The perils of imperfect politics
Many moons ago, a friend recounted why she cut someone out of her life. She already didn’t appreciate that this person wasn’t protesting the war in Gaza as actively as she was standing for other causes. When she found out that she had recently used Airbnb, a company on the BDS list, it was enough to pull the plug.
Her reaction did not surprise me. The BDS movement gained unprecedented traction and loyalty in the last few years. People who once mocked me for avidly trying to be a more ethical consumer now had apps that let them scan supermarket products and check them against the boycott list.
I was grateful for it for a while, for whatever part of the Internet was responsible for this moral policing. If it took a bit of public shame to nudge apathetic people towards more ethical behaviour, then so be it.
What did surprise me was that this was not the first time I was hearing of this. It was part of a growing trend of people being distanced or cut off, people I sometimes knew to be allies and far from apathetic.
It appeared to me that what was once an instinct to push apathetic people to do better was now more sharply directed at imperfect allies who were never doing just enough.
In part, this may be a reaction to the black square slacktivism that took off during the pandemic. Years of exposure to virtue-signalling has left many of us eternally skeptical. A skepticism that now treats any moral inconsistencies as proof of political performativeness.
I think what sits at the core of this puritanical approach to dealing with imperfect politics, however, is an overwhelming sense of doom. A powerlessness that comes from being unable to hold the powerful to account while watching them push the bounds and limits of impunity.
When arguing with those sitting in opposition to our cause becomes impossible, it’s easy to redirect the anger and enforce justice on those who will still listen, even if they are in political alignment with our values and ideas.
Ivy Wolk hit the nail on the head in her recent appearance on the Internet Is Dead podcast:
Moral impropriety being the greatest sin of all is the new “you’re a junkie, therefore you should go to prison for the rest of your life and suffer”. We’re following the same playbook and the same patterns but we think that because it’s in our hands and not in the hands of somebody in a judge’s robe or with a police badge on their shirt that it’s all of a sudden different or more just or more sanctified.
If the goal is to create real sustainable change, social alienation of imperfect allies is self-defeating and disenfranchising.
It can be helpful to challenge inconsistencies in behaviour and ask for clarity but I think it’s unproductive to turn accountability into a form of exile.
We could go a long way with extending more grace to those who have shown us where they stand time and time again.