Thread by @K_Niemietz

I see everyone is now accusing everyone else of "politicising" Coronavirus, or using it for "political point-scoring".
Couple of thoughts on that.
There is, of course, a huge asymmetry. We always think our political opponents are "politicising" events, and that they're being...

...cynical, manipulative, and disingenuous for doing so. But nobody ever thinks that THEY are politicising anything. What, ME? No, I'M just spelling out the obvious political implications!
Quite often, we just disagree on the extent to which something is political. Let's say...

...something bad, X, happens. Some of us will see X as simply an unfortunate event. It could have happened under any government, and it could have happened under any system. It has no major policy implications.
But others WILL see X as the result of policy choices.

Now if you're in the latter camp (and that camp could be totally wrong, but it's what you honestly believe), it would be insane for you not to spell the policy implications, as you see them.
In that case, you're NOT politicising a tragedy. You just think it is already political.

A good example is a terrorist attack. Some people (on the Left) believe that terrorism is caused by Western foreign policy. Some people (on the Right) believe that it's linked to immigration policy.
These claims are disputable. But someone who believes that is NOT "politicising".

They just think that it is political, while you think it's not. You think it's just an unfortunate event, and should be treated as such.
But you can't accuse them of cynicism or opportunism. It would be impossible for them the talk about it honestly without mentioning politics.

So when is it fair to say that someone is politicising an issue?
The easy answer would be: "When someone secretly agrees with me that this is just an unfortunate event, but pretends that there are policy implications, because it suits them".
But this will be a minority of cases.

Political opportunism usually doesn't mean that we endorse positions that we know to be false. It means that we spot a political position, and think "Hmmm, this would be convenient. Can I convince myself that this is true? Would be great if it were! I want to hold that view!"

(That's why nearly everyone on Twitter adopts views that are considered "cool". It's not that they're lying, and secretly believe the opposite. It's that they talk themselves into holding those positions, because they want the social status boost that's associated with them.)

But given that we know about those mechanisms, I think it's absolutely fair to expect people to do some self-policing. You SHOULD ask yourself "Am I being entirely honest with myself here? Or do I just adopt that position because it's convenient?"

So when someone lazily adopts the most convenient position, using a sloppy logic they would not have accepted under any under circumstances, then it is fair to say that they're politicising an issue. Even if they would pass a lie test.
Carelessness is almost as bad as malevolence

Going back to Corona: If you have strong views on how a pandemic should be handled, if the government's approach is very far from your ideal approach, and if you already hated the government anyway - fair enough. You're not "politicising", you just see the issue as political.

But you should ask yourself: What if a Corbyn government was doing the exact same thing? Would I then be similarly critical?
And that's a rhetorical question, because we know that virtually nobody on Twitter would ever have said a critical word about a Corbyn government.

Similarly, if your position is, "I wouldn't start from here; if we had done X, or hadn't done Y, we'd be in a stronger position", you should ask yourself: How sure am I? How big is that effect, even if it exists? Is it really relevant right now? If you don't - you're politicising

This, for example, is an absolutely shameless attempt to politicise the issue. NT is using Corona to peddle the same communitarian tosh he's been peddling for ages.
Yes, he believes that. But he also knows, or should have known, that it's a separate issue.
telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/1…