Uboa & Fashiongore - Protection

Another collaboration song finished recently, with the inimitable Bulgarian dark ambient artist fashiongore. She sent me only about 2 minutes of drones to work with, and we manage to expand it to a full 8. Featuring - drones, choirs, pedal noise, samples and, of course, screams. The long one at the end made me quite dizzy.

Of course, the theme should be self-evident given the recent fascist crackdown on folk like myself around the world - which is not just limited to the USA. Sadly places in Europe, including Bulgaria have recently passed anti-LGBT legislation too - often due to far-right, pro-Russian parties. Not even same-sex marriage is recognised there, and the queer community there is constantly worried about things progressively getting worse. It is important to empathise that trans liberation - LGBT liberation in general - is a worldwide struggle. Despite being a so-called Australian, we are in an election year with a far-right candidate as one of the main choices and this can always creep down under too.

Underlying many of these anti-trans and anti-LGBTi laws is overt irrationality, at least on the surface. They are often financially wasteful (if you want to hurt your tech sector, pass anti-trans laws), "accidentally" target cis people (i.e. gender-non conforming cis women in bathrooms, often for simply having short hair), cost money for police enforcement and directly lead to the suicide of children (despite conservatives stating they are "pro-family"), whilst also traumatising their families and communities. The main point of all this is nothing other than cruelty.
The cruelty is the point.

The far-right have selected a portion of the population to be treated as less than human, as homo sacer, almost like a punching-bag for the rest. Cis people - a majority of which are working class and have had their quality of life actively plummet and the conditions of late capitalism due to wealth inequality and climate change, are not just distracted by fascist leaders by transphobia and queerphobia - but are told "yes the world sucks, here is somebody you can punish for it". That is why it is common to state with these laws and executive orders - the cruelty is the point. It's not enough for a fascist to scapegoat a minority group, what really sells it to the masses is allowing them to participate gleefully in the bloodbath. The best distractions are sadistic in nature. It allows the cis working classes who have fallen to this propaganda to feel a sense of power that most of them actually lack. It has been the fascist playbook since the dawn of fascism itself, of which we were amongst the first targets.

How do you reason with this? If you are trans and living in these hell-zones, you can't. There is no bargaining here. The logic here isn't truth, but the fragile feelings of the cis, who need somebody to hurt due to the sordid state of the world. There's no debate to be had, as one side doesn't want to win a debate based on reason. They just want blood. The only option remaining for us is self-defence.

Thus, the lyrics to this song are a single line, repeated.

Our cruelty will be our point.

--

Y'all can download the song here.