January is shaping up to be quite the adventure. We announced the winners of the SWS24 Awards two weeks ago, and the announcement of the winners of the Marŝarto24 Awards is just around the corner.
These events are quite exciting, but can hardly compete with the event that falls right in between these two announcements: the swearing in of a rapist as the new president of the United States, and all the insane consequences that this has already had.

As I write this, Trump just announced sanctions against Colombia for not accepting two deportation flights. Trump is still bent on taking Greenland from Denmark, and who knows what will happen with the Panama Canal?
It's of course Americans themselves who will suffer the most from the misogynist and his cronies, but besides Trump's own rage-bait spilling across the borders, his oligarch buddies, Musk in the lead, want to fill their hungry bellies with the spoils of less resilient nations across the world. And this can easily be a lost battle for the rest of us, as it's easier to sow discontent and to destroy, than it is to unite and solve the polycrisis we are stumbling into.

Musk's Nazi salute is striking, but the lack of his cancellation, and him adding more insult to that injury, is even more striking. Meanwhile, his words, and Trump's actions, betray a fascist state in the making. Sadly, the destruction that will follow will not likely be contained to the US.

Musk, the self-proclaimed "Technoking" of Tesla, often positions himself as a visionary leading humanity into a futuristic utopia. Yet, to bring this back to where we find ourselves, for all his grand promises of colonising Mars and revolutionising transportation, one can't help but notice how disconnected he seems from the most basic of human acts: walking. This universally accessible activity stands in stark contrast to Musk's hyper-ambitious, impractical and pretentious schemes. While walking fosters mindfulness, connection to the environment, and a sense of humility, Musk's endeavours prioritise escapism, ego, and a detachment from the present. His obsession with tunnelling cars underground or launching rockets to Mars are a desperate attempt to avoid the mundane reality of putting one foot in front of the other, both literally and metaphorically.

Walking is an act of patience, requiring no special technology, no billion-dollar investments, and no grandiose marketing campaigns. It’s a reminder that progress doesn’t always need to be flashy or disruptive. Musk, on the other hand, thrives on spectacle, promising revolutionary breakthroughs that fail to materialise and come with a host of unintended consequences. It’s almost poetic how Musk’s relentless pursuit of futuristic solutions overlooks the elegance of simplicity, much like a child so obsessed with building a robot that they forget how to tie their own shoes.

Moreover, walking is a communal activity, often shared with others, fostering connection and dialogue. Musk, however, prefers isolation, whether it’s in his sprawling mansions, his private jets, or his imagined Martian colonies. His vision of the future is eerily solitary, a world where humanity is either trapped in self-driving cars or shipped off to distant planets, leaving Earth behind as a playground for the ultra-wealthy, or, in the vision of Jeff Bezos, as a natural park to gawk at. Walking, by contrast, keeps us rooted in the here and now, reminding us of our shared humanity and the importance of caring for the world we already inhabit. Perhaps if Musk took a long walk, he might gain a little perspective. But then again, that would require him to slow down, and humility has never been his strong suit.

Much of Musk's behaviour, and that of his fellow oligarchs, is the natural result of the unbridled capitalism the world in general, and the US in particular, has been shoving down our throats for decades. With colonisation of the natural world having come to a practical end, the exploitation of the periphery has to be replaced by exploitation of the centre, which is exactly that the US is explicitly going through, today, and many other countries in the Global North have started to explore.

This didn't start after Occupy Wall Street in 2008, though it accelerated. Consider that Henry Ford, often compared to Musk, was both an industrial innovator, and Nazi sympathiser.
But the start of the capitalist present originally dovetailed with the colonial conquests of, first, Spain and Portugal, then the UK, Holland, and France, followed by Belgium, Germany, and, eventually, the US. We live in a world that was first shaped by companies like the Dutch United East India Company.

And that, neatly allows me to plug a project I've been working on for a while, highlighting the Dutch colonial past in the Brazilian Northeast, which still influences the thinking of modern day politicians in Brazil, thinking back fondly to an ancient perceived Golden Age in northern Brazil. It's called Sins Beneath the Equator.

At WLC, we got a bunch of events coming up in the coming weeks. You should stop by for a chat.

In the mean time, keep walking. And ditch Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Threads.

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