They did everything right and it wasn’t enough; justice was on their side and it wasn’t enough. The eyes of the world were upon them and it wasn’t enough. God was on their side, and it wasn’t enough.

In the aftermath, when the screaming had trailed off and the fires had burned out, the bombs kept falling, guns kept firing. They were lined up and shot, maimed, mutilated, hauled off to prison, slavery, extermination; their children taken from them and scattered among their enemies to be raised. Their mother tongue was outlawed, their culture destroyed, the record of their existence erased. Three generations on, their survivors would be mocked as a new weakness, the decadence of a fallen culture, unknown in their grandparents’ time; even the future fact of survivors seems a sick hope amidst the rubble and the ruin.

They fought and it wasn’t enough; both within and without the system and it wasn’t enough; violently and nonviolently and it wasn’t enough. They seized the means of production, united as a class, rose up together and it wasn’t enough. The revolution has come, but not theirs. The end of history is come round to the beginning again.