Apathy.
David Lammy let 60,000 Sudanese civilians die and no one cares.
The game of politics is built on people who can abstract that number until it's fucking meaningless. Who can decide that protecting a political ally (in this case the UAE who provide weapons to the RSF) is of more interest than the souls of 60,000 innocents. This is moderate politics under liberalism.
The depressing part is how little attention is really paid to this in the first place, the death of one is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic. Part of the reason the Genocide of Palestine is so radicalising for so many is that it's the only time where everyone could see first hand reporting from the scene everywhere. The only time thousands of those suffering could have their screams heard around the world.
Predictably, it seems a conscious effort is made to make sure this never happens again. The social media numbers of accounts that platform the stories of Palestinians have reached a steep decline, but polling data shows it's still a topic of major concern amongst the public. One can assume that a platform like TikTok, which as of January 2026 has ties to the US government, would be less willing to platform the horrors of the foreign policy the Trump administration gleefully supports. You could say the same for Meta and for X, as both Musk and Zuckerberg have made various attempts to coddle the sitting president. If you prefer, you could also quite easily argue that the horrors of genocide are not particularly marketable, and may deter advertisers broadly. Personally I think both are a factor, as the shift across platforms like TikTok and those associated with Meta happened after the election of the Trump admin and the aforementioned coddling.
The goal of course, is to make the response to Palestine as apathetic and miniscule as the response to Sudan, but it appears that the trauma of seeing a starving child screaming for his lost mother, of hearing stories of doctors singing to children as they perform amputations without anaesthetic, is one that lingers.
The Apathy Has Yet To Set In
Nor should it. If anything we should be working harder to platform the Sudanese innocents, to empathise with more people suffering around the world, to slay the demon of apathy. But this is very much an uphill battle.
I'm going to practise what I preach here and point you to rescue.org which has documented three harrowing stories from the largest humanitarian crisis on record.
Eatizaz, Khamissa and Safa made it out alive, but many more haven't and won't, and our government is letting it happen so it can provide arms to the UAE, who in turn facilitate it. 30.4 million people are in urgent need due to famine, human rights violations and attacks on aid workers.
If you have anything to spare, donate to https://sapa-usa.org/ and try and save future lives by paying for vital medical supplies and emergency healthcare.
Most importantly, we need a world where people like Lammy are forced to hear the stories from that day in El Fasher until they can think about nothing else. Until he can never wipe the blood off of his hands, until he feels just a fraction of the pain they felt. Until it becomes politically impossible to keep letting it happen.