WAVY RED BENCHES
Or how a small change in the design of a bench can change a government
“We always end up knowing so little about the people we are close to”
Rafael Chirbes. Crematorio
“If you hate a person, you hate something in them that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”
Hermann Hesse
“You don’t do a thing in a living system and get the direct result you may have hoped for. You can not fix the whole, as you can with a machine. You do a thing, and then something happens so more things happen, mostly in ways that are impossible to track or correlate. The variables excite the other variables into incalculable storms of consequences and consequences of consequences.”
Nora Bateson. Combining
‘It wasn’t a dream,
I saw it:
The snow was burning.’
Angel Gonzalez
In a recent interview in the Aftonbladet newspaper, the “supreme leader” of the Swedish Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, gives us a genuine lesson in dehumanizing without making it too obvious. Like a pathetic pseudo-Nero, reclined on his imperial triclinium, showing his multicolored socks beneath a shirt about to burst, he brays, spewing his nauseating conspiracy invectives as always: Deport those who threaten the interests of the Kingdom! People with dual nationality are inherently suspicious and can jeopardize the nation! In the photo where he is sprawled on his sofa, he only lacks the lyre to order the burning of mosques in Stockholm. If you want symbols, there’s one for you.
Jimmie is comfortable moving like a shark in the deep waters. He smells the fresh blood of his electorate. He feels that absolute power is within reach, like a true Northern Caesar with eternal glory. No more supporting roles in this movie, no more Tidö agreements. Now the movie is called “Jimmie for Eternity.” But for that, it is necessary to climb “a few more steps” in the hate narrative to which he has accustomed us. He knows that out there, there is an eager electorate cheering for any of his occurrences. An electorate eager for these daily mini-doses of poison conveniently supplied by Jimie and his fellow believers through “friendly” media (which, by the way, are increasing, that’s what it’s like to touch power) and the social media of hatred (they dominate them all with an advantage). Steps that could mean going from 20.5% in the percentage of votes in the next elections to 22%, 25%? and with it, the government and even, why not, the presidency. The sky’s the limit for Jimmie. “Paris is well worth a mass.” You know, “We owe it to our electorate.”
Jimmie enthusiastically climbs that extra step when, during the interview, he drops this pearl and remains calm, maintaining his well-behaved smile (Jimmie is very good at throwing the stone and hiding the hand): “And I mean, it is not a human right to be in Sweden if you are not a Swedish citizen.” Let’s stop for a moment. What Jimmie is saying is that what gives you access to the application of human rights is not your condition as a human being per se (an inalienable right, by the way, in all fundamental international jurisprudence that nothing and no one, not even Jimmie, can question), but your condition as Swedish. Being Swedish is what entitles you to have your rights applied as a human being. Bingo!
With this unparalleled assault on decency, Jimmie injects into public discourse the terrifying and sinister idea that what entitles you to claim your rights to be treated as a human being is to have Swedish nationality, that is, if you don’t have it, you don’t have that right. The philosopher Caroline Emcke remembered us recently in an interview that “Human rights are unconditional. Who counts as a human being cannot and should not be negotiated”. Similarity is not a precondition for human rights Mr. Åkesson. And because the pill is a bit bitter to swallow, we soften it a bit by saying that non-Swedes are a bit “less human” than Swedish citizens. How much less? Ah, that will be decided later when the splendid triumph of 2026 arrives.
The logic of dehumanizing the other, be it Jew, Muslim, Woman, Black, Latino, Filipino, LGBTQ, Sami, Foreigner, Poor, Mentally Ill, Child, “Traitor to the Homeland,” etc., is an old trick used extensively throughout history by all authoritarian regimes based on terror, lies, and hatred. As the brilliant linguist Viktor Klemperer warned us some time ago in his work Language of the Third Reich, language is usually the preferred means of tyrants, despots, and apostles of purity to normalize this process of dehumanization and make it extendable to the entire population, which ends up seeing the use of words created expressly to harass, destroy, and mistreat as completely natural and even logical. The Nazis, always creative in perpetrating absolute evil, invented the word “Untermenschen” to refer to the Jews. One of the first measures the Nazis implemented when they came to power was to prohibit Jews’ access to public swimming pools. It was essential, Klemperer reminds us, that more and more people used these words to create the hell of extermination that they ended up creating.
Language is the main tool for creating the reality we want to create. In that sense, it is the political resource par excellence. As the philosopher and Hannah Arendt disciple Elisabeth Münch points out, extensive evil only requires inoculating a few drops to spread at the speed of light, taking advantage of the ambition, envy, greed, and status-seeking of completely anonymous people. Jimmie knows this very well (like all his fellow believers in the Bannon brand of international of hatred) and promptly attends the meeting. Here is your dose, open your mouth please, a little more… there, very well. Now swallow: “And I mean, it is not a human right to be in Sweden if you are not a Swedish citizen.”
Is it impossible to get out of this rabbit hole? Should we suffer it as a kind of biblical curse impossible to change? Not at all. Ask the Spanish people, the Polish, or the Sardinians in their latest elections. Nothing is impossible when people say enough. Ask the late Navalny. Fear only exists in our heads. They know it and convince us that it is real, that it is out there, threatening our rights, our families and friends, our jobs. But it’s a big lie, a farce. In reality, they are terrified that people will discover their tricks and traps. Behind their facade of apparent impregnability, there is nothing, only smoke, albeit smelly, but smoke. They are scared and resentful children who cannot contribute anything, or create anything; they just kick and gesture sulkily because “mommy doesn’t give them their candy.” In essence, they are extraordinarily weak; in fact, they spend all their time pretending not to be. They only know how to hate and make others hate. That is their only (in)competence. They cannot offer anything else. Arrogance is always the product of ignorance and unresolved inferiority complexes.
I propose to lose our fear of them, expose them, laugh in their faces, turn their always hieratic, grave, and severe faces (notice how little they laugh) into the caricature they really are, and laugh with them. I propose to counterattack from language and from a place as little given to political counterattack as museums, which strategically is an advantage for its unexpectedness. In front of the horizontally occupied divan, lengthwise and crosswise, by Jimmie, I propose to create red undulating benches (IKEA could be a good sponsor) near all museums (indoors and outdoors) to promote and facilitate encounters between people. Safe spaces for everyone that breaks with the horizontality and rigor “Mortis” of the power structures that are being implemented at full speed. And replace them with the rhythm and swaying of undulating benches. Movement versus paralysis, fluidity versus freezing, life versus death.
On an undulating bench, it is impossible to be separated from the other; you necessarily have to approach, slide, get closer, gradually become part of their space, and make contact. From there, the miracle of connection arises when two people recognize each other and participate in something common, beautiful, and authentic. As activist Monica Guzman says, there are many more things that unite us than separate us; all it takes is to make it possible, and these benches can be a good way to achieve it.
Benches as anechoic chambers with which we can isolate ourselves from the fury and the big lie that permeates the environment while metabolizing them into smiles, caresses, and promises. Free ourselves and cleanse our minds and hearts of words that soil us by offering our sacred presence. I am here for you, but also for myself. I need you to be who I truly want to be. I can’t achieve it without you. We have so much to share! I’ve waited so long for this! And the same goes for you and all of us.
Benches-citadel, benches-refuge, benches-shield, benches from which to literally resist the onslaught of insult, humiliation, and abuse, practicing hospitality, kindness, mutual care, and respect for the inalienable dignity of every one of us. The more abuse, the more respect. Benches for everyone where there is no “us” versus an imagined “them” only to harm and subdue; there is only an “all.” Hospital benches that heal and are capable of looking into the eyes, regardless of the history of the one looking and being looked at. Benches capable of connecting personal stories and creating long-term bonds, community weavers where words of kindness and welcome are woven in rhythm as words like “foreigner,” “refugee,” “strange,” and “one of ours” are unwoven. Storytellers versus Storysellers. Warm data versus Cold data.
People from the bench versus others from the Banks with a capital ‘B.’ Lowercase against Uppercase. Nouns against Adjectives. Values against Barriers. Benches that rescue from the daily shipwreck that cities increasingly resemble, inhumane battlefields where the “to be or not to be” of many is unfairly decided every day. Cities turned into machines that grind meat and spit it out, ensuring that everything is perfectly normal in a society where “law and order” must prevail at all costs. Paranoid cities that are whipped up every day with war drums so that citizens see enemies in everyone and threats everywhere. A narcissistic cult matrix. Benches to heal trauma, as the wonderful leaders of The Friendship Bench or the Human Library do. Benches that exalt the future and make us look it in the face, smiling with hope. Micro-environments where the impossible can be imagined and co-created.
Can you imagine that one day undulating red benches start to appear here and there? More and more benches without anyone knowing who put them there? Benches that spontaneously show up to say, “Enough, it’s over, never again; we don’t buy your ideological trinkets, your mental junk, your diarrhea of deceitful and malicious words. Mouth shut. From now on, we decide. A great undulating wave to surf on, scanning the horizon, a tsunami of benches like a great red sea that floods everything, from corner to corner of the country, with hope, compassion, and enthusiasm for being part of a shared future where everyone is necessary. Come from wherever you come, whoever you are.
So what would happen? Would they order to remove them? Nothing more harmless than a bench in a park and its silent, almost anodyne presence. The extraordinary normality, the dignity of every day of which architect Alejandro Aravena, winner of the 2016 Pritzker Prize, speaks so much. Weavy red benches, yellow umbrellas, white handkerchiefs, blue and yellow ribbons like the flag of Ukraine. As my friend and great creative Dave Gray, the creator of the School of the Possible and the great Possibilitarian himself, says we can only make possible what we have previously imagined.
Well, today, International Feminist Fight’s Day (Women are being the main containment dike against the reactionary-populist wave), I imagine a splendid undulating red bench near a museum where two women who don’t know each other start to chat amicably in the middle of a bright spring afternoon, discovering the wonder of the infinite diversity that is inherent in each one. One of them seeks asylum, the other is a voter of the SD. After the conversation, they exchange phone numbers to meet again another day. They liked each other. There was chemistry. Together, they will enjoy the bench watching their children playing. Emulating the sensitivity and tenderness of Hirayama, the protagonist of the recent film by Wim Mertens, who goes to a park bench during breaks in his working day to photograph his friends. the trees. Jokingly acknowledging the phrase uttered by Forrest Gump on another bench: “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get”.. Together, they will help each other as much as they can leaving far behind the resentment that one day someone planted in their lives with the sole aim of manipulating them to gain more power. Together, on an undulating red bench celebrating that after a long winter spring always comes.
Post Scriptum: A few days after writing this article another Nero, this time from the West, Trump, claims that if he is not elected in the November elections “there will be a bloodbath in the country”. He finishes it off by pulling the same dehumanizing handbook on immigrants that Akerson uses and states “I don’t know if you can call them people. In my opinion, in some cases they are not:” Climbing one more rung on the ladder of infamy. A ladder on which he repeatedly called them “rapists” and that they were “poisoning the blood of the country”, in a reference with echoes of My Struggle, the book in which Hitler summed up his ideology. Lately, Trump defines them as “criminals”, and says, without evidence, that they come straight from “prisons, insane asylums and mental asylums”. The international of hate in action.
