Franco Berardi’s ‘Thinking Gaza’ Fails To Think

Gaza is the compass. These words—emblazoned on large banners at the 2025 People's Conference For Palestine in Detroit, and frequently invoked by comrades in the Palestinian Youth Movement at speeches and rallies—contain a truth with which so much of the world has yet to reckon, though it will sweep them along regardless. In other words, Gaza is the place—and the event—in reference to which we must orient our actions, our thoughts, our lives. It is the most important place in the world right now, because the genocide taking place in all of historic Palestine, with Gaza as its most brutal flashpoint, reveals the foundation of violence and domination on which the architecture of the present world order has been built, as well as the terrible struggle that will be necessary to tear it down. It is understandable, then, that so many writers have turned their attention to Gaza since 2023. Indeed, this attention is exactly what is required of us. A failure to think about Gaza means a failure to think at all: Any thought which bears no trace of the absolute inhumanity of the present has already taken the side of the murderers. Thinking about Gaza implies a responsibility as well: to treat the subject with the requisite seriousness and attention so that one does not add to the significant trove of poor, cynical writing on the Palestinian people and their struggle; to understand one’s limitations while simultaneously attempting to reach outside them; to assimilate horror, yes, but to think beyond it towards liberation as well.