Today marks one year since the terrorist attack on Zamocka Street in Bratislava. This heinous act shook a part of society. Many people hoped that the loss of two human lives would lead society to show at least a little more solidarity with the queer people of Slovakia. Lots of candles, flowers, and even the words of the President offered a semblance of solidarity. Today, however, we can say with certainty that nothing has changed. And we pointed this out before, then and afterwards.
It is easy to preach from the ivory tower
We have long emphasised that the majority of society will have no reason to support us as long as the fight for queer rights remains a private matter. Can we be surprised? No. Just as Easterners may not care about what happens in the West, cis/heterosexuals may not care about queer issues. There’s no point in moralising over it. As long as there is a divide between us (as between the two ends of the republic), society’s indifference remains its inverse.
In our article, Liberal queer activism hinders progress on equalisation, we concluded that “acceptance will not be achieved from the ivory tower, but by demonstrating socialist solidarity with the rest of the working class by supporting strikes, trade union protests, and the like,” and we stand by that. There are a million people living below the poverty line in Slovakia, and millions are threatened with poverty every day. Five million people in Slovakia face dysfunctional health services, education, infrastructure, rising prices, and poor wages every day. And with the exception of a handful of entrepreneurs, none of us feel that we live in a country where their voice, and not just their electoral voice, counts for anything. From this perspective, the average person really doesn’t need to see the difference between Zamocka and Zochova.
Society will not learn solidarity with queer people without a common platform
A year after the attack, after several solidarity protests against fundamentalist activity in parliament, and after an election that can be seen as a referendum between “bread” and “identities,” this hypothesis has been confirmed. However many solidarity protests there are, as many times as there are, they will be just shouts in the dark. If Jozef Mak only knows queer Janek from the Bratislava protest, their relationship will remain cold. In the words of internet discourse, queer people need to be normalised. How? We can start by not singling ourselves out from our communities—workplace, neighbourhood, or village. On the contrary, as far as possible, we need to openly ‘admit colours’ and not make a big deal out of it. Being queer is normal, but it is not the accepted norm, and that needs to change. It will be more constructive than even ten public buildings flying a rainbow flag. Instead of emphasising identity, let’s emphasise the social demands we share with the rest of the working class.
The events of Zámocká Street still hurt. If we don’t want its legacy to go to waste, we must not forget what led to it: dysfunctional upbringing in the family of a businessman and a reactionary politician; dysfunctional mental health care in schools; alienation and loss of basic humanity; and the indifference of the state and its authorities. The common denominator of these factors is capitalism and its consequences in all sorts of areas of public and private life. And that is why the struggle for socialism is a struggle for Zámocká.
