“‘The problem with politicians and political activists is that they are trapped in their own little bubbles.’ If there’s one complaint that defines our age, it’s the accusation that those involved in politics are too removed from ‘real’ people. The trouble is, when political activists show that they have the same concerns as everybody else, the complaint gets turned on its head. ‘But that’s not a real person, that’s a political activist.’

So it was with the confrontation last week between Boris Johnson and Omar Salem, the father of a sick child at Whipps Cross university hospital in London. Much of the debate about the confrontation has been less about Johnson or the state of the NHS than about Salem being a Labour party activist.

What if he is? Isn’t that a good thing? An expression of an activist facing the same problems as experienced by ‘ordinary’ people? Of an ‘ordinary’ person whose experiences are part of the reason he is an activist? Salem’s experiences are no less real, his anger is no less valid, because he is an activist. To insist that ‘ordinary’ people cannot be activists is to insist that people’s experiences and anger only matter when they suffer, but not when they challenge the problems they face or organise against them. …”

aus: Kenan Malik: Boris Johnson’s confrontation: don’t lose sight of the real story, The Guardian, 22.9.19, im Internet

Abb.: ?

09/19