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The “SCOOP: @OmarSalem is actually a Labour activist!” angle is obviously ghoulish as it implies some kind of surreptition or duplicity (like, he was only *posing* as a father caring for his sick child, when he was really a Labour activist in disguise)... (1/3)
...but it’s also a further indication of the depoliticisation of public discourse. It suggests that “member of the public” and “political activist” are mutually exclusive categories, and that to be an authentic “public voice”, you have to be above or outside politics. (2/3)
In fact, our politics and our public culture in general would be much healthier if many more people were political activists, connecting politics to material experience rather than a conception whereby it’s something technocratic specialists do to or for “ordinary people”. (3/3)
