Bald men fighting over a comb

While seeking one’s comfort in an echo chamber is neither edifying nor a good use of time and energy, having interminable arguments which often begin and end at cross purposes is frankly quite depressing. Having a conversation on social media often feels like bald men fighting over a comb.

You might ask, “Why bother then?” That’s a good question, especially when there is a point where social media, just like news portals, becomes unbearable.

Apart from a degree of addiction, social media does reflect a certain mood in circles which, as one expects, follows specific patterns. Though nothing like a scientific poll, social media is a good barometer of collective moods in how it reflects the energy, mediocrity, and not to mention the sheer lunacy of it all. This is something to note, especially when it is well known how such platforms play a major role in forming public opinion, consumer patterns, and even electoral outcomes.

This does not mean that social media platforms are any healthier or more truthful than other sources of information. We know how hatred is spread and why anti-politics finds fertile ground in social media, particularly in how it provides an inordinate source of power when audiences are played on their binary dispositions

Children of a binary god

The word ‘binary’ is not reserved to gender. While yes, binarism in gender holds that the human species is simplistically divided between men and women, such reductionist assumptions come from a deep-seated dualistic logic which splits the human world in two camps – good and evil, soul and body, heaven and hell, right and left, west and east, and so it goes on. This reasoning unfolds in world outlooks that only see two sides to any situation, particularly when this concerns war, the economy, and the wider approach to our political and ideological behaviour.

Although the disposition to a binary logic often appears to be intrinsic to how we think, binarism is not natural. It is schooled. We are instructed in it from infancy, at home, in churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, at school, over means of communication, in political and social groups… everywhere!

It reflects a specific kind of moral and economic arrangement. Anyone who appears to say one thing must therefore belong to ‘the other side’. To claim that there are many other sides would be derided and quickly dismissed. For dualists, criticising the binary logic itself would mean that you are being either stupid or dishonest.

A binary logic is convenient for power structures. Political partisanship, and in particular the kind of tribalism that we have seen emerging in the US, but which in Malta we are very much used to, is perhaps one of the most debilitating and destructive forms of binarism.

Neutered gymnasts

Politicians seem to want clarity and in pursuing that, they have no time for nuancing a question, and less so inclined to problematise anything that looks simple enough to ‘understand.’

Unable to name and stop injustice, prominent politicians are engaged in all manner of gymnastics, falling over themselves to declare how ‘neutral’ and ‘objective’ they are, while at the same time denouncing any argument that they see as being ‘of the other side’.

Busily caught in their own binary world they hardly realise that in doing so, they are effectively neutering themselves and their followers. And here I am not talking about the usual trolls, but even current and former politicians who see themselves as beholders and shapers of public opinion.

Speaking in absolutes and simple terms, these sages wilfully parrot narratives that come straight from populist sources. Lately we have been hearing echoes (sometimes literal translations) sourced from prominent MAGA politicians whose track record does not exactly make them a natural ally, especially when the Maltese interlocutors in question claim to be on the left of the political spectrum.

Campism seems to be abounding, and this is sadly coming from quarters where some still have to hold onto a world divided between ‘the West and the Rest’, when in effect the players are not two, but often three, four and more, each pulling in the direction of their vested interests.

Contrary to what campists nostalgically pine for, the Soviet Union is long gone. Putin is not Lenin’s heir – the same Lenin whom Putin denounced when it came to his Ukraine doctrine. Neither is the US the only and common denominator of all worldly disasters, though it has its own record of catastrophes. Trump confirmed this back in 2016, although it took almost 10 years for the penny to drop.

For campists, Trump is just like Biden and those before him. In their enthusiasm to denounce the Empire, they forget that empires in human history never came in two, but three and more. Even Nixon noticed that and with Kissinger’s help, he made sure the world is split in many parts. Chile’s lesson confirms that these characters were not doing this for peace, just as their many counterparts, who as it happens were all too quick to abandon Allende, were only interested in strengthening their own hegemony.

Storing more domestic trouble

What our homespun political gymnasts don’t realise is that apart from the fact that they are tying themselves in knots, their inconsistency is blatant. Ask them what they mean by a ‘just peace’ when it comes to Palestine and why they don’t seem to care much for that when it comes to Ukraine.

Even more problematic is how such flare-ups in such a shared binary and campist logic will permeate down public opinion. We are already seeing how this has inflamed a distorted sense by which we do politics across board in other issues. Just read this divisive and often hateful thinking from other perspectives – migration, natalist narratives of population, reproductive rights, social and civil justice and so on.

The sense by which we can’t even see eye to eye on commonly held affairs is now made even more acute. Take Malta’s own neutrality and whether it really means anything beyond the partisan insistence on telling everyone that one side wants war and the other peace, as if it were that simple.

This kind of thinking leaves us in deep trouble. More so it is destructive, and apart from making many politicians and their faithful followers look both intransigent and stupid, the deleterious effect on society is enormous.