It's affecting GIGS. Wading in to the Palestinian problem ike Roger Waters of Pink Floyd or studiously trying to stay out of the public debate.
Martin Young on Facebook writes in the comments below the Kiffness.
David, there’s no such thing as being ‘apolitical.’ Here’s a detailed explanation why …“You say or think you’re ‘apolitical’? Think again …The claim “I am not political” is not an escape from politics. It is itself a political move. To argue that no one today can honestly say they take no sides, we need only see that politics is not confined to elections, parties, and politicians. It concerns power: who gets what, who decides, who is protected, who is ignored, and whose way of life is treated as normal. Once politics is understood that broadly, total neutrality becomes impossible.First, the status quo is not neutral. If you refuse to take a side on an unequal arrangement, you are not floating above the conflict; you are accepting the arrangement as it stands. Silence on a living wage, police violence, climate policy, refugee rights, or gender equality does not mean you have no position. It means your position is that the existing order should continue. That is a side. The person who says “I don’t do politics” usually means “I am comfortable enough that politics does not interrupt my life.” But comfort is distributed politically.Second, everyday life is entangled with political systems. What you buy, eat, wear, drive, rent, invest in, or ignore connects you to supply chains, labor conditions, environmental damage, and tax regimes. Where you live is shaped by borders, zoning, histories of segregation, and public investment. Your work is governed by labor law, immigration policy, and corporate power. Even withdrawing from public debate is a choice made possible by laws and infrastructures others maintain. You cannot fully opt out because the grid, the road, the currency, the police, and the internet are already political.Third, language and knowledge are political. What counts as “common sense,” “objective,” “extreme,” or “reasonable” is struggled over. Media frames, school curricula, statistical categories, and algorithmic feeds shape what people can see and say. A person who repeats “both sides” in a debate about equal rights may believe they are neutral, but treating an oppressed group and its oppressors as equivalent is itself a political judgment. It protects the powerful by making resistance look like the problem. Methodological objectivity in science is valuable, but the choice of what to research, who funds it, and how findings are used or suppressed is political.Fourth, the digital public sphere makes escape even harder. Algorithms reward attention and outrage; sharing, liking, ignoring, or reporting content has effects. Not posting about a war, a disaster, or an injustice does not keep your hands clean, because the same platforms are shaping public opinion whether you participate or not. The question is not whether you are in the arena; the arena is already in your pocket.Fifth, “I take no sides” is often a strategy of the powerful. The marginalized cannot say politics does not matter, because politics decides whether they can marry, migrate, access healthcare, walk safely, or vote. The privileged can afford to call politics a hobby. So the claim of apolitical purity frequently functions to delegitimize the political claims of others while exempting oneself from scrutiny. It says: your demands are political and therefore biased; my comfort is natural and therefore neutral.Objections do not rescue neutrality. “I’m not interested” is not an exemption; politics is interested in you through taxes, laws, borders, wages, and climate. “I vote for neither side” is a political act that helps one side by subtracting your consent from the other. “I keep it private” ignores that privacy itself is legally defined and politically uneven. “I’m just doing my job” ignores that institutions do political work through ordinary labor.This does not mean every action is equally political or that everyone must become an activist. Politics is a spectrum, not a binary. Some choices are trivial; some are consequential. But zero is not on the spectrum. No one today occupies a pure outside from which they can survey the world without commitment. We are all situated: by nationality, class, race, gender, language, consumption, and attention. The honest position is not “I am not political.” It is “I am political whether I admit it or not, and I must take responsibility for where I stand.” The only people who can truly claim to take no sides are those who have already sided with the way things are.
David, there’s no such thing as being ‘apolitical.’ Here’s a detailed explanation why …
“You say or think you’re ‘apolitical’? Think again …
The claim “I am not political” is not an escape from politics. It is itself a political move. To argue that no one today can honestly say they take no sides, we need only see that politics is not confined to elections, parties, and politicians. It concerns power: who gets what, who decides, who is protected, who is ignored, and whose way of life is treated as normal. Once politics is understood that broadly, total neutrality becomes impossible.
First, the status quo is not neutral. If you refuse to take a side on an unequal arrangement, you are not floating above the conflict; you are accepting the arrangement as it stands. Silence on a living wage, police violence, climate policy, refugee rights, or gender equality does not mean you have no position. It means your position is that the existing order should continue. That is a side. The person who says “I don’t do politics” usually means “I am comfortable enough that politics does not interrupt my life.” But comfort is distributed politically.
Second, everyday life is entangled with political systems. What you buy, eat, wear, drive, rent, invest in, or ignore connects you to supply chains, labor conditions, environmental damage, and tax regimes. Where you live is shaped by borders, zoning, histories of segregation, and public investment. Your work is governed by labor law, immigration policy, and corporate power. Even withdrawing from public debate is a choice made possible by laws and infrastructures others maintain. You cannot fully opt out because the grid, the road, the currency, the police, and the internet are already political.
Third, language and knowledge are political. What counts as “common sense,” “objective,” “extreme,” or “reasonable” is struggled over. Media frames, school curricula, statistical categories, and algorithmic feeds shape what people can see and say. A person who repeats “both sides” in a debate about equal rights may believe they are neutral, but treating an oppressed group and its oppressors as equivalent is itself a political judgment. It protects the powerful by making resistance look like the problem. Methodological objectivity in science is valuable, but the choice of what to research, who funds it, and how findings are used or suppressed is political.
Fourth, the digital public sphere makes escape even harder. Algorithms reward attention and outrage; sharing, liking, ignoring, or reporting content has effects. Not posting about a war, a disaster, or an injustice does not keep your hands clean, because the same platforms are shaping public opinion whether you participate or not. The question is not whether you are in the arena; the arena is already in your pocket.
Fifth, “I take no sides” is often a strategy of the powerful. The marginalized cannot say politics does not matter, because politics decides whether they can marry, migrate, access healthcare, walk safely, or vote. The privileged can afford to call politics a hobby. So the claim of apolitical purity frequently functions to delegitimize the political claims of others while exempting oneself from scrutiny. It says: your demands are political and therefore biased; my comfort is natural and therefore neutral.
Objections do not rescue neutrality. “I’m not interested” is not an exemption; politics is interested in you through taxes, laws, borders, wages, and climate. “I vote for neither side” is a political act that helps one side by subtracting your consent from the other. “I keep it private” ignores that privacy itself is legally defined and politically uneven. “I’m just doing my job” ignores that institutions do political work through ordinary labor.
This does not mean every action is equally political or that everyone must become an activist. Politics is a spectrum, not a binary. Some choices are trivial; some are consequential. But zero is not on the spectrum. No one today occupies a pure outside from which they can survey the world without commitment. We are all situated: by nationality, class, race, gender, language, consumption, and attention. The honest position is not “I am not political.” It is “I am political whether I admit it or not, and I must take responsibility for where I stand.” The only people who can truly claim to take no sides are those who have already sided with the way things are.
