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I think George Floyd didn’t die in vain. COVID-19 is linked to climate change, to how we treat each other, how we look at health, wellbeing, morality, human rights, not to mention the outcome of the US election. I think this has been a seismic point in the history of the world. […] We have the power now to demand, to recognise and to voice things […] For the first time, people have felt that they could say what they feel and be listened to. […] We have come to a point in the history of the world that, with our moral conscience and recognition of the challenges we face with climate change, things can never go back.Steve McQueen, interviewed by Gary Younge in Tate Etc, spring 2021
From 9/11 to the Capitol
Given the role of the spectacle in the American imaginary, it is fitting that two events watched live around the world have bookended the final two decades of the era when market values dominated politics. The first was the levelling of the Twin Towers. The second, the storming and occupation of the Capitol.
Both were forms of ‘propaganda of the deed’. Both were initiated by cunning, fascistic narcissists – Osama bin Laden and Donald Trump – each of whom apparently spent hours watching TV. Both were taboo-busting shocks played out on US landmarks; one destroyed, the other desecrated.
