InActivism
November 3rd, 2006 at 15:22

I’d imagine if you read this blog extensively, you’ll get the impression that I’m a left-leaning studenty type who feels passionately about a number of issues. You’d only be half right.

The trouble is, that for all of the talking and complaining I do about certain issues, I don’t think I have many strong opinions… and I’m supposed to be a politics student. I mean, yeah, I think Tony Blair has blood on his hands, and I think nuclear weapons are a bad idea- and I really dislike conservative politics and religion (as you might have guessed), but I don’t really feel strongly enough about any issues to go on a protest or cause a fuss about them. Essentially I’m a terrible activist.

I was trying to write about the proposal to ban flag burning earlier this week- I’m really opposed to this idea. If I were a good political activist, I’d talk about freedom of expression, and the right to protest against the state, but in reality, most of my opposition to this proposal is because I think flag burning looks really cool, and I’ve love to go on a protest and burn a flag.

I guess part of the problem is despite being a political junkie, I don’t have any well defined political opinions. I’m pretty damn liberal on the social scale of things, I believe in equal rights for women, gays blacks and poor people, but being male, heterosexual, white, and somewhat middle-class, I don’t ever feel compelled to really fight for change, as society is already in my favour. Economically I daresay I probably lean to the left a bit, but I can sympathise with the view that the free market can be alright for say, telecommunications (but not in schools or hospitals, please). I’m not a member of any political party (anymore), so I can’t campaign for anyone, and I am knowledgeable enough to know that for every good thing a politician does, they no doubt do a million bad things, so I can’t sincerely encourage people to vote for someone.

I think I define a lot of my opinions by what I don’t like. I don’t like the Conservative party- but I don’t like the Labour Party that much either. I mean, as much as I hate commoditising air and selling it in cans (as the Tories might do), I dislike the fact that Blair has taken Britain into an illegal war. There’s no such thing as an “anti-Conservative Party” club, unless I want to join the “I heart the Labour Party” club. So I can’t be a proper political activist because it would involve supporting things I don’t support.

I can’t even bring myself to feel too strongly about any individual issues. Yeah, I know that global warming is bad, and I know that people are starving in Africa, but what else can I do aside from donate some money to comic relief and switch on an air-conditioner and point it at the polar ice caps?

I know there’s a genocide occuring in Sudan, I know there’s a brutal military regime in Burma, I know that civil liberties are being curbed worldwide under the guise of fighting an imaginary terrorist villain, but I’ll still get more worked up about ITV dumbing down again, or the frontpage of the Daily Express. I guess this makes me the perfect proletarian that the governments and corporations of the world have wrapped up in a consumer society hooked on self-interest and personal greed to disguise a world system built on the exploitation and subdigation of others and keeping the masses surpressed and maintaining the status-quo, whilst keeping me happy enough to not complain about the illusion of democracy that keeps debate firmly lodged in the centre and restricts any outside ideas thus provoking apathy amongst the vast majority of the population. The only time I’ll be sticking it to the man is when I complain that the DVD I just bought has a small scratch on it.

Comments(3)

1. Arthur Embleton
   November 3rd, 2006 at 4:44 pm

   “I know there’s a genocide occurring in Sudan, I know there’s a brutal military regime in Burma”

   Did you also know that there were atrocities acted out by Saddam against the Kurds in Iraq before the invasion? If you want things sorted out sometimes it takes war, as can be seen at the moment. The world is letting the Sudan genocide continue, partly I suspect because of Chinese oil interests there and partly as a backlash to the invasion of Iraq war.

   What is your take on the Sudan genocide? Do you believe that it should be stopped, including the possibility of an invasion, resulting in another quagmire similar to Iraq. Or do you think we should just leave the genocide to continue, comforting ourselves with the belief that if we do anything we will only make the situation worse and cause more deaths?

2. The French
   November 3rd, 2006 at 11:03 pm

   Seems a bit rich, Embleton, to ask for a specific clarification of a political opinion in the comments of a blog thats all about how he doesnt HAVE any opinions…

   Or at least that he’s too scared to commit to them for fear of being shown up.

3. Psythor
   November 4th, 2006 at 12:51 am

   I definately think that there needs to be action in Sudan. What I’d like to see is some sort of UN force sent in with a proper mandate to kick some arse. It’d need to be multilateral so that no one power can try and exert is influence on the country and it is done on decent human rights terms, and not as a grab for the oil resources in the south. Like you say though, I guess this is unlikely because China has a useful veto… although it’d have to have a pretty decent excuse to use, or risk destroying any credibility it has.

   My main problem with the invasion of Iraq is that it was done illegally, and unncessarily. I’m under the impression that in Saddam’s Iraq, after the Gulf War the northern Kurdish part was practically an independent state, where they could do what they liked. Yeah, Hallabjah (etc) was bloody awful, but as to my understanding, there was no active committing of genocide going on.

   If they’d sold the war to us on terms of “Saddam is a bastard, lets get him”, and gone through the UN, and not framed it as part of the war on terror, but more of upholding human rights and so on, I might have supported it.

   Although there are tonnes of candidates I’d put above Saddam’s Iraq on my “priority invasion” list.

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