Nuance’ and the universal debasement of political discourse

The world is in a dark and dan­ger­ous phase. There are cur­rent­ly sev­er­al con­flicts that if they come togeth­er, and pow­er­ful forces align­ing mean that they might, could bring us to a
WW3 tip­ping point.

That there are rich and evil men (the are almost always men) look­ing to cre­ate this sit­u­a­tion is not new. But what is rel­a­tive­ly new is that polit­i­cal dis­course has been infan­tilised and polarised, aid­ed and abet­ted by the inter­net. Nuance has dis­ap­peared from even main­stream polit­i­cal thought now and the world is suf­fer­ing as a result.Some exam­ples…..

1 — I, like many, believe that Israel is an apartheid ter­ror state with a pol­i­cy of eth­nic cleans­ing against the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple. That’s a posi­tion. A very very long held one. Here’s the nuance though. Hamas engaged in bru­tal inhu­man war crimes against cit­i­zens in Israel yes­ter­day and it should be con­demned for those war crimes.

In world dis­course now it’s ok to hold my views on Israel. Many do. It’s accept­able. Even laud­ed by those who share the per­spec­tive. It’s also ok among oth­ers to hold the com­plete oppo­site view. Those who back Israel regard­less of its end­less abus­es on a per­se­cut­ed peo­ple find much sup­port. But what isn’t allowed is to hold strong views on one side that are nuanced and com­plex. Sim­ple, blunt and unbend­ing rules the day. Nuance is ‘sell out’.

2 — I believe Putin has turned Rus­sia into a fascis­tic impe­ri­al­ist klep­toc­ra­cy and his inva­sion of Ukraine is polit­i­cal­ly abhor­rent and being con­duct­ed pri­mar­i­ly as a war against inno­cent civil­ians. Many agree. Many don’t.

Here’s the nuance, I’ve always opposed NATO, don’t like or trust Zelen­sky and believe Ukraine, like all for­mer Sovi­et ‘Republics’, is oli­garchic and inher­ent­ly cor­rupt. But there’s no room for such nuance in the mod­ern ‘pick a side’ polit­i­cal dis­course. For the first bit of my views I’ve been called a CIA spy. For the nuance I’m a ‘com­mie bas­tard’.

3 — I abhor Irish racism, think it’s an insult to our his­to­ry and iden­ti­ty, and I wel­come refugees and asy­lum seek­ers and rejoice in a sec­u­lar mul­ti-cul­tur­al Ire­land that is very dif­fer­ent — and bet­ter — than the one I grew up in.
Here’s the nuance, I oppose ‘open bor­ders’, want to see an effec­tive and speedy sys­tem of eval­u­at­ing asy­lum appli­ca­tions and think that any­one not gen­uine and caught after a process to be abus­ing a func­tion­ing sys­tem (which we don’t cur­rent­ly have) should be speed­i­ly deport­ed.
So what am I? A racist or an ‘open all bor­ders’ advo­cate? Sure­ly the inter­net age of polit­i­cal debase­ment demands that I be one or the oth­er?
Nuance Is not per­mit­ted.

Just today I have been abused by both sup­port­ers of Pales­tine and Israel. But it’s ok. Nobody is cut­ting my throat or lock­ing me In an open air prison. Last year a fam­i­ly friend I know for decades called me a CIA spy because I con­demned Putin. But it’s ok. I’m nei­ther in Guan­tanamo Bay or hav­ing my fam­i­ly raped by Russ­ian sol­diers. So I don’t mat­ter. Real­ly. I don’t.

WHAT MATTERS?
This juve­nile envi­ron­ment of polit­i­cal dis­course, the elim­i­na­tion of nuance, does very much mat­ter though because it has two chill­ing effects.

1 — The first chill­ing effect is that most ratio­nal peo­ple are so put off by the tox­i­c­i­ty of cur­rent dis­course that they dis­en­gage in polit­i­cal debate and even thought.

2 — The sec­ond chill­ing effect is that, the sys­tem there­by being shorn of ratio­nal engage­ment by the major­i­ty of cit­i­zens, our ‘lead­ers’ are then free to fuel this polar­i­sa­tion and become pro­tag­o­nists to the extent that peace­mak­ers of stand­ing are vir­tu­al­ly non exis­tent.

The worst cur­rent exam­ple is the EU response to yes­ter­days hor­rors. Instead of the EU posi­tion­ing itself as an ‘hon­est bro­ker’ and encour­ag­ing long over­due peace talks that com­pel Israel to at last define its own bor­ders (incred­i­bly it refus­es to do so) and sup­port Pales­tine as part of a ‘two state solu­tion’ (Hamas oppose a 2 state solu­tion and want Israel and all Jews oblit­er­at­ed) EU lead­ers right­ly con­demned the attacks on civil­ians but then effec­tive­ly called for Israeli ret­ri­bu­tion that will pun­ish already hor­ren­dous­ly abused inno­cent Pales­tini­ans.
Biden did the same. Starmer duti­ful­ly did too. All bought and paid for by the ‘Israel lob­by’. Over there some­where Rus­sia, Chi­na, Iran , North Korea and the lunatic Tal­iban are lin­ing up for the oth­er side.

The UN, once a body we could hope­ful­ly look to, is now bor­der­line irrel­e­vant. There is no longer an effec­tive moral author­i­ty any­where that both sides could trust. This emer­gence of debased polit­i­cal ‘pick a side’ dis­course spread and has now left only war­ring fac­tions and those lin­ing up behind them, pick­ing their ‘team’.

Nuance, sub­tle­ty and prag­ma­tism has all but been erad­i­cat­ed. Fun­da­men­tal­ism on all sides is now king. Unless that changes I fear that soon­er rather than lat­er a whole world con­flict is inevitable.