Left, right and nothing in between
By: Appachoo N K
Tags: Wistron, Right Wing, Left Wing, Ssr, Twitter

As a common news consumer today, one often comes across the words left, right and popular add-ons used with it like leaning (left-leaning, right-leaning), wing (right-wing, left-wing), faction (right-faction, left-faction), etc. Every single piece of news today is branded as right-wing or left-wing and herein lies the problem for some of us centrists.

Few years ago, we would consume a piece of information and develop a for or against view basis what the story dealt with and the facts supporting it. For example, a news article on the benefits of vegetarianism, made us check on the internet if this is indeed true or is there a contrary view to this story. One step further would be to try a vegetarian diet and test it out for yourself before developing a view. Today, a similar article on benefits of vegetarianism, would first make us first check on who shared this news article and in some cases, infer his religious identity, derive his political affiliation and then develop a view on the article, sometimes without even checking the things mentioned in the article itself.

In the initial days of Twitter, I found it to be a broadcasting tool for celebrities and other influencers to provide updates to their followers. Today, it has revealed itself to be a much bigger platform with hoards of users forming factions and waging a digital war against each other. Again, the groups do not debate each other on logic or on fact-checking. The only thing matters if you are in their group or the opposite one. Case in point, the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput or the Tanishq Ekatvam ad campaign. Even though these incidents had nothing to do with groupism or right-wing vs left-wing, both issues were dragged into political and religious contexts resulting in a Twitter war among the two groups which continues to rage even to this day. If a centrist were to even dare to ask why Sushant’s death wasn’t suicide or how the Tanishq ad hurt religious sentiments, that person would be immediately branded as naïve or a coward who could not take sides.

The same story with a more frequently used Whatsapp. Sometimes, you have got to reminisce the simpler times when the normal text messaging app on your phone helped conversing with your friends & family and rue the day when it was replaced with Whatsapp . Whatsapp groups are perhaps today the most used medium to spread fake news and propaganda. Any issue posted in these groups would somehow be moulded into a right vs left issue despite them having no connection any of them. Case in point, recently Apple Inc contract manufacturer, Wistron’s plant was attacked in Karnataka by its own employees. While the issue was under investigation by the police and other competent authorities, I came across one Whatsapp forward which said that the attack on the plant happened due to the failure of law & order by the state government and another forward which said the attack was done by the opposition to show the state government in bad light. In the end, it came to light that it was labour issues and the non payment of timely wages which had prompted the employee’s union to cause a riot. We might debate on whether the employees were correct in choosing this violent path to get their voices heard but that’s another topic. Why this issue took a political turn of right vs left is what is happening today across social media and news outlets.

There is no country for centrists. We live in a world which is not interested in facts but in opinions. Centrists are branded as cowards or spineless. It is evident that being a centrist would not get you followers on Twitter and Whatsapp, but would it at least allow you to be in a country without having a sense of alienation?