How much of your self image is tied up with your political views? Have you ever felt a sense of group belonging for agreeing, or disagreeing with a political story?
Are you part of the Left? Surely not the <gasp> Communist wannabes? Neo-Marxist, liberal Hollywood elites backed by mainstream media feeding you rose-tinted visions of a world without poverty where everyone gets a government handout for sitting at home scratching themselves. You know that's how the economy will collapse, right?
So you're on the Right then? You must be rich I guess, since only somebody born with a silver spoon in their mouth would willingly turn a blind eye to the world's inequalities, swallowing all the lies of the mainstream media who never cover the real stories, like all the government tax cuts and hand-outs to the rich. You just want to take and take and let everyone else rot along the way. You do know that's not sustainable, right? The people deserve a fair shake, we should totally nationalise all the means of production, otherwise you know the economy will collapse, right?
If you spend any time engaged in political discourse, particularly on-line, you're probably familiar with being spoken to in one of those two ways. You may also be guilty of speaking to someone else in something like the other way. We can all see that politics in our current era is becoming, every day, more tribal and divided. Gone are the days when we could sweep it all under the rug by asking others to just not talk about politics. It all seems too important now to just ignore it and let the world run itself in the background. Whether or not it is actually more important than in the past is up for debate; but many more of us are actually paying attention now, and as a society we are more politically engaged. This should be a good thing, but instead of truly discussing problems often all we do is brand our opponents, de-humanising them and locking ourselves in bubbles of self-affirming information. The truth is that most of us are at least a little guilty of exacerbating the problem, a problem that is in part rooted in our tendency to personally identify ourselves and others with political buzzwords. Most notably "left" and "right" wing.
Conservative, liberal, oligarch, fascist, socialist, communist...
Don't get me wrong, these words do have meanings, often too many meanings that people don't always agree on. We can be pedantic and quote a dictionary or bring up the very first historical root but the truth is both language and political movements evolve, sometimes splintering into many different directions that still use some of the same identifying words. Do you like earning money, and want to earn as much as possible for doing as little as possible? You might think that's just common sense, we all want the freedom over our time to decide what we would like to be doing, and the financial freedom to do whatever we choose to do in that time. But does that mean we're all capitalists? Does that mean we're not allowed to support government social services like free healthcare? If I think the rich should pay more tax does that mean I think the government should be allowed to expropriate any business it wants?
As a Venezuelan person I have some experience with the use and abuse of political language. We’ve seen what lies beyond the brink when two sides can't communicate at all for too long. Yes the problems in venezuela are manyfold and complex and most of us can see now, when you might say it's too late, that many of the decisions that were made over the past 20 years (and earlier), primarily for populist reasons, led us to where we are. Some saw the grim possibilities from the start, and more and more saw them as time went on, but our inability to breach the gap with those who saw things differently was more than anything what lowered the defences and allowed the current situation to take hold. The chief crime of Chavismo for me has always been the split in our society that its leaders willfully encouraged and thrived on, where in the end one side could only see greed and corruption and the other could only see ignorant uneducated masses. Politicians across the world seem to have taken note of how effective that strategy was.
It’s a strategy that puts us at odds with each other, and sometimes even at odds with ourselves. Anger at the other group encourages a zealous loyalty for our own, and unthinking loyalty is dangerous.
And we are all doing it.
Our sense of "group belonging" has been shown to be a large factor in our political views, which will most often align in large part with many of our family or friends or our community even if they don't align with the larger world. It can lead to contradictions or actions against what would seem like our self interest. Regardless of your views on Trump it seems telling to me that a billionaire tycoon giving tax breaks to the rich is seen so favourably by literally millions of lower class, effectively poor Americans. Many excuses come to the defence, many attempts to divert attention or focus elsewhere, all fuelled by loyalty to whatever initially sold each individual on Trump, or on the GOP in general, or against Democrats. Hundreds of tit-for-tat battles pointing out each mistake by the opposite party, however long ago in justification for whatever is happening now. What you have to stop and wonder is: why? why are they loyal? and if we're most of us honest why are we loyal to whatever political brand we've decided to join? are we buying into a complex package deal based on agreeing on one issue we're passionate about? The UK isn't much better; did millions vote for Brexit because of fear of immigration, buying in the process an economic and diplomatic mess no one truly understood at the time? Are we making apologies for Corbyn's inability to condemn people like Fidel Castro or Nicolas Maduro because we like the sound of some of his policies?
We can still support some ideas while campaigning for our group to change others. We can still hold our leaders to higher standards in their own behaviour. We can’t be afraid that every criticism is a betrayal that only helps out their political opposites gain power. To even think that is to give in to the politics of fear.
The mass "group think" on both sides has been steadily increasing, Intensified by the confirmation-bias driven algorithms of social media taking us at exponential speed down one track and away from each other. The larger mass of blind support drowns out small dissent in the ranks on both sides and is helping to radicalise both camps; dissent which is essential to perfecting and course-correcting any movement. Even if we don't agree with the criticism, we should welcome it; listen to it and debate it. If we stamp it out aggressively we discourage it in the future when it may someday be key to saving a movement from itself.
Populism is not a reserve of the Right or the Left. Neither is corruption or authoritarianism. No political leader's motives should be trusted beyond doubt; constant scrutiny is their cross to bear that we should not hesitate to lay on them. Most of society's ills are not going to be solved by any one-size-fits all approach. Nor in many cases will it be solved by a "neither this nor that" centrist approach. The centre ground should be where political discourse meets, but not one that simply appeases both sides and achieves nothing. Certain aspects of society may require a cold business-like approach, and others a kinder social approach. As long as all of it is in the interest of the betterment of society as a whole. We should judge each case as it comes, and hear all sides before voting on a solution. That may be how a parliament is supposed to work, but party-line voting means the argument is mostly between the two front benches. With them always keeping an eye to the next election, views even there at the front lines are now mostly pushed against the "popular" extremes. True discourse, where one side might actually concede points to the other and try to reach good-natured agreement or compromise, is simply lost as collateral damage.
More and more those who succeed in politics are the ones willing to feed the fear and rhetoric. Beyond any policy consideration, our chief concern with any leader should be their respect for democracy and the separation of powers, not to mention their willingness to debate and defend their ideas in a dignified and civilized way.
Politics responds to its audience; just like any industry that requires public consumption to survive, in the end it will adapt to sell the product that is most in demand. We must, all of us on all sides, demand better. The issues will not be successfully addressed, society cannot truly evolve, until it moves away from fear and dehumanization to enlist a better class of debate.
The goal should not be defeat and domination over the other, but agreement. I know this is not always possible; but in the modern age of politics it is no longer even ostensibly the goal. There will always be people with extreme unwavering views. It is them who should pushed to the fringe, not the rest of us who move to the edges to join them.
