> On 17 Jan 2024, at 08:48, Venkatesh H R via Silklist > <silklist@lists.digeratus.in> wrote: > > Enjoyed this piece. In the last two years or so, I've been steeped in > intensely political chatter on our school whatsapp group for a book project, > and I've realised that as a 'liberal', I had thought of all my classmates who > are mostly 'right-wing' as one monolith. But there are significant nuances. > There is someone who can't stand the attacks on minorities but is firmly > behind the Temple. Another is a fierce Modi supporter only because "he gives > him hope" but at the same time disavows the politics of the BJP. And so on. > >
Yes, it’s a good piece, or at least makes a case for some nuance which is rarely found in political discourse. One thing I find frustrating is the assumption that anyone who disagrees with your political views must be dumb/corrupt/evil/duped or similar instead of actually thinking about why they have certain opinions/vote for certain people and consider that they may have rational reasons for doing so even if you disagree. Both sides do this of course but in a paper like the Guardian it is usually upper middle class liberals sneering at people who voted for Brexit or to elect Boris Johnson in 2019 and calling them dumb etc. This is not a commentary on whether those votes were the “right” thing for the country. It’s actually irrelevant. It is simply not a very productive way to conduct politics - morals aside, it is very difficult to convince those people to vote for your side (remembering that Boris Johnson won dozens of traditional Labour working class/poorer town seats in 2019 to get his majority in 2019 by promising to “get Brexit done”, even though many of those seats had been Labour held for decades and had never voted for the Tories) if you choose to sneer at them instead of figuring out what their concerns are and giving them some policies they actually want to vote for. I mean it looks like the Tories are finally going to lose the elections this year - mostly because the country is tired and wants a change after 14 years - but I find it very hard to believe that it is going to be the 1997 style Labour landslide that Labour supporters are currently predicting. For all his faults, people *liked* Tony Blair, he had charisma and he had actual policies he wanted to (and did) implement. He was actually a positive choice. The best thing even Labour supporters can seem to say about Starmer/Labour is that they’re Not The Tories... It’s just an aspect of the tribalism that has infected politics so much lately and the UK is not even the worst of the bunch and it extends to everything. That blog post by Charlie Stross that Udhay linked is a good example - Stross is a fairly typical upper middle class liberal and he says this about Zelensky in Ukraine in the blog: "Ukraine would elect a new president this year, but it's not clear whether Volodymyr Zelenskyy will face a wartime election: he previously indicated that he would retire from politics when the war ended.” - That is an awfully polite way of saying “Zelensky has suspended democracy and elections in Ukraine until he decides the war emergency is over and he chooses to step down”. I’m willing to bet that if *Russia* suspends elections for the duration of the war, Stross would be considerably less polite... -- Silklist mailing list Silklist@lists.digeratus.in https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
