I recently had to set a difficult boundary with my sister.
We haven’t always got along. We are very different people with very different values and very different goals in life. I am very much pro vaccine, pro racial justice, and socially conscious. I love folk punk, Arabic pop music and Appalachian folk. I collect opossum trinkets and tattoos. I eat almost exclusively MENA food. I love gardening, I’m well traveled, and I speak multiple languages. I run a tight ship at home, and we emphasize family time and community building in our family. I don’t drink or party. I never really had a party stage.
My sister is a country and alt rock listening, wolf tattoo and camo wearing, ATV riding country girl. She collects huskies like they’re going out of style, and still lives in the same area we grew up in. She’s never really left the country, and despite coming from an Arabic speaking immigrant household, she only speaks English and eats mostly American food. She’s anti vaccine. Her politics are far more right leaning than mine.
Neither one of us is better, we’re just different, and in a lot of ways, our lifestyles and our values are incompatible. Nothing has made this more clear than the Freedom Convoy.
We’ve recently been discussing our differing opinions on this. For the most part I’m happy to accept differing opinions. I often disagree with my friends on many things, and I don’t require people to share my opinions in order for us to coexist and share meals or friendships. I have friends who disagree with vaccines, who share different opinions on gun ownership, who disagree with me on the importance of voting, and on economics. My table welcomes tankies, ancoms, anarchists, and the confused. 2A supporters of all stripes can eat with me. Vaccinated or unvaccinated, you can sit at my table, as long as you can present your arguments without cruelty or malice.
But I will never welcome fascists at my table. I will never allow a nazi across my threshold.
This is my line. My hard, unwavering line, to which I have no exceptions, not even my sister.
During our discussion, I tried to explain to her why I hold this line. I told her that while I can understand that she naively stands with what the Freedom Convoy claims to stand for, she is missing the messaging beneath the propaganda. She’s missing the nazis hiding behind the polite words and cause du jour. I explained to her that if you have one nazi at a table with ten people, you have eleven nazis at your table.
I told her that if you add a teaspoon of shit to a barrel of wine, you have a barrel of shit.
I told her that it doesn’t matter what good points some of the people at the convoy may have had, the moment they allowed the fascists into their movement, they lost credibility, they became a movement of fascists. I explained it kindly over and over, and then I explained it angrily, and I shouted it. And I begged her to understand. I called in reinforcements. I did everything I could.
And then she told me she was joining the protests.
And I told her that it was her choice, but that if she did, I would draw my line in the sand. I have worked so hard to salvage and maintain our relationship over the years, but I will not allow nazis to cross my threshold. I do not abide nazis literally or figuratively. And if you see a nazi, and you do not stop a nazi, or you join a nazi, you become one yourself. There is no functional difference between a nazi and a sympathizer.
I would say goodbye.
And I will say goodbye.
And I will say it finally and forever.
Sometimes boundaries hurt. Sometimes setting them means walking away from relationships that are supposed to last. Sometimes you can have empathy. I love my sister. It is no fault of her own that she is so naive. She is a product of the place she grew up in. She is the way she is, in part, because of the way I am. I left when she was young. I did not put the kind of effort I could have into our relationship when we were children, and the sisterly role I took on in our childhood was not one that welcomed her or encouraged her growth, even if it did keep her safe.
But boundaries exist for a reason. And lines sometimes need to be drawn, and this is mine.
I will not abide nazis, or their sympathizers.
- Bad Weather And Mutual Aid - December 22, 2022
- Matthew Berdyck - December 2, 2022
- On Grief And Tokenism And Friendship And A Hundred Billion Other Things - November 28, 2022