End-of-year 2023

So it's been another year. I'll get the grim stuff out of the way first.

At the beginning of this year, I wrote about the way the Marin government simply decided to stop trying to suppress the pandemic, and overall deaths surged from 1 500 to almost 9 000. As I write this, the World Health Organization has us at about 11 000 cumulative Covid deaths. Earlier this year, we elected an extreme-right government with neo-Nazis and sexual predators among its ministers, so you can easily believe that we're still strongly invested in pretending there's no pandemic. Here's one estimate of how that's going.

I don't really know what to say, except to repeat that the necropolitics of the pandemic are unbelievably grim. Eleven thousand people have died, and the media and what at least feels like the majority of the population simply don't care.

But then some 20,000 civilians have been brutally murdered in Gaza over the last couple of months, and it's not just that people don't care, but in fact actively support massacring children. Our government certainly does.

In the face of all this, I've become a lot more active politically this year. I had a very memorable time marching against our travesty of a government this summer, and I've taken part in a bunch of protests against Israel's slaughter of civilians in Gaza. Here's a picture from one.

The problem is that I'm quite convinced that things will only get worse. The indifference to mass death that we've seen during the pandemic and the butchery in Gaza is one sign of that. Another is the rising popularity of fascism, whether it be the orange oligarch in the US or the almost ridiculous performative cruelty that is UK immigration policy, or indeed our own government.

At this point, I think it's impossibly naïve to believe that the resurgence of fascism has nothing to do with the deepening climate crisis. It's amply clear that the powers that be are not going to take any effective action to stop the planet overheating. The farce that was Cop28 was yet another nail in the coffin of the biosphere as we know it. What they seem to be preparing for is mass repression. Witness, for example, the ludicrously draconian anti-protest laws being enacted in the UK, or for that matter, the actions of the Helsinki police this independence day. I took the following snippet of video there, to give you an idea of what it was like.

I participated in the antifascist protest at Töölöntori, which was broken up by mounted police. As I said elsewhere, it's certainly an interesting experience for a military historian to be charged by a mounted formation, but it's not really one I'd have chosen to have at a totally peaceful antifascist demo. The cops certainly picked their side, and it's difficult to not think that in addition to trying to provoke and intimidate us, they were also practicing for future protests.

What strikes me more and more often these days are the parallels I see in our society today to ancien régime France, or the country my grandfather was born in, czarist Russia, we then being a grand duchy of theirs. In both societies, it was quite obvious to so many contemporaries that the system was badly broken, and the needs of the many were being thoroughly neglected in favor of the endless greed of the few. Faced with peaceful attempts to reform their societies, the rich and powerful in both countries absolutely refused to make the slightest concession. They would give up nothing, not one penny to anyone, but rather use violence to suppress anyone trying to change anything.

We all know how that worked out for them. Today's political elites are too busy worshipping billionaire oligarchs, imposing austerity on the poor and inciting ridiculous culture wars to protect the rich whose reckless overconsumption is literally destroying the planet. There are so many sensible things we could be doing to create a more ecologically sustainable, more just society. They'd rather send out the riot cops.

As a historian, I do not believe this will end well. Our societies are facing one of the most extreme tests ever endured by any organized groups of humanity, in the form of the planetary ecological crisis. We are comprehensively failing that test, and it's only going to keep getting uglier from here.

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So, that's the heavy stuff. On to more frivolous things, because in the middle of all this, ordinary life also goes on. It has to, because if we're going to try to do something about the big problems, we need to get energy from somewhere. Rest and relaxation are political and part of activism. Indeed, one of the popular ways to try to discredit activists is to set impossible standards for anyone who claims to care about anything, and then call them a hypocrite. It's a purely cynical maneuvre to maintain the status quo, when the reality is that no-one is perfect, and the goal of activism is never to be a perfect individual, but to do what you can to make the world better.

Last year I blogged about abandoning my so-called academic career for good. None of the above has exactly made me feel worse about my decision; on the contrary, the decision by the University of Helsinki to summon the police to violently clear people protesting Israel's war crimes from its premises on 29.11. made me feel quite confident that I did the right thing. Our academia is divided into two parts: the people holding actual power are far too privileged and cosseted to care about anything, and everyone else is too busy being torn apart by the inhumanity of neoliberal academia to be able to do anything even if they wanted to. And let's face it, most of them don't want to. So I'm tremendously happy to leave that nonsense behind me.

Instead, I've been working on a video game: Goblin Camp. You can read our blog here, if you're interested. It's a follow-up to the shareware Goblin Camp I was involved in over a decade ago, and we're kinda excited about it. Do check it out! It's certainly been an experience diving into a totally different job, but I do get to use my professional skills. I've done historical research into things like wooden armor and farming, and I'm quite proud of the way our game takes inspiration from Finnic paganism. We'll see how it goes!

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In even sillier hobby things, it's been a good year. I got to play a game of Warhammer 40,000, where I got my ass kicked by space wizards. I tried Battletech, and we played two whole games of Twilight Imperium, one of which I actually won! I made a golden Knight, and started collecting little ships. We've also played a lot of Darktide.

I'm very grateful I got into the miniature hobby again years ago, because frankly, it's really helped my sanity. Having something immersive I can do with my hands is such a wonderful experience when everything I do for a living involves thinking, writing and talking.

I'm running a tabletop campaign again as well! Our Rogue Trader campaign has been on hiatus for a while, what with the pandemic and everything, so I was persuaded to start a Dark Heresy campaign set in the same fictional universe. I'm trying to run a more focused campaign than my earlier sandbox efforts: this is a far more plot-oriented mystery-solving campaign with a definite structure and end point. Once it's done, I hope we'll be able to resurrect the Rogue Trader campaign and actually finish it. I've really enjoyed the Dark Heresy, we have excellent players and it's just been so much fun.

Speaking of finishing things, way back in 2019 I made a sort of new year's resolution to actually try to finish hobby projects before starting new ones. It's been going  variably, but I feel like I am actually getting better at thinking about my hobby activities in manageable chunks, and at least trying to finish more chunks than I start. I'm buying much less stuff, and actually, fuck it, it's time to extend my resolution.

In 2024, I will not buy any more miniatures.

I was going to come up with all kinds of exceptions to this, but I'm just not going to. No new minis in 2024, and that's the end of it. I will use next year to make a dent in my gigantic pile of undercoated miniatures.

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So there! Happy New Year, everybody.