Anything I don't like is politics

[smmg]

i will never be able to understand people who say things like "don't bring politics into this discussion" or "don't make the situation political" etc etc. like everything is politicised whether you want it to be or not.

Politics is a daily part of life and anything can be defined as politics if someone doesn't like who's saying it.

this comment i screenshotted was in response to comments asking "why the group needed to become political" when someone asked how to say "free palestine" in scottish gaelic. because yeah politics is in everything, whether you want it to be or not. it's also especially ridiculous to be annoyed at politics in a group about scottish gaelic i.e. a minoritised language, where scottish/wider uk politics are not-infrequently brought up, including discussions around the history, oppression, and revitalisation of the language. like surely those things are all political too yes??

i think a lot about that quote (at least i think it was hozier? i cannot find a link to it now unfortunately) where he's talking about how if a teacher asks a child to draw a home, it's going to look different for each child depending on the politics that effect their life, like their cultural, ecomonic, social, etc backgrounds. some might draw a terraced house, a posh detached house, a caravan, a small flat, etc, even though they are likely not thinking about the politics of what they're drawing at all or even know a lot about politics because they're children. politics permeates everything, whether you are aware of it or not. idk it might not have been hozier and i might be misremembering the full extent of the quote, my health is bad as i'm typing this.

idk, just as someone who's part of minority cultures, disabled, and trans, i have to live every day painfully aware of how politics effects every single aspect of my life (and as a white person, although the effecst of that are in a different way to my minority identities), and it utterly astounds and bewilders me that some people are just so ignorant to the politics effecting their eveyr day experiences, decisions, and actions. and how some of them seem to choose to be ignorant by getting annoyed at anyone who tries to bring up politics.

and the number of people in that comment section going "well regardless of what you think about the situation, don't bring up politics" or "regardless of who you support, this is what the translation is..." and like no!!!! not "regardless of who you support", as a minoritised culture that's suffered at the hands of imperialism, you should be showing solidarity and support with other minoritised peoples who are suffering, yes?? as a celtic language speaker, i don't want to build a community with people who are happy to be silent on the suffering that other peoples are facing (especially as a member of a celtic nation in britain of all places, the place that issued the balfour declaration - it would be insanely hypocritical of us, surely, to cry about our own oppression but then show utter apathy to oppression that we are complicit in. arthur balfour himself was scottish and the uk prime minister at the time, david lloyd george, was welsh.)

i hate that "don't bring politics into this" basically seems to be code for "we can talk about politics and issues that we face, but not the suffering and colonisation of others bc that's Too Much. i only want to talk about things that are comfortable for me and anything i don't like is too political"

Comments

[heleninwales]

As the old feminist slogan went, "The personal is political." But you can also reverse it to say, "Politics is personal."