I recently traveled to the United States from Egypt. It was a strange time to visit the country of my birth. Many people are (rightly) in some kind of distress, whether it’s because of the brutal ICE regime, extreme repression of speech and activism, ascendant neo-Nazism, economic precarity, the ongoing genocide in Palestine, or a general sense of impending catastrophe.
Because of a U.S. government hellbent on punishing everyone to the left of Elon Musk, many people told me to “be careful” in the weeks leading to my trip.
I made it in and out of the country without any problem, but the appeal to “be careful” has stayed with me since my return to Egypt. What does it mean in the current environment of extreme repression? Can it help clarify how we’re processing this strange moment of American history?
Telling somebody who is traveling to the United States or expressing unpopular opinions inside the United States to “be careful” seems perfunctory, the kind of thing one says (or hears) without thinking too much about it. This time it didn’t feel perfunctory, though. It managed to convey the severity of the moment.
My initial reaction was polite annoyance. “Of course,” I would reply while thinking, “What do you even mean, ‘be careful’? I’m not planning to go through passport control with a ‘Fuck Trump’ sign. Either they let me in or they don’t. Either the feds show up to my talks or they don’t. Anything that happens is entirely out of my hands.” I suppose I was annoyed because of a tacit recognition that I’m powerless and what I read as a suggestion that any negative consequences of the trip somehow would be my own fault.
It was a hasty reaction. The part about being powerless was true, but I came to understand that nobody was shifting the responsibility of fascism onto me. People were in fact expressing a deeply-felt opposition to everything happening in the United States.
“Be careful” can mean any of the following:
- it’s safer in Egypt than in the United States.
- I care about you and am expressing concern for your well-being.
- I fundamentally distrust the U.S. government. (Here all kinds of things might follow about a lack of trust in democracy, civil liberties, and the judicial system.)
- criticizing the USA and its Zionist client state has been essentially (and in some cases formally) criminalized. Therefore, you are traveling not as a U.S. citizen, but as a criminal.
- saying certain things is an invitation to trouble.
- anybody associated with Palestine can invite trouble even without saying anything.
- little recourse exists for victims of Zionist persecution.
- the U.S. regime is now completely unpredictable.
- the unpredictability of the U.S. regime makes everyone more insecure.
It turns out that more than anything “be careful” meant, “I believe in you to uphold principles and values that are anathema to centers of power.” Never has a platitude felt so inspiring.
When we tell one another to be careful, then, it is less a warning than a gesture of solidarity, at least when the comment is sincere. Sometimes the comment is souped-up, “please be careful,” which heightens recognition of the perils of dissent in today’s United States. I’m not merely suggesting carefulness; I’m putting forward care as an ideological principle.
People all over the United States are being snatched up, disappeared, imprisoned, and deported. So how can we be careful amid these horrible conditions? Simply put, we can’t.
We can be tactically prudent, but there’s no guarantee of safety for anyone serious about Palestine solidarity, or for anyone who is vulnerable by virtue of identity or legal status. There’s no guarantee of safety for anyone, really, in a world that so readily tolerates genocide.
“Be careful” has other uses and connotations.
For example, I would suggest that you be careful about nostalgia for a democratic polity that never was. Be careful about activists and organizations appended to the Democratic Party. Be careful about the podcasters who built an audience by caping for Bernie Sanders. Be careful about celebrities who moderate support for Palestine under pressure. Be careful about genocide profiteers in the film and publishing industries. Be careful about the next shiny young politician who comes out of nowhere to save us. Be careful about anti-Zionists who ignore Palestinians. Be careful about anyone who prioritizes the settler’s existential angst. Be careful about anything that tries to make a place for oppression in this world.
And, for God’s sake, please be careful about the supposedly radical luminaries interjecting liberal Zionism into conversations about Palestine.
In these instances, “be careful” isn’t an appeal for you to keep safe; it’s a demand that you seek to protect everyone else.
A minor reflection (mine) from a minor character (me): traveling through the USA last month I was either really stupid or mildly courageous. I was carrying a burner phone I had factory reset in Havana, but I was also wearing my watermelon t-shirt (thanks, Wear The Peace). The young gentleman from ICE in Miami never bothered with my phone and didn’t even notice the shirt: he had other issues he wanted to address.
“Why’d you go to Havana? What’d you do there? Why’d you do that? What do you do? How long have you been doing that? Why did you go into teaching? What do you teach? English Lit? (smirk) and Theater?? (extra smirk). Where are you going? Why are you going there? How long have you lived in Vancouver? Where else have you lived? Why’d you go to Tunisia? How long did you live there?”
30 minutes of that. He was fishing, I guess, or trying to wear me down. In my private vernacular, he was a wannabe punk. And that seems to be an apt descriptor of the people currently running the US government: wannabe punks. (Biden’s team was worse, in a way. When I see Sanders and AOC pulling 30,000 people for what is essentially a massive grift, I throw up in my mouth.)
PS: Canada, if anything, is more insidious. The rightward slide into neocon territory is cloaked in the maple leaf and images of pristine glacial lakes, while First Nations die of poisoned water. Yay.
Great story! I don’t doubt that bit about Canada at all–ss