By We, I mean all those who are offended by Trump’s racist remarks or Johnson’s sexist terminology, or … in short, by the discourse that have seeped into political life all over the world and that is dubbed by many as populism.
We should take a deeper look at the reasons. A great number of voters are electing politicians that are ‘saying it as is’ without pandering to political correctness. Why? it is not enough to dismiss all of them as uneducated, bigoted, or stupid.
It is not true.
Look honestly into your deepest emotions, even if you do not like them.
Don’t you feel irritated when you see a fully veiled woman walking the roads of Paris, London, Vienna, Berlin, or Beirut? I do.
Don’t you feel irritated when you see persons behaving in a manner that is not in line with the classical ‘proper behaviour in your country? Whether talking loudly or getting bathrooms wet in airport for ablution purposes? I do.
Don’t you sometimes feel that some feminists are taking harassment to excess. I do.
And I could go on forever about small insignificant irritations that could put me in the corner of bigots and sexists.
Yet, I am a woman activist, a human rights activist, and a person who does not believe that cultures clash. Rather I believe that cultural interactions enrich.
Anyway, what separate people is not culture, it is stage of development.
But I cannot deny my human deep dark emotions. What separate me from an extreme right or white supremacist person or bigot, or just a person afraid of the other he does not know, is that I know how to analyse these emotions and put them where they really belong.
We need to understand that adopting a superior elitist discourse is the main reason people that vote for the extreme right. We do not acknowledge, respect, and discuss their fears.
We and the Left all over the world lost the connection to other people’s fears and concerns.
We became the bigots.
We should take a deeper look at the reasons. A great number of voters are electing politicians that are ‘saying it as is’ without pandering to political correctness. Why? it is not enough to dismiss all of them as uneducated, bigoted, or stupid.
It is not true.
Look honestly into your deepest emotions, even if you do not like them.
Don’t you feel irritated when you see a fully veiled woman walking the roads of Paris, London, Vienna, Berlin, or Beirut? I do.
Don’t you feel irritated when you see persons behaving in a manner that is not in line with the classical ‘proper behaviour in your country? Whether talking loudly or getting bathrooms wet in airport for ablution purposes? I do.
Don’t you sometimes feel that some feminists are taking harassment to excess. I do.
And I could go on forever about small insignificant irritations that could put me in the corner of bigots and sexists.
Yet, I am a woman activist, a human rights activist, and a person who does not believe that cultures clash. Rather I believe that cultural interactions enrich.
Anyway, what separate people is not culture, it is stage of development.
But I cannot deny my human deep dark emotions. What separate me from an extreme right or white supremacist person or bigot, or just a person afraid of the other he does not know, is that I know how to analyse these emotions and put them where they really belong.
We need to understand that adopting a superior elitist discourse is the main reason people that vote for the extreme right. We do not acknowledge, respect, and discuss their fears.
We and the Left all over the world lost the connection to other people’s fears and concerns.
We became the bigots.
No comments:
Post a Comment