A New Faith: Part 2: Chapter 18

The governments of Sweden, Norway, and Finland promptly tore up the treaty with the Sami. Not satisfied with that, they viciously leaned on the Sami to completely disown Kaija. Then the three PMs savagely reprimanded the Sami leadership behind closed doors for allowing this to happen in the first place. An official statement was read out by the Sami spokesperson where it was mentioned that Kaija had recently been impacted by a great personal tragedy because of which she had not been in her right mind and that she had never discussed her speech with any of her colleagues, friends, and family let alone with the three national governments.

None of the Sami were able to articulate their protests. What Kaija had gone and done was beyond their comprehension. The whole point of their movement was to protect the Sami land from the rest of the world. The Sami leaders had been absolutely bewildered by the complete about-face by Kaija when she had invited millions - maybe, billions - of refugees to come live on that same land. She MUST have completely lost her mind.

After the initial state of confusion, many had felt betrayed by her and were understandably livid. They had probably lost the opportunity to carve out a place for themselves for good. There was no way anyone was ever going to take them seriously in the future. They were very vocal in their denunciation of Kaija as they carried the faintest of hope that the treaty could still be salvaged.

Then there were the few who genuinely felt bad for Kaija. Poor thing - she needed help. But they were scared to reach out and give her that help because they were worried that they would be cast out by their community if they did so. So they stayed quiet. It didn’t matter. The three national governments had decided to put an immediate end to this topic. There would be no further discussions with the Sami. Or at least that is what they thought.

Unfortunately - for those three governments and the Sami (not that their opinion mattered much) - Camille had very different thoughts about Kaija's announcement. It was as if Kaija had flicked on a switch somewhere in Camille’s soul. The passion that Camille had fitfully tried to channel in the protest movements against the well-entrenched fossil industry had now found the right direction. She was going to force the issue of migration as a way to deal with the terrifying impacts of climate change.

Camille’s initial impulse was to rely on loud and frequent demonstrations in front of the major government buildings in Oslo, Stockholm, and Helsinki. She used all her experience to help organize the biggest demonstrations that had two immediate effects. The first one was good. The demonstrations brought the world’s attention to Kaija’s speech. While the video of that historic speech went viral, the real Kaija was nowhere to be seen. The second effect was the opposite of what Camille had been aiming for. The demonstrations unleashed such a massive wave of nativism that it threatened to completely drown Camille’s nascent movement. The three nations had never seen such a toxic mix of racism, nativism, fascism, sexism, and many other kinds of ugly -isms bursting forth in their respective societies.

Camille was stung by the viciousness of the vitriol that was being flung at her for the first time in her life. She was used to the crassness of the online trolling from the fossil industry. She had developed a thick skin against that crap. But this was something entirely different. 

It came from everywhere including her family and friends. Why were her parents shouting at her? Grand-parents? Aunts? Uncles? Random old men screaming at her as she walked down the street? The people that she had looked up to while growing up had instantly been transformed into rude assholes. The people that had been supportive of her advocacy against fossil fuels seemed to have lost their marbles and their sense of perspective completely. It was as if evil had captured their souls and turned them into demons that would lash out at her whenever she happened to be in their vicinity.  

What had Kaija said that had caused such a revulsion among the society that she had grown up in? Initially, when the media had begun to cover the demonstrations, the governments had been worried. But as they saw the mood of their societies swing so decisively against Camille’s movement, they gleefully joined in to torch it whenever they got a chance. Their spokespersons could barely keep their joy in check as they smugly held press conference after press conference to shake their heads at these troubled young people. They would not reject any opportunity to give interviews all over the world about how the young were being misled by unhinged leaders such as Kaija. Again, there was absolutely no sign of Kaija anywhere in all this ruckus. She had simply vanished since that fateful day. Some even assumed that she had been secretly imprisoned or even worse, executed and her body disposed off. No one, of course, tried to find out what really had happened to her. She was one of the most hated figures in Scandinavia.  

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Camille and her friends decided to hit the pause button on their demonstrations. In fact, they went underground. Away from the spotlight, they wanted to take stock of the situation. In a few days, the media lost interest as there was no one left to beat up. Secretly, the governments heaved a sigh of relief as they had started to worry about the increasing support for fringe ideas that were a bit too close to outright Nazism. The last thing they wanted to see happen was the right-wing parties using this to expand their voter-base. It was best to use the disappearance of Camille’s movement from the public domain to cut off the oxygen to this issue. The outpouring of so much bile had also left a bitter after-taste for many people. It was best to forget this whole thing and focus on other issues.  

Camille fruitlessly ruminated over her experience of the past few days. Despite the numerous heated discussions with her friends and the leaders of the movement, she was not at all clear why their near and dear ones had so definitively opposed the obviously kind gesture of providing a refuge to unfortunate people from climate-ravaged countries.

Camille called her favorite aunt to inform her that she was alive but planned to continue her incommunicado status for a few more days. This aunt had lived in the state of Georgia in the US during her graduate studies many years ago. She had witnessed the tumultuous struggle between the two political parties on the issue of voting rights. The white supremacists who were dominant with one of the parties wanted to turn the clock back to the pre-Civil War days when the blacks had no rights whatsoever. While the liberals in the other party wanted to put an end to the discrimination that minorities continued to face despite the painstaking progress that had been made over the decades.

During the call, Camille’s aunt made a simple observation that maybe the native Norwegians were scared that their world would vanish if hordes of foreigners were allowed to live in their countries. Even if the reason for those foreigners to be in their countries is for pure survival and not as a conquering army. To Camille’s aunt, this was such an obvious explanation that she mentioned it only in passing as they were about to hang up the phone. For Camille, though, it was like bolt of lightning reveals the entire landscape. 

The perversity of the behavior of her near and dear ones disgusted her. They were fine with democratic and liberal values only when most of the voters were people similar to them. The mere possibility of majority of the voters being completely different from them, made democracy and liberalism untenable for them in such a visceral way that even they had managed to surprise themselves. Wishing away those democratic and liberal values was just as distasteful for them. After all, no one wanted to bring back apartheid. Kaija’s speech had forced them to confront this choice without any warning - live with refugees who would vastly outnumber the natives and may have fundamentally different preferences OR live in an apartheid. No one wanted to face this choice. That is why they had raged at Camille’s movement.

They really did not want to even think about this. Thinking about it made them feel bad about themselves. They hated the fact that they were unable to think of every human as being equal. They had always thought of themselves as these enlightened liberals who routinely castigated bigots. But when faced with the possibility that they would be outnumbered by people who did not look like them or talk like them or think like them in their own country had brought to surface their innate bigotry. The bigotry that they did not know they had in them all along.

The story that they had been telling themselves and others where they were the glittering stars who looked beatifically upon the world was after all just that, a story. Just as unreal as a novel or a movie. And they truly hated that fact about themselves. It was no surprise then that they had hurled abuse at the person or persons who had forced this realization on them. The reaction of the three PMs on that stage when Kaija was making her speech now made complete sense to Camille. No one ever wants to be put in a situation where their hypocrisy is revealed to all, but most importantly to themselves. Especially, a hypocrisy that doesn’t pertain to a trivial personal vice but to a fundamental belief about their essential personality. 

Camille hastily convened the whole group and described her revelation to them. Slowly and then vigorously, everyone started nodding their heads in agreement as they thought about their own experiences over the last few days. This rang true. There was elation as they felt that they finally understood the main reason behind their pain. They were excitedly pointing out numerous examples that validated Camille’s insights.

That sense of excitement started ebbing as it started dawning on them that knowing the source of resistance did not mean that they had any ideas for overcoming it. All that had happened was the anger they had experienced from their loved ones was no longer something mysterious. The hypocrisy of their loved ones made them feel terrible. Some felt so sick that they stepped out to throw up. Some were deeply saddened and started crying. Some became so angry that they smashed stuff lying around them as the veins in their faces threatened to pop. Camille grew silent as the emotions of her friends walloped her. Her jaw was clenched tightly as she stared unblinkingly at some point in the distance that only she could see. The unfairness of it all was so galling that she couldn’t even find the right words to express it. She silently fulminated against the whole society. 

She felt trapped. No longer were her main antagonists faceless evil fossil-fuel corporations. She was confronting people that she had known all her life. People she loved and admired. People that evoked powerful emotions in her heart. She had laughed with them. She had cried in front of them. She had begged them. As a child, she had innocently manipulated them. The very notion that their hypocrisy was akin to being evil would have seemed laughable to her. How was she going to persuade them? Would any words that she could muster together ever move them from their impregnable position? She couldn’t really understand how the kindness and generosity and love that all these people had in them, that she herself had experienced countless times, had suddenly dried up so completely. What could she say to break through this wall that they had built seemingly overnight? Maybe… maybe, she thought that the time for words was gone. It was time for something visceral.