Respect different views to make politics a nicer place
OLITICS, globally, has become a nastier thing to be a part of in the last few years. Most of the last decade has seen people seem to engage in a race to the bottom of political discourse that is of lower and lower quality, and is more and more aggressive.
The potential reasons for this are numerous: the rise of social media seems to have had a negative impact on a lot of people, for example. The ability to sit behind a screen and type terrible things about other people, which one would not dream of saying to someone’s face, has brought out the worst in far more people than it is comfortable to ignore.
Furthermore, the way that these sites are constructed contributes to this nastiness — Reddit’s “upvotes” and “downvotes” manufacture a binary dichotomy of opinions that does away with any search for a middle ground, and Twitter’s miniscule character limit means that almost nothing nuanced has ever been posted on that particular website.
In addition, the algorithms used by every single social media website to determine what you see create echo chambers, which create spirals of hardening opinions about both policy, and people who hold other opinions.
Social media is not solely to blame, however. The general standard of swathes of the world’s news media, both in print form and on television, has also taken a nosedive in recent years.
The aim of many news outlets is now to incite, to shock, and to outrage, rather than to inform. They attempt to appeal to people with short attention spans with this type of journalism, rather than trying to create something of quality aimed at making those people pay attention for longer. The result of that is headlines such as the infamous labelling of British Supreme Court
judges as “Enemies of the People” by the Daily Mail, or of some of the debate surrounding the lifestyle choices of the Duchess of Sussex while Piers Morgan was a presenter on Good Morning Britain, including his totally-not-pre-planned storming out of the studio.
The bullying of a duchess is nasty, of course, but the example of the Daily Mail and similar headlines by various outlets is something else altogether, and has dangerous consequences. Language like that is inherently violent, and can have dangerous consequences. It is no coincidence that two British MPs have been murdered while doing their jobs in the last five and a half years: Jo Cox by a right-wing English terrorist during the European Union membership referendum campaign, and Sir David Amess just over a week ago.
Even here in North Cyprus, we have seen similarly unsettling scenes, albeit to a lesser extent. A protest against the Afrika newspaper (now known as Avrupa) in 2018 turned violent, with people throwing projectiles at their offices and even breaking into and ransacking the building.
Of course, the murderers and rioters were likely mentally ill, but people prone to those types of illness get whipped up into a frenzy by a combination of violent headlines and sensationalist television, as well as the aforementioned problems with social media.
These deaths were caused primarily by this relatively new-found animosity in politics, and by what I call its “footballisation”. The aforementioned social media and news media have created an environment in which politics has become like a team sport — people
support their “team” or party or cause, and anyone who doesn’t support the same party or cause is automatically their enemy.
It is this mindset which creates the damaging rhetoric we see today, and which some people take to the extreme of physically harming or even killing others over it.
Ordinary people now nail their colours to one mast or another, rather than seeing politics as a set of ideas that one can change over time or when presented with new information.
Just like football fans, a growing number of people now support their political party through thick and thin, and rather than change their opinions when the facts change, they churn out excuses and talking points in order to defend “their side”, and attack the “other side” at every opportunity.
I am of the opinion that this problem of politics becoming more nasty is one that can only be ameliorated by the actions of individuals. Government action to try to rein in this discourse by stripping back people’s right to online anonymity is something that I believe will be pretty ineffective.
The vast majority of the worst instigators of damaging rhetoric online are not anonymous now. In fact, a few of them are household names. Restricting online anonymity would simply mean the end of whistleblowers, and make it easy for the likes of stalkers and other criminals to seek out their victims.
As individuals, we all choose how to behave, and how we interact with others, including those who disagree with us politically. Too many of us seem to have lost sight of the fact that our political “opponents”, or rather those who happen to have
different opinions than ourselves, are also our neighbours, family members, co-workers, friends and, most importantly, people. Additionally, where possible we should try to break free from the echo chambers that are our social media feeds.
Reading, watching, or listening to the news, or opinions about the news, from people with whom one’s political opinions do not necessarily align, is something I would recommend everyone should do as much as possible.
Not only does it help one understand the state of mind of people who have different political opinions, but I personally find it much more interesting than reading over and over again columns written by people who agree with me.
Admittedly, it feels good in the short term to have one’s preconceptions verified by an article in a familiar newspaper or website, but in the long term we will all find
ourselves to be much more well-rounded people if we step out of that comfort zone.
This will also in turn bring down the level of toxicity among parts of the media, as a more rounded populace will be less willing to buy into the narrative that people who disagree with them are their “enemies”, and therefore begin to print more reasonable takes in order to avoid losing custom.
As well as reading, watching, and listening, interacting with people who have different opinions to our own is a lost art that should be rediscovered.
Rather than trying to “win” an “argument” with someone we have decided to perceive as an adversary, we should engage in political conversations in order to learn about each other’s views and the reasons for the conclusions each of us have drawn about various issues.
Almost none of us are politicians or lawyers, we are not going to win a case or any votes by starting arguments with people – nor are our views anointed and pure, that would somehow be blackened by listening to a different view.
In fewer words, we should once again become curious about each other’s viewpoints. This does not by any stretch mean that we should stop disagreeing with each other, but that we should find a more responsible way of doing so.
Thankfully, here in North Cyprus, some of our politicians are choosing to take this route. Leader of the Rebirth Party (YDP) Erhan Arıklı, Deputy Prime Minister and Economy and Energy Minister in the recently terminated coalition government, shared to his Facebook page a picture of himself enjoying a meal with the leaders of his former coalition partners, Ersan Saner of the National
Unity Party (UBP) and the Democrat Party’s Fikri Ataoğlu.
Captioning the photograph, he wrote: “We politicians may fight each other in the political arena, especially in Parliament, but when we come together in a social environment we treat each other with respect and love . . . Don’t let politics ruin our environment of tolerance, friendship, and brotherhood.”
Erhan Arıklı is not a politician I find myself agreeing with all too often, but that is kind of the point of this article. This is doubly true when one compares the rhetoric he uses today with the language he used 20 years ago when he was a young and rather enthusiastic political writer, at which time he wrote some rather heinous things about his political “opponents”.
His metamorphosis from being directly part of the problem of political animosity, to an advocate of the solution, is evidence that if we truly want to make politics a nicer place, it is not all too difficult to do so. One’s manner and tone is a choice, and being considerate of others’ viewpoints in my experience takes a lot less effort than being angry all the time.
In short, therefore, this is one of the few issues of our time where it is genuinely beyond the remit of any government to do anything about it other than to lead by example.
There is no policy I can suggest other than to be a bit nicer to each other, and more considerate of each other’s viewpoints.
To this extent we, as ordinary people, are being shown a positive example by Erhan Arıklı, and it would do us all good to follow it, lest we import the type of violence against our representatives that has darkened politics in the United Kingdom.
Reading, watching, or listening to the news, or opinions about the news, from people with whom one’s political opinions do not necessarily align, is something I would recommend everyone shoul d do as much as possible