this is all heavy subject matter, so imagine if you will, university. i'm sure it's a fond place for many of you. a simpler time one might say. i personally went to adelaide uni (to study music specifically). between involving myself in more clubs than is advisable, buying cheap asian food from a takeaway place that no longer exists, burying myself in the library to study for hours on end or peruse the many books, and doing a lot of drugs on the weekends (unrelated to the ability to study for hours, that's just autism babey), i became roughly aware of the “political landscape” of campus. the sad and pretentious world of stupol. a bunch of parties larping as the real thing, all promising sweeping foundational changes that never happened. ah yes.
i won't go over the details, i'm sure if you ever went to uni yourself you’ve been bombarded by communists, chatted up to by hyper-capitalists, been dragged to a protest by a greens friend. got confused at the weirdly centrist labour party that ends up working with the liberal party more than the greens. bumped into a few groypers. what i will say, there was one party that always fascinated me: progress.
progress, despite the name, ran its entire campaign on being expressively ‘apolitical’. allow me to now break down why this is a non-identity.
i could start by gesturing to the typically conservative policies progress campaigned for, but allow me to try and illuminate the root of the problem. apolitical is, itself a political position. an ‘apolitical’ party, to be truly apolitical, would have to not exist, or exist in a way in which they have little to no values, or otherwise act amorally, which would itself completely invalidate the need for a political party. i can point out that in progress’ case, it was usually a cover for obstructionist policy. and really, what is politics if not the systemic representation of personal values? the only way to be apolitical, to my mind, is to be a valueless heathen, or just sit at home looking at rocks all day idk.
in the real world, we often see the word ‘political’ usually as a stand-in for ‘political ideology i disagree with’. the alt-right tends to frame the removal of poc, queer characters, or otherwise what they refer to dei from media as ‘removing politics’ from a franchise. i’d like to mention that this is such a fervent fixation due to parasocial contact hypothesis, the idea that positive exposure to underrepresented groups in media can reduce prejudice, similar to having real-life exposure (which is counter to their goals of dehumanising minorities, thus allowing more freedom in movement to right-wing policy) but i’d also argue the removal of black characters is so white audiences can forget that racism exists. the idea of making something ‘political’ usually means it evokes some level of critical thought or discussion around a topic that we face in the real world. it acts as a reminder of the social issues facing the world today, and that often invites one to think about their role in such a society. is silence violence? is not advocating simply complicity in systems and their systemic injustices? enough investigation, you might come to the realisation that what you believe is counter to what you value. maybe outlawing gender affirming care is at odds with your belief in bodily autonomy, the ability for adults to make their own informed medical decisions, and the government staying out of the lives of individuals, or even god’s issuing of free will unto the people.
it’s been observed that conservatives tend to fixate on a nebulous and evermoving ‘30 years ago’ as a golden age. for the longest time, it was the jim crow era. it’s really easy to chalk this up to simply a desire to oppress people of colour, say, but i think the more appropriate read would be that issues like race, gender, sexuality, ableism weren’t the kind of conversations you might have on a daily basis. it was a state where one could exist in relative ignorant bliss, and be against prejudice in the abstract without having to follow that through with affirmative action. under such circumstances, such a lack of exposure, it’s really easy to believe that the issues themselves didn’t actually exist, or existed in such a capacity that it was limited in perceived consequence. everything was perfect. everyone was where they were supposed to be in the hierarchy. today is so fucking ‘political’. this is what people tend to mean when they say ‘nostalgia is inherently reactionary’.
let me ask you
if you were a racist, what would be easier?
living in a world people talk about race and you have to come to terms with your beliefs or have them scrutinised?
or a world in which racism isn’t even a concept or at the very least largely ignored and always out of frame?
would you rather see a person being brutalised by the police?
or only hear about it on the 6 O’clock news?
when i think of a period of my life i’m nostalgic for, i tend to fixate on my mid to late teens. there’s many reasons for this. i was in school, a very structured environment with clear goals and ultimately what felt like low stakes. binging anime, listening to endless amounts of jazz, lo-fi hip-hop, ruining my brain with videogames and not feeling guilty. but really, it was because in a way, no one took me seriously. i was a dumb kid. If i fucked up, that’s just part of growing up babey. not knowing what i want to do? who cares? it was a place in which i didn’t feel the pressures and responsibilities of being an adult. it’s easy to feel in comparison, that in my mid-twenties i have more stress, more eyes on me, more of my attention diverted, less time to fuck around, because i am responsible for myself properly, and the wellbeing of those around me, and i can’t escape that. i’m glad I have those burdens, because my life is pretty okay, and my friends are amazing, but i’d be lying if i said i never wanted to go back to my state of ignorance and lack of responsibility. those who claim to be ‘apolitical’ or detest ‘politics’ are kind of like that.
they want to live in a world in which they don’t shoulder a responsibility for what goes on in it. they don’t like thinking of their actions as having consequences. they want to live in a world where they aren't scrutinised for seemingly small mistakes. and they are absolutely fucking furious with you for trying to force them to acknowledge that world doesn’t exist. any attempt to get them to admit they could be doing better, is an attack on personal character of which you are trying to put the blame for societal issues at their feet. but just as much, they are scared of the expectations placed on them, and they are hurting deeply in the face of being told it’s time to move on and grow up. they are stunted, and i can’t help but see myself within that: the core anxiety that life cannot return to being simple, the aggrievement of innocence, both internal and external, robbed.
if there’s no other pattern you’ve seen, make it this. the left tells people to confront themselves, change, and acknowledge some harrowing truths. the right affirms that it’s okay, there is nothing to worry about. we are fighting an uphill battle. it is not an easy sell. peace is easiest achieved with no conflict to disturb the natural stillness of mind. one solution is immediate, the other, the dimmest of lights at the end of the longest of tunnels of which many cannot even see, let alone believe. that is how this pipeline starts. that is how all of this starts.
“That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himselfe he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himselfe” - thomas hobbs (leviathan, chapter xiv, the second law of nature)
alright. where is this going?
hello, ‘[people] who, for lack of a better term, aren't politically engaged’
i get it, responsibility sucks. i wish i had something more affirming to give you. truly. i want to at least tell you, i don’t blame you. i don’t judge you. i think nothing less of you. in the slightest. i get that i have been morally grandstanding for at time of writing 2818 words, but i do not hold a single part of me as better than you. some of you, or people like you, have seen me at my biggest fuck ups. whatever slights perceived against you, i genuinely slight myself much more.
can i ask you something? no sarcasm, rhetorical nature, none of that mickey mouse bullshit. what do you value? what do you believe?
fuck party lines. fuck liberal vs labour, soc-dems vs gop. fuck irony. fuck geopolitical factors. fuck all of it. what do you think people deserve in life? what are a few core virtues you want to embody, or see in the world that you can jot down? i can go first:
are there any of those you resonate with? okay. think about what they mean for a second, then let me follow you up. do you see whoever you vote for, as embodying those virtues? are they at the heart of what they do? if so, what can you point to? if not, why do you vote for them?
i understand the desire to look at some aspects of left politics. the nauseating policing of language. the petty bullshit that is the queer platonic group chat textwall (which yeah, i’ve fucken seen that shit irl), the eldritch horror that is the depths of the lgbtqia+ wikis with such terms as ‘emoticongender’ or ‘aegofictosexual‘. maybe you disagree on the fixation on political philosophy rather than action, or the endless hordes of people telling you you’re not left enough, the far-left’s resistance to forgive past mistakes. but are any of those enough to outweigh the core beliefs that you hold? is it worth jumping the fence to vote with people who you might find abhorrent? is the far end of your party much better? take it from me, i have issues with most of the shit i put in that list. my point is, when you vote for a party, you're not just voting for the points you agree with like the right for free speech, you're voting for the policies, aligning yourself with others who have voted for more radical reasoning than you. you don’t vote for a specific policy, you vote for someone who has a catalogue of policies with equal affect. neo-nazis voted for trump because they stand to gain with him in power, not because they want to make dark jokes on facebook.
trump for example isn't just ‘trolling the left' and fighting for the right for someone to be offended. he’s deporting us citizens based on the colour of their skin and where they were born, calling the education around race-relations and trans issues ‘anti-american’, creating deregulation in markets and stripping consumer rights, calling for spreading misinformation to be perfectly legal. he is destabilising a nation burning international bridges in his wake.
i understand, far too well, the desire to believe that none of this matters. that all this can be ignored. fuck man, sometimes i wish i truly was unaware of some of the shit that is happening right now. would make my life so much easier. but the people who tell you that’s possible, they don’t have any more dominion over reality than you or i do. saying you can live without that responsibility, doesn’t make it true. and i’m sorry. i wish i could soften that blow at its core.
all of this, and i do mean all of it, is a lot to take in. you might disagree with my assessments, i'm more than happy to have that conversation. i am not asking you to become left, i'm asking you to ask yourself some honestly pretty hard questions. and the answers will take time. you don't need to know right now how you should feel about any of it. but when you do, please report back to me. thank you for coming with me on this trip. seriously.