content warnings: genocide, violence
“Can we not talk about politics, please? Not everything is political.”
This is a sentiment often heard when a controversial topic arises, be it at the dinner table with family, in a group setting with friends, overheard at a coffee shop, or online when expressing an opinion.
But what does “being political” even mean? Is it pledging allegiance to a political party? Is it exclusive to government actions? Is it following the news diligently and participating in conversations about current events? Or has the definition of engaging in ‘political speech’ evolved throughout the years?
Politics surrounds us – when politics is an inherently human system, you cannot argue that it is separate from humanity. Those who live without thinking of politics are allowed to because they are the ones benefitting from it.
Distancing yourself from politics is harmful because everything is political. By choosing to ignore or not engage in political issues, or claiming nothing is “that deep,” we fail to take into account that often, things actually are that deep.
To live in a world of internet populism is to live in a reality where everything is humorized. Where the government-sanctioned murder of an innocent woman is played for jokes by prominent political figures. Where Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids have been glorified by the Trump administration through meme culture. Where racist tropes of South Americans as members of drug cartels have been weaponized by the Trump administration to justify the abduction of a sitting national leader. We are being gaslit by the current political establishment into taking the serious unseriously, into believing that crimes are practical jokes, and that abuses of power are trends confined to our For You feeds.
The American political debacle reflects a wider trend in modern internet culture, where politics is trivialized and even reduced, in some circumstances, to entertainment. In this internet age, one might assume that increasing accessibility to information would lead to greater political awareness and literacy. However, the immediacy of the news has become a double-edged sword: we are being exposed to the world through a digital lens, while simultaneously downplaying said news to the background.
We’ve entered an era where people react to the news in the same way they react to entertainment. Wars are equated to reality shows. Humanitarian crises are taken as the newest “hot button” topic, trends to be consumed and fed through the internet discourse cycle. Racialized language has become the newest punchline. As social media platforms have emerged as the primary means of accessing news, people online lose the ability to differentiate fact from fiction and attitudes from experience.
One second we might be viewing images from the genocide in Gaza; the next, we’re judging celebrities’ outfits at the Met Gala. Graphic images of death and destruction flash before us and become quickly forgotten. We’re growing used to being entertained rather than informed.
Coming to terms with the political nature of our world can evidently be burdensome. However, this does not mean that we should take on a defeatist attitude. Getting involved in independent journalism, advocacy campaigns, and crowdfunding initiatives are just a few concrete steps we can take to integrate political issues into our social lives. While we must remember that everything is political, it does not mean that everything is doomed.