Bury My Heart at Szigetvar

Most Social Justice Warriors know nothing about the long history of our movement. Many believe it started just a little while ago. The truth is that the struggle against oppression has been going on for all of human history.

This is a little story about the fight for social justice. It happened long ago, not the 1960s but the 1560s, in a town called Szigetvár in what is now Hungary.

The great community organizer, Suleiman the Magnificent, the leader of the #TurkishLivesMatter movement, organized a big protest against the Christian white supremacists of Europe who refused to accept undocumented refugee immigrants into their lands. He organized a large group of 150,000 refugee protesters, and they headed north, determined to speak truth to power.

After many long days of travel, during which the magnificent leader had to be carried in a litter because of his obesity, the protesters arrived at the city of Szigetvár. It was defended by more than 2000 white supremacist haters, under the leadership of Count Nikola Zrinski. It is hard to imagine a more evil figure than Count Zrinski. He was a landowner, a rich white man, a Christian, and married with children: the very epitome of evil.

The protesters arrived outside the walls of Szigetvár, and demanded to be let in so they could redistribute wealth and sexually liberate women. But Zrinski and his men were not willing to give up power. They fired a single cannon to salute the magnificent, morbidly obese community organizer. But the gates stayed closed.

The town of Szigetvár was well designed for defense. It had three parts: the new town, the old town and the castle. Each was protected by walls and surrounded by water. To reach the castle, the refugees would have to protest their way through the new town and the old town. It was going to be a difficult protest, but the 150,000 undocumented migrants had the advantage of numbers.

For almost a month they protested against the walls of the new town, taking many casualties. Finally, they breached the walls and stormed the town. The surviving white oppressors fell back into the old town, while the protesters redistributed wealth, and liberated women from their husbands and children, freeing them to have polyamorous sexual relationships.

Suleiman the great community organizer became distressed at the huge loss of life and the destruction of valuable property. He offered Count Zrinski a prominent position in the #TurkishLivesMatter movement if he would surrender the city, but Zrinski spurned his offer.

The protest continued, until the walls of the old town were breached. Of the original 2000 Christian white supremacist oppressors only 600 were still alive. They retreated into the castle with as many women and children as possible. Again, the protesters carried out the sacred work of social justice: redistributing the wealth of the old town and sexually liberating any women they could find.

Then began the final stage of the protest. Soon, the roof of the castle was in flames. Count Zrinski realized there was no way he could continue his reign of white supremacy, but he refused to wave the rainbow flag of surrender. Instead, he assembled his remaining soldiers in front of the castle gate and said these hateful words:

Let us go forth from this burning place into the open and stand up to our enemies. He who dies will be with God. He who dies not — his name will be honored. I will go first, and what I do, you do. As God is my witness, I will never leave you, my brothers and knights!

They flung open the gates to the castle and fired a huge mortar loaded with broken iron, killing 600 of the protesters. Then, Zrinski led his remaining men on a final charge across the bridge, into the guns and pikes of the undocumented migrants. Zrinski and most of his men were killed, but they took many migrants with them to the grave. A few survivors fell back into the castle, still fighting, but the battle was over.

Social justice had triumphed over evil, as it always does.

However, evil had one last surprise in store.

In a room deep inside the castle, a young woman was hiding. The room was full of kegs of gunpowder. She had chosen to die rather than overcome her prejudice against polyamorous sex with refugees. She lit a slow fuse that was attached to a powder keg. Then she knelt on the stone floor next to the keg and recited an ancient prayer:

Our Father, who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen.

At that moment, the burning fuse set off the powder keg, and in a chain reaction all the other kegs exploded. She was killed instantly of course, but she took with her thousands of innocent refugees who had swarmed into the castle, eager to redistribute wealth and liberate women. Despite the words of her prayer, she did not show forgiveness to trespassers. She was a hypocrite and a h8r to the very end.

Finally, the protest of Szigetvár was over. The town was a smoking ruin, filled with the wails of dying men and sexually liberated women. The protesters now faced a long walk home through a devastated landscape. The greedy capitalist farmers of the region had burned their crops rather than allow them to be redistributed to hungry refugees. Of the 150,000 original protesters, 30,000 were dead, and an equal number were wounded or sick. The victory celebrations were somewhat muted.

Worst of all, Suleiman the magnificent community organizer had died in his tent the night before the final battle, choking on his own vomit. His death was kept a secret from the protesters, but nothing could hide the stench of his bloated, rotting corpse as it was carried home for burial. The great protest movement limped southward, hungry and sick, their protest signs in tatters.

Such is the price of social justice, but no price is too high to pay to rid the world of hate.