WORLD’S END

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

On our way to Antarctica, we set out from the Argentinian city of Ushuaia, a place an estate agent might call “charming”, but which, seen up close, is far more messy and interesting. The town touts itself as the southernmost city in the world, and unsurprisingly, was first established as a penal colony. Ushuaia has a lot of bars, there is an Argentine naval base and a pier big enough for cruise ships, like ours. Ships of all sorts pick up supplies here and take some Dutch courage before setting out for Drake’s Passage, the notoriously rough stretch of sea that separates the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

On our way south our cruise ship bounced on ten-metre waves, during a crossing which the ship’s captain, with an annoying nonchalance, called “fairly smooth” (apparently they can be as high as 25 metres). Our journey took us past the Tierra del Fuego, the land of fires. My assumption that this referred to volcanic activities – suitably dramatic for such a setting – was wrong; rather the land was named by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during his circumnavigation of the world, because of the numerous fires that lit the shores. The archipelago was at that time densely populated by the native Selk’nam people, one of many groups of hunter-gatherers that didn’t survive their contact with Western civilisation. Walking the ship’s corridors is impossible when you’re cruising at a 45 degree incline; we clung to the furniture in our cabins. The majority of our fellow passengers were retired American dentists. Never had the body felt so insecure and teeth so safe.

Antarctica is the emptiest and coldest place on Earth. It contains 80-90% of all the ice on the planet but it’s technically a desert, and experiences less precipitation than the Sahara. Most of the ice stacked there is ancient, some of it millions of years old. The waters around it are some of the richest seas anywhere and host vast quantities of every imaginable fish and sea mammal and birdlife that heads there to hatch and feed hungry babies.

As we sailed further south, the serenity of the endless sea of icebergs stood in ever sharper contrast to the continuing destruction of Gaza, delivered to my phone by our vessel’s super-fast broadband. It was an odd experience, providing the space to think about a conflict that is often described as too complex and insoluble, the history too long and the enmity too intense. Sailing by Tierra del Fuego while so many young lives are being extinguished by the Israeli army as it earns the dubious honour of being the leading cause of death of children on earth this year, one is forced to consider the fate of all the children of men. Surely we are all doomed.

Unexpectedly, there is a silent retort to the threats of genocide and ecocide. Once we arrive at the icy continent, we are told that only our disinfected boots are allowed to touch the ground and that there are no prospects for sitting down on the snow or kneeling to pick up a stone. Antarctica is the last place on earth free of bird flu and its inhabitants are mostly birds. Thus visitors must maintain a series of quarantines and restrictions so as not to put the animal population at risk; a level of care or consideration that would be welcomed elsewhere on the planet, especially my local park in London. Being in this pristine environment has further lessons: not least that the mirror of its glass-like seas can reflect the better angels of our nature.

The Antarctic Treaty, signed in 1959 by 12 countries and now acceded to by 57, forbids leaving anything on the continent and taking anything away; it also forbids the bearing of arms and commercial exploitation. What’s more, it declares that Antarctica belongs to everyone and no one, as it is held in commonwealth by humanity and out of the reach of the twin plagues of capitalism and miltarism. It is the only large patch of land on earth dedicated, by international treaty, to the pursuit of peaceful scientific study alone. Such lofty ambition is hard to conceive of in our age of greed and homicidal rage. Can it only belong to the age of wise and peaceful forefathers?

The prospects of this November’s US presidential elections was similarly described by many as the closest thing to the end of the world. While the results remained uncertain, everyone agreed that the consequences were bound to be horrible. Having ignored the campaign mantra of the party scion Bill Clinton (“It’s the economy, stupid”)  the Democratic Party led a campaign that was mostly based on Trump’s threat to democracy, whereas the Republicans led on Biden’s economic performance and the “threat” posed by immigrants. The Democratic Party’s blind commitment to a continuity programme including permanent war was only part of the reason for their failure, and the promise of a surge by women voters whose reproductive rights are under attack didn’t materialise either.

Perhaps the most searing preview of the elections came from Chris Hedges, the veteran US journalist who declared in an essay that the election represented “a civil war” inside American democracy. Hedges, a Pulitzer-winning journalist and a former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief, argued that both corporate (Democratic) and oligarchic (Republican) power, while operating differently (one through stability, the other through chaos), ultimately serve to concentrate wealth among billionaires while dismantling democratic institutions and public services. Standing between the new oligarchical rulers of America and their vision of what Vice President-elect J.D. Vance has called “deconstructed institutions” is an obstacle course of rules, institutions and traditions both domestic and international.

Like the computer-game-based film Wreck-It Ralph (2012) to which Donald Trump bears an increasing resemblance, the Donald and his newly acquired cast of sidekicks including Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, are relishing their chance to have a go rearranging a trophy room full of shiny and fragile administrative institutions with sledge hammers. From NATO to the WHO to NAFTA they recognise no restraining force or law. Men as rich as God have issues with higher authority.

It does not matter that the trophy cabinet is full of the memorabilia of an American Century, mostly dedicated to maintaining US influence if not supremacy. While his camp contains all sorts of folks from anarcho- to techno-capitalists, old-fashioned religious types and outright ultra-nationalists and racists, Trump is mostly motivated by the potential to position himself as the principal actor in the drama of American history. Trump has no philosophy, no ideology or strategic goal, however perverse. Liberals frequently but wrongly accuse their MAGA tormentor as a fascist. Fascism rose out of the frictions of European history, philosophy and competing ideologies of religion, class and nationalism. Trump rose out of the process familiar to the rise of all oligarchs, born with a silver spoon and a grudge, entitled and aggrieved in equal measure.

The Antarctic Treaty didn’t come to be against the background of world peace and harmony. Exactly the opposite. The world’s powers were locked into a bloody conflict in Korea which threatened to end life on earth through nuclear holocaust. Then, as now, apparently sane people in high positions of authority wanted to trial the limited use of tactical nuclear weapons. The world was populated by the same war-like and selfish people – so what caused the United States and the Soviet Union, at the height of their ideological hostility and warlike posture, to assign Antarctica to be a place of peaceful scientific cooperation? Multilateral agreements may be made, it seems, between enemies.

The serenity of the frozen continent is heart-stoppingly beautiful when the sun beats down from an azure sky on the white ice sheet, yet in a matter of minutes the skies darken as blinding blizzards sweep in, churning up the once glass-smooth seas, creating conditions in which human life is not viable for too long even with the aid of layers of insulation and Gore-Tex. The silent mountains of ice speak this truth. Peace will be restored to earth one way or another, at the expense of human annihilation or through the process of human cooperation. Masoud Golsorkhi