fucking doing it, not “let’s do it anyway but call it something different.” Trump’s promise to end birthright citizenship, establish deportation camps, and separate families in the name of national security is rooted in the same xenophobic spirit as Japanese internment camps.

Never again
Never, again

Never again
Never, again

And as we move on to the wеather and swipe down to the wеst
Where death is now a number that is questioned
The suits are shaking hands in quietness
How can we live with this?

The list goes on and on of all the things we’ll never do again, and yet the majority of Americans just voted for a “let’s go back to the way it used to be” platform. That’s the exact definition of allowing history to repeat itself.

Listen, does this mean we’re on the verge of becoming 1940s Germany? Not necessarily, though the warning signs are there — including Trump’s own campaign promises, Cabinet appointees, and foaming-at-the-mouth loyalists standing on guard to do whatever he says, including “a new Civil War.”

And this is where perhaps Thomas Azier is correct when saying “we’ve never shown so little empathy.” At least at the end of the Holocaust there was a near-universal outrage and shock over the final death tolls, and countries established international courts to ensure such behavior would never be tolerated again. That is, until America needed a post 9/11 enemy and invented a war in Iraq; that is, until Israel made it very, very clear that their innocent lives were worth more than innocent Palestinians. Then again, I shouldn’t expect much of America: the same country that began as a genocide will inevitably fund a future one. History repeating, again and again.

We can’t seem to hold two truths simultaneously. That there are dangerous migrants smuggling lethal drugs across the border, even as millions of migrant workers — many of whom are also illegal — work harder than the average Trump voter, who escaped far more dangerous environments in search of a better life. We can’t seem to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization who must return hostages while also calling a genocide a genocide. Almost nothing is that black and white, and until we accept that we will continue to repeat history’s worst moments over and over and over.

Never again
Never, again
Never again
It’s happening again

~

Start following the #365Songs playlist today, and listen to each new song with each new article!

Follow me on Substack: https://thefogandthefury.substack.com/

Previous
Previous

Wasteland of the Free — Iris Dement

Next
Next

The Message — Grandmaster Flash