{"id":318588,"date":"2026-07-27T12:01:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T11:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=318588"},"modified":"2026-07-22T18:36:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T17:36:47","slug":"becoming-the-stranger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/07\/becoming-the-stranger\/","title":{"rendered":"Becoming the Stranger"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Becoming the Stranger – by Mr. Fish<\/p><\/div>\n

The road to fascism, as Ece Temelkuran writes in \u201c<\/em>Nation of Strangers,\u201d was constructed over the last six decades of neoliberal assault. We have arrived at the terminus.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

20 Jul 2026\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0We are becoming strangers. Strangers in our own countries. Strangers in the world. The values we cherish, the liberties we once took for granted, and the possibility of a democratic future are vanishing. The communities where we found meaning and purpose are being demolished. The iron grip of fascism is being consolidated. The decades long assault on democratic institutions in the name of neoliberalism, better understood by its less sanitized name, cutthroat capitalism, is reaping its grim harvest.<\/p>\n

Ece Temelkuran in \u201cNation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century<\/a>\u201d draws on her exile from Turkey, as she did in her previous book, \u201cHow to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship<\/a>,\u201d to prepare us for a future we do not want but will be forced to endure.<\/p>\n

\u201cNation of Strangers\u201d is written as a series of forty letters beginning in June 2022 and ending in April 2025. Each letter is addressed \u201cDear Stranger,\u201d which slowly drives home the point that we will soon become, like her, a stranger. First in our own land, then, for some of us, in exile.<\/p>\n

She scoffs at our mania for hope, the na\u00efve belief that our hollowed out and corrupted institutions can roll back the fascist tide.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe in hope,\u201d she writes, \u201cbut in determination, having faith and doing what you can to survive when there is no hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Temelkuran was a prominent Turkish novelist essayist, and journalist. She wrote a widely read column and had a show on national television. She was also the b\u00eate noire of the government of Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, especially after the publication of her 2016 book \u201cTurkey: The Insane and the Melancholy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

She left Turkey after being relentlessly smeared and attacked by government-run media, her colleagues started to be imprisoned, the death threats became \u201ctoo regular to ignore,\u201d and she lost her job.<\/p>\n

Temelkuran called her mother on November 6, 2016, from Zagreb, Croatia: \u201cMom, I am not coming back home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a one-minute phone call,\u201d she explains. \u201cHalf of it was silence. But that\u2019s all it took for me, in the autumn of 2016, to become homeless.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was 43.<\/p>\n

You can see my interview with Temelkuran here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe neoliberal system\u2019s reality \u2014 extreme inequality \u2014 cancels out the fundamental promise of democracy \u2014 equality \u2014 and that is why the idea of protecting democracy means less and less to people,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

We are rendered homeless not only because of those who hold power, whether it be Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, or Erdo\u011fan, but because of a bankrupt liberalism, a faux opposition enslaved to the same corporate and oligarchic masters.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince our political outrage is considered irrelevant by the conventional homes of realpolitik, the old political parties, we find ourselves politically homeless, too,\u201d Temelkuran notes. \u201cWe no longer know through which political medium we can unite our voices to be heard by the rulers. Like refugees, we stay in temporary places: protest tents, makeshift occupy-movement tents or strike marquees. In the cold or under the sun, we imagine and reimagine a new political home \u2014 like an exile who knows that the old home is impossible to return to but still misses a<\/em> home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fascism\u2019s lifeblood is the demonization of the other, of the stranger.<\/p>\n

By 2050, over 1 billion people<\/a> will find themselves \u201cat threat of being displaced\u201d due to \u201cenvironmental change, conflict and civil unrest.\u201d By 2070, between 1 and 3 billion people<\/a> may find themselves \u201cleft outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 [years].\u201d<\/p>\n

She warns that the genocide in Gaza is a template for what will come, an exercise by the global ruling class to see how much carnage it can inflict with impunity.<\/p>\n

Temelkuran describes Gaza as \u201ca long bleeding, thick scar on the world map,\u201d that is \u201cwidening to become a fatal gangrene, swallowing up the entire body of humanity.\u201d She cautions that the \u201cnew standards of brutality will be set,\u201d that \u201ctoo many will become homeless by the end of this story, and it will not only be those whose houses are bombed. And it will all begin with the loss of one word.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be no explicit agreement needed,\u201d she goes on, \u201cbut gradually, people will avoid that one word that is deemed \u2018problematic\u2019. It is the word genocide <\/em>in Germany today; in other countries, it will be other words.\u201d<\/p>\n

The void left by the lost word \u201cwill soon be filled with harmless words kindly suggested by the power-approved words, such as war, even though the other side is primarily civilians. \u2018Let\u2019s not call it a genocide but \u2018atrocities.\u2019 Eventually, it will become impossible to join the public conversation without uttering only those approved words. They will operate as signal flares to show that you are not using the criminalized word. This is how fascism works. It not only silences people but also forces them to speak in a certain way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Temelkuran chronicles the indignities of surmounting bureaucratic obstacles to apply for residency and visa permits in \u201csoul-sucking waiting rooms.\u201d She wonders, along with the other strangers, if, when the permit expires, it will be renewed or if she will be forced to find another refuge. She is hardened by exile. Humor is dark. She watches as refugees from the war in Ukraine arrive in Germany, clueless about what awaits them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Ukrainians do not know this yet,\u201d Temelkuran contends. \u201cThey don\u2019t doubt that the promise made to them by the Western world will be kept. They still believe that they\u2019ll be welcomed in a civilized manner and taken in gracefully, dignity intact. A very dark, very broken place in me wants to laugh that repugnant laugh. You wish, baby! They never take you in without crushing you first. You will despise yourself, hate everything, give up, turn numb, and only then will everything start happening. You will be welcomed only when you surrender<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her experience as an exile mocks the West\u2019s conception of itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cWesterners still like to think of Europe as the safe haven for the oppressed intellectuals of the Global South, but that is giving too much credit to Europa <\/em>when thousands are pushed back into the sea to die,\u201d she insists. \u201cPutting the spotlight on \u2018the exile\u2019 to divert from \u2018the refugee\u2019 operates as a crisis management tool, if not a branding strategy for Europe\u2019s self-image.\u201d<\/p>\n

The persecution by the regime that drives the stranger into exile is not, ironically, the most difficult to digest.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the Westerners haven\u2019t realized yet is that many of us do not leave our homes for fear of a dictator,\u201d she writes. \u201cThey still make the distinction in their heads between the \u2018goodies\u2019 and the \u2018baddies.\u2019 But what truly severs your ties to a country is to see so many people, ordinary people, supporting the regime even after witnessing its evil \u2014 to see so many choosing<\/em> to be evil. That is when your faith in humanity shakes. That is what ostracizes us and makes us homeless even when we are at home \u2014 the sense of being under siege from inhumanity, madness and brutality.\u201d<\/p>\n

The final blow, Temelkuran says, the one that \u201cactually breaks you,\u201d does not come from \u201cthe other side.\u201d Rather, it \u201ccomes from those whom you think of as your people, your side. When the sense of defeat takes over the side you belong to, the anger or self-disgust of being on the losing side turns to self-hatred. The hatred turns people against each other, and then \u2014 as I did once before, permanently leaving the country \u2014 you find yourself under attack, more viciously than the other side can manage. They say you are not enough. No cut is deeper than that. That is the precise moment when you become a total stranger in your home, when not the dictator but your fellow people sever your ties to your country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Home for \u201cthe abyss of the unhomed self\u201d is no longer a place. It is not \u201ca thing of the past or a destination to be arrived at in the future.\u201d It is found in \u201cthese moments of being fully in myself, an intermittent sense of wholeness, a rare but precious feeling of normal people<\/em>, and it will only be in the here and now<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the home we leave behind may be gone, there are \u201cnew homes in the making that yield moments of peace when you least expect them.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, perhaps, is a kind of hope, but one accompanied by eternal mourning and estrangement.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times,\u00a0where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief. He previously worked overseas for\u00a0<\/em>The Dallas Morning News,\u00a0The Christian Science Monitor, and<\/em> NPR. He used to be the host of the Emmy Award-nominated <\/em>RT America show\u00a0<\/em>On Contact.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – chrishedges.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20 Jul 2026\u00a0–\u00a0The road to fascism, as Ece Temelkuran writes in \u201cNation of Strangers,\u201d was constructed over the last six decades of neoliberal assault. We have arrived at the terminus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":318589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[225],"tags":[1924,686,276,542,993,545,172],"class_list":["post-318588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spotlight","tag-authoritarianism","tag-climate-change","tag-democracy","tag-fascism","tag-global-warming","tag-neoliberalism","tag-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318588"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318591,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318588\/revisions\/318591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}