Deep Thought: Time to punch up, not down

The invasion of Venezuela is not for you. The war on Iran is not for you. The erasure of Gaza and occupation of Southern Lebanon are not for you. Putin’s crimes in Ukraine are not for you. You will not benefit from any of these savageries. They are committed in the interests of a sneering cabal, determined to fill its pockets, whatever the means.

The oil wars will fuel data centres and colonising trips to Mars, for a bunch of amoral men drunk on delusion and self-aggrandisement. If this means the mothers of Molenbeek are forced to put things back on the shelf at Lidl, so be it. There isn’t room on the space ship for everyone.

What sleight of hand to make it seem the real danger were desperate people risking their lives at sea, hidden in lorry trailers, queuing for the indignity of unemployment benefit, children alone in forests at Europe’s borders. Fooled in this way, we have let pass corporate exploitation and destruction, the tax evasion of the ultra-rich, oligarchs and magnates the world over, a financial system fuelled by theft and make-believe, the sheer corruption of our administrations slashing safeguards and burning the earth for the profit of those who already have the most.

Post-structuralist discourse theory says successful politics needs an “other” against which it can define itself, an enemy it promises to defeat. How appalling that we have let that “other” be the most vulnerable among us, for so long.

Has the time come to start punching up? Join us for an unflinching conversation.


* Open to everyone *Reservation required *Bar Open
* This is part of the monthly Conversation Series 'Deep Thought', hosted at Full Circle Brussels

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ABOUT The Host
andreea Petre-Goncalves was 8 years old when totalitarian Communism collapsed overnight in her native Romania. She saw then how quickly yesterday’s absolute truth can become tomorrow reviled atrocity. She knows that societal narratives can shift fast, and when they do, they make deep system re-set possible. For two decades she worked for international development, human rights, health and sustainability in the eu institutions and international Ngos. In 2019 she set up Flare, a Brussels-based think-and-do tank that experiments with practical ways of shifting the collective ideas we hold of what is normal and desirable. This work builds on 15 years of her researching and writing about societal narrative shifts. She is a Bmw Foundation Responsible Leader and a member of Global Diplomacy Lab.