INTERNET POLITICS Versus REAL WORLD POLITICS

To clarify my terms -
"Internet Politics" refers to postings on internet sites such as YouTube, facebook, blogs etc dealing with social / political issues and the discussions & arguments that take place in the comments boxes.
"Real World" simply refers to the world outside of the internet - that whole wide world (& all the people that are in it) that's there as soon as you open your front door & go out.
"Real World Politics" - Political action in the Real World.

A very frequent criticism of Internet Politics is that it's "all talk & no action". In fairness, it can't really be anything else, & the fact that is "just talk" merely reflects the limitations of the medium. However, one shouldn't underplay the value of communication & discussion, as a lot of these discussions can result in personal growth & learning.
An element of Internet Politics that does have some similarity to Real World politics is the whole process of networking & creating "movements". Certain movements seem to exist almost entirely on the internet (& have next to no presence in the Real World) whilst others are internet equivalents of movements that  have Real World counterparts.
However, because these movements consist only of numbers of people acting individually, interacting with a computer in their own private space & running by their own schedule, they differ in very important ways from a Real World  movement (i.e -people in the same physical space interacting with each other & the wider world). Internet Politics is a different way of  doing politics, a way in which everyone can set their own agenda, & nobody need ever have to compromise with anybody else.


I can't claim to be the world's greatest political activist, but I certainly was very "hardcore" in my youth. My political awakening (like so many others of my generation) was  back in the early 1980s, when the u.k was a hotbed of "alternative" political culture. We embraced anarchism, feminism, socialism, workers rights, campaigns against homophobia, racism, & all forms of bigotry & discrimination etc (Our politics were "intersectional" long before American academics coined that term). For our generation, "political action" consisted of very real things - demos, protests, lobbying, squatting, non violent direct action etc. Many of us got arrested for our actions. This was also an era in which the police were very brutal in dealing with protest & many of us experienced violence from the police. Many of us chose to live out our politics in the most "pure" & uncompromised ways possible - dropping out of society to experiment with "alternative lifestyles" such as the New Age Traveller movement, communes, peace protest camps etc. I lived for 3 months at  a peace camp in Scotland with about 30 other people. As much as we were "protesting" about the nuclear submarine base that we had camped next to, we were also experimenting with communal living & alternative personal politics & power structures. (1)
I don't say any of this to blow my own trumpet, but I want to show that very important lessons can be learned from having to work together with real people in real life situations.
I'm now 47 years old. I don't engage in as as many of these direct political actions as I did in my youth. However, I learned a lot from these experiences - the skills needed to work with other people in creating social change - and try to apply what I have learned to every aspect of my life & to the way I communicate with others. Many people who have been on a "political path" for a long period of time find that they move away from these more direct political actions. You slowly find that your politics become so much a part of who you are that they really become "built in", & are actively informing you whenever you engage in activity or are interacting with other people. This is a process that seems to happen to many people if they've been on the path for a long enough time.
It could even be argued that these small scale interactions with those in our immediate social circle have far more chance of "getting a message across" than anything aimed at strangers. I'll probably never stop a nazi being a nazi by typing "Fuck Off Nazis" in a YouTube comments box. However, without even trying to, I might convince a friend to become a vegetarian by making them a beautiful vegetable curry.

What got me thinking about a lot of these issues again was a posting on an anarchist facebook page. All it consisted of was a single typed sentence -  "If you aren't prepared to support feminism, then you can;t call yourself an anarchist, & you're not welcome on this page."
 All hell broke out in the comments boxes underneath - I couldn't really make sense of the thread & who exactly was insulting who, but there ended up being over 100 comments by various people all throwing insults at each other. Some people's objections to the premise were entirely legitimate from an anarchist perspective (some anarchists don't like to support movements that placate The State for tougher legislation - that's their choice & I respect it. I choose to support both anarchism & feminism, but that's my choice. I wouldn't tell a fellow anarchist that they're "wrong" because they think differently on this issue, & I certainly wouldn't be telling then that they were not allowed to call themselves anarchists). Regardless of the nature of the objections, anyone who objected was inevitably labelled a "misogynist". The page moderators were whizzing around the comments boxes, casting out the heretics with cries of  "You can't come to my anarchist page anymore", & it all ended up very People's Front Of Judea.
All over what ? Two words in a box. In the context of that facebook posting, all that "support feminism" could ever mean is typing "I support feminism" into a box. You might as well have a box that says "tick here for approval." In the Real World there are plenty of men who don't call themselves "feminists" but have very good attitudes towards women, & there are men who call themselves "feminists" who are horrible to women. The label itself is no guarantee of anything, & it is better to judge people by their actions. Ultimately, is it really necessary for an anarchist on an anarchist page to also be a feminist? Well it would be nice if they were, but its not really necessary. 
The "All Or Nothing" quality of the proposition unsettled me. It was so "Absolute". It seemed odd that being an anarchist wasn't good enough to be welcome on an anarchist page - you had to be something else as well, & where would it end ? Would next week they be adding another "clause" to their demand - surely by good "politically correct" standards, they would have to add the whole catalogue of "causes" & "isms" - anti racism, disabled rights, transgender rights etc.

The issue here is that the higher you set your "qualifications for entry" the more you cut out  potential allies.
Learning when & how to compromise is very important. However, Internet Politics has no need to learn to compromise. Its not about getting people to work together in the same physical space, its not about meeting deadlines, its not about organising events, its not about filling vans up with people & driving off to take part in protests  - situations in which your interactions with people teach how to compromise in order to achieve a result. Internet Politics may demand "political change", but only through asking the government to sort it out on the people's behalf. It doesn't require anybody to even leave their house or interact with a single other person. It has the luxury of being able to be as exclusive as it likes, because it doesn't matter. No matter how many people it alienates & excludes, there are no consequences to that in the way that there would be in the Real World.
In The Real World, maybe you do have to be prepared to walk down the road with a capitalist or a non-feminist or even a "transphobe" in order to form a human chain to stop the bulldozers demolishing the children's hospital (& the act of doing so breaks barriers down between people -  linking arms with a transgender person may make someone someone start to quietly question their own prejudices, in a way that shouting at them them never can).
In The Real World, if you're trying to fill a van to go on an anarchist demo, chances are you won't be making a whole list of ideological demands that are "necessary" before being allowed into the van, otherwise you might end up with an empty van (In the days when I used to go on "anarchist demos", I don't remember even being asked if I was an anarchist, let alone what "denomination" I was. It was rightfully assumed that you probably were an anarchist, otherwise you wouldn't be going to an anarchist demo).
In the Real World you sometimes have to make alliances with people based solely on a single general premise (e.g -that you agree that you should campaign to keep the local library open) rather than choosing only to work with people who have reached some Gold Standard of politically correct excellence.

I'm not doing that old "I had it tough, so you should have it tough too" routine. I think its wonderful that the young people today have opportunities we never had, such as being able to smash the system or deconstruct the patriarchy without having to leave their front room. However, tough as things were for us oldies, we actually learned some very valuable life lessons that can't really be learned through the internet -
(A) To learn that often minor differences of opinion have to be set aside if we're all in agreement on general principles.
(B) How to get complex ideas across to people who may have had no previous knowledge of politics, without using "insider" jargon or complicated theories.
(C) How to get people behind a "cause" by introducing it slowly & gently to them in gradual stages
(D) That sometimes you do have to bite your tongue when people "offend" you with their language. There's a time & a place to have those conversations, & you have to build up good relationships with people before bringing these kind of issues up, otherwise you will be met only with hostility & anger. Making grandiose claims like "We should call out transphobia  (or whatever "phobia") every time we see it" shows no consideration of the Real World, where doing that could result in violence.
(E) .How to judge people by WHO they are, not by the "labels" they attach to themselves.
(F)  To realise when its necessary to compromise.
(G) How to compromise.

What concerns me is that there are a lot of  people today who have had no experience in engaging in any kind of political activity outside of what happens on a computer screen. The inherent nature of the medium means that people can just pick & choose their "allies" at will, & equally just get rid of them with one click of a button. People can set whatever "standards" they choose, & we can all be kings & queens of our own castles. We can alienate or exclude whoever we like - it doesn't matter. There's no consequences.
Is it any wonder that so many people (of every political persuasion) have turned into inflexible, uncompromising bigots who can't deal with the fact that someone may hold a different opinion with them.

NOTES

(1) For anyone who is interested  in the particular mix of 1980s British counter-culture movements, lifestyles & political actions that I am referring to here - from road protesters to anarcho punk to New Age Travellers - I highly recommend the book "Senseless Acts Of Beauty : Cultures Of Resistance Since The Sixties" by George McKay (Verso Press 1996).