Politics is too often a competition between bigots or, at least, is swift to make people bigots who think they are fighting bigots when they are simply fighting over honest disagreements.
It’s almost as if bigotry (as well as hypocrisy) is a virtue in politics, that political power turns us contemptuous and resentful towards one another.
Rather than enlightened and measured debate over complex issues, what passes for political discourse in *Kashmir* is often nothing more than dishonest advertising with a dose of insult comedy, absent the humor.
Inciting intolerance and bigotry in the name of the greater good is still used for regimenting political movements.
Why?
Well, I suspect it is easier to mobilize people for this or that political cause when they are told they must fight some great evil. I suspect, if you want people to fight fervently for your cause, you must make them believe you have the moral high ground while branding the opposition as morally depraved and ignorant. You must make your cause more than an abstract argument over ideas, but rather a matter of identity and personal pride.
Sometimes it is true that people really do have the moral high ground, but even when it is not true, inciting intolerance and bigotry in the name of the greater good is still used for regimenting political movements, which only serves to confuse the issue of when a cause is actually a just cause or when it is being used for cynical political ends.
War propaganda is, of course, the most virulent form of political bigotry; its purpose is to dehumanize the adversary in order to make people forget they are, in fact, killing other human beings. But, short of war, political bigotry endures. For instance, rather than simply deescalating and neutering the worst forms of bigotry (such as racism and sexism,) politics can often play up the threat of such intolerance for the sake of riling up the party base. Again, this only serves to confuse the issue whereby folks falsely accuse others of being bigots only to show themselves to be bigots despite their good intentions to stomp out bigotry.
Partisan Intolerance
Indeed, “partisanship” might as well be synonymous with “bigotry,” which makes the term “bipartisanship” all the more absurd. Who on earth would want to have “bi-bigotry?” How does that work? You get some to empower some of your intolerance while the other side gets to empower some of their own?
Of course, I understand calls for “bipartisanship” are actually appeals to drop political intolerance and partisan posing for the sake of productive compromise, but most political compromises usually fail in this endeavor – solving little of substance while merely giving the opposing sides new ammunition and time to recharge their intolerance towards one another.
Politics is innately a matter of division and picking your particular form of bigotry.
Put simply, it is easier to raise argument about the inefficiencies of, say, single payer healthcare or the minimum wage; it is easier to raise about the harms
All this hyperbolic political bigotry and partisanship aside, let us not fool ourselves when it comes to political bigotry and intolerance. There does come a time to take a stand and pick a hill to die on, a time to be pigheaded in your own way in the face of some other guy’s pigheadedness.
Politics is innately a matter of division and picking your particular form of bigotry.
For instance, I am personally intolerant towards authoritarians, and though I try not to let my own political bigotry towards them destroy my sense of prudence and moderation, there does come a time to fight for what is right.
Just remember, “the truth is rarely pure and never simple” and if fighting for what is right and true was so simple, evil would have been wiped clean from the world long ago. If only we allowed ourselves more liberty to persuade one another, maybe the complicated truth of justice and peace would be easier to solve with love and understanding rather than intolerance and imposition.
The Author is Persuing Graduation in International Relations from JNU