On the Claim of Not Being an ‘-ist’ of Any Sort
A few weeks ago, I was engaged in a discussion with some friends on that wonderful debating chamber that is also known as Facebook. We were talking about educational reform in quite an animated fashion when suddenly one of the participants in this online conversation said something along the lines of: “I don’t believe in being an ‘-ist’ of any sort. My politics is beyond self-identifying as socialist, anarchist, monarchist, etc. Such identities are ideological and I’m not interested in them.”
Oh, the wonders of the age we live in where some claim to hew to a politics without tradition, a politics that does not come from anywhere other than one’s own head. “Ideological politics is so 20th century,” they say in a tone which is almost a sigh of boredom, accompanied by a flick of the wrist. With an ostensibly questioning look, they continue: “Weren’t all these firm political stances what led to the totalitarianism that plagued the earth during that age of extremes? It’s time to move past such things.”
Such a standpoint, which some have called ‘post-political’, may look deceptively reasonable, and even laudable. Two imposing pillars of horror in the last century, namely fascism (Mussolini, Hitler, Pinochet, etc.) and communism (particularly the Soviet and Maoist forms), were indeed founded on inflexible political ideas. Is it not much better, then, to be somone does not feel the need to identify with a tradition of political thought but is able to mix and match the best bits of various political ideas to form a balanced, ‘holistic’ viewpoint?
My view on this is quite simple: to claim that one is not an ‘-ist’ (or an ‘-ian’, an ‘-ive’, or whatever suffix one uses) is to hide from oneself and (some) others the views that one really does hold. And the danger with this is that quite often, these views will just be rather mainstream and, quite possibly, rather centrist. In other words, the dominant strands of political thought that are the building blocks of one’s political viewpoint will be the ones that are widely accepted and transmitted through newspapers, popular film and music, random conversations on the bus, and so on. For example, I have never met a post-political person who did not think that capitalism is the least objectionable (if not the best) way to organise society. Neither have I met a post-political person who objected to society being organised according to hierarchical structures. In both these cases, there were political beliefs behind these opinions, namely supporting capitalism and believing in formalised leadership. But these political beliefs were hidden by claims which rejected ‘politics of the old sort’, claims which acted as a fig leaf that covered the nakedness of the post-political position.
I was searching for a literary depiction of the post-political standpoint when I remembered a few lines from a fairly old book, fairly well-positioned in the Western canon of literature. Towards the end of this book one finds these sentences apparently written from a divine being to a group that claims to worship him: “I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth!”
Some may object to what I have just said, saying, “Alright, alright! So my pick-and-choose, lucky-dip-ish way of doing politics may be a random jumble that results in a lukewarm concotion. But, to repeat myself, isn’t this far better than the dogmatism that characterised the last hundred or so years? At least I’m not killing anyone by being a moderate!”
Do moderate, mainstream, and/or centrist political views not result in any harm? A popular saying commonly (but probably wrongly) attributed to Edmund Burke states: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” To be post-political often results in sitting on the fence and saying that things are too complicated for one to act. In other situations, being post-political results in one rationalising the present state of things as being the best that things could be at this present moment, and that all that can be done is just to tweak things a little bit here and there to make the situation even better. But the fact is that we live in times where those who seem to be moderates are actually extremists for the status quo. Even as the wheels in the great machine continue to turn, the earth continues to suffer from environmental degradation, inequalities among people continue to widen, and old forms of oppression linger on while new forms arise.
What is required of us today is not a balancing act at the centre of politics or a complete exit from the field but rather a new form of principled politics that strives to avoid the consequences of the old extremism by paradoxically infusing one’s principles with a strong dose of humility. We don’t have it all worked out just yet, and may be wrong on a number of accounts, but the solution is not to avoid convictions but rather to embrace them in a way that combines passion with the openness to change one’s views if they are proven to be inaccurate or less helpful than one originally believed. Yes, one should say no to dogmatism, but no to content-free politics as well, as such politics are but a new form of dogmatism, an unavowed (or even disavowed) dogmatism.
Well, what can I say to end this piece? Simply this: soon after the social network debate that inspired this article fizzled out, I quit Facebook, and so can now probably be considered a non-Facebookist. But make no mistake: this too is being an ‘-ist’ -- that is, an ‘-ist’ of the old sort, a political ‘-ist’, a principled ‘-ist’.
by Soo Tian Lee
