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Episode 38: A Fallacy of the Highest Order (Being Apolitical)
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"The only people who claim to be apolitical are the ones who experience unearned and unrecognized power from privileged identities (e.g., whiteness, maleness). These people are not forced to confront the politics of their identity because society mirrors the life they are living and the values they hold." - Kate, blackfeministthoughts.wordpress.com.
If everyone is a product of their cultural (and genetic) environments, is it ever possible to behave in ways that are not congruous with the views they have been told to value? Even if we do not consciously act on our convictions at all times, are we inherently "political" beings? Parallelly, is it possible to be apolitical?
We often hear people say things like, "Don't bring politics into this", or "I'm apolitical". An interest in party politics is conflated with participation in political life, which is a fallacy of the highest order. Whether one's interest in "the political" lies merely in theory, or whether it extends to praxis, the claim of being apolitical is nothing but a masked privilege: the privilege of having the normative worldview agree with one's personal worldview.
In this episode, we talk about nearly a dozen different short articles--ranging from Oxford Politics blogs to obscure Reddit threads--in an attempt to qualify politics and the political, as well as question what it means to be disengaged from either of those, i.e., being apolitical.
We believe that this episode is particularly relevant to contemporary times, so there are several things we might have missed in the course of our conversation. Let us know through DM, email, or whatever platform works for you, what you thought of the episode and the articles discussed! Feel free to poke holes or patch wounds in our arguments: after all, we were not apolitical while recording this episode.
Mentioned in the episode:
What is the political, and why should we care?
Reddit CMV: Being "apolitical" is intellectual laziness and not a trait to be proud of
Reddit CMV: There is no such thing as apolitical
Reddit CMV: There's such a thing as being apolitical
Being "apolitical" is a PRIVILEGE
Being Apolitical is an Illusion
Please Stop Being Apolitical It's Not Helping
The Politics of Being Apolitical
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