Political polarisation
22 December 2025 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeYouTube thinks that because I watch Russian-language documentaries about Soviet-era films I might be interested in eavesdropping on a right-wing ex-Army channel about how the real enemy is not the poor innocent Russians in the Ukraine, but the British government and the 'Islamic invasion' against whom super-surveillance and protective barriers are required on British streets. (I have a feeling that the person who drove his car into a crowd of shoppers recently actually turned out to be a horrifically extreme example of the classic 'must get in front' driver, who had absolutely no terrorist or political motivation, but was just frustrated at the pedestrians daring to spill onto 'his' road and wanted to smash them all out of the way...)
To be fair, the presenter actually has a point in his headline assertion that Russia is being simultaneously depicted as too weak to defeat the Ukrainians and so strong that Britain needs to re-arm and remobilise against it as a matter of extreme urgency -- which is why I bothered to watch the video in the first place. But the comments section from people who self-identify as 'extreme right' (and see themselves as persecuted for it) is scary; the first warning bells (of many) went off when they started referring to 'Queer Starmer'...
Meanwhile the people I mix with in real life are extreme left-wing firebrands of the 'Bliar' brand who consider me a 'Zionist' for questioning their status quo, and the fandoms I lurk in espouse a sexual agenda to which I can't possibly sign up.
And I, of course, like all of the above, consider myself to be the reasonable, rational, self-evidently 'normal' one...
(I can understand *why* Putin is doing what he is doing. That doesn't mean I consider it either sensible or commendable, or that I can overlook the strange way he seems to get back into power again and again and again.)
To be fair, the presenter actually has a point in his headline assertion that Russia is being simultaneously depicted as too weak to defeat the Ukrainians and so strong that Britain needs to re-arm and remobilise against it as a matter of extreme urgency -- which is why I bothered to watch the video in the first place. But the comments section from people who self-identify as 'extreme right' (and see themselves as persecuted for it) is scary; the first warning bells (of many) went off when they started referring to 'Queer Starmer'...
Meanwhile the people I mix with in real life are extreme left-wing firebrands of the 'Bliar' brand who consider me a 'Zionist' for questioning their status quo, and the fandoms I lurk in espouse a sexual agenda to which I can't possibly sign up.
And I, of course, like all of the above, consider myself to be the reasonable, rational, self-evidently 'normal' one...
(I can understand *why* Putin is doing what he is doing. That doesn't mean I consider it either sensible or commendable, or that I can overlook the strange way he seems to get back into power again and again and again.)