You may have noticed the election in the United States. It’s been going on for roughly a decade now, and still shows no sign of abating.
This got me thinking about politics and authorship. Specifically, how many authors are reluctant to get involved in politics, or hide their affiliations lest it put potential readers off.
I think it goes deeper than this. I suspect most writers are people who don’t really delight in confrontation. Having your world view challenged is healthy, but being abused isn’t much fun.
There are novelists who’ve made careers out of partisan politics, and there are also those who haven’t been afraid to speak out (see Stephen King’s tweets throughout the Trump presidency), but I know that whenever I’ve dipped my toes into political waters I’ve found that water too hot for comfort. Some of those rightwingers (or woke leftie snowflakes, whatever’s your poison) clap back pretty hard. The thing is, a challenged world view is often seen as a direct attack. We’ve all been there: a pleasant dinner conversation is completely derailed by a casual mention of Brexit and then - BOOM - no one stays for dessert. Most of us don’t go out at night looking for a black eye, and believe there’s something wrong with people who do. The anonymity of voting is democracy’s greatest gift.
But, and I say this as someone who was largely apolitical in his younger years, isn’t there a danger in not speaking out if you see something as blatantly, historically wrong? Is silence really complicity?
Of course it bloody is.
So someone doesn’t end up buying your book because you called a fascist a fascist? Big deal. Anyone, for example, who sides with a man who brags about grabbing pussy, mocks the disabled, refuses to condemn white supremacy, denies climate change to the point of withdrawing from the Paris agreement, elevates his own family to positions of high power, pressures foreign governments to dig up dirt on opponents, locks foreign children in cages, lies about paying tax, shamelessly attempts to stage a coup, is openly racist and believes bleach kills coronavirus, frankly, needs to go back to school. The mainstream media hasn’t said anything so damning about Donald J Trump as his own tweets.
That’s it. That’s the fucking blog post. Enough.
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