#10: insta shouting

Political struggles aren't a marketing posture.

The world is on fire, and Pakistan is no different. With the violence of the deep state peaking in several parts of the country, parts that are not afforded the luxury of proximity to the centre, we are all watching what is happening in Parachinar, in Gwadar, just as we are watching what is happening in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Dhaka. I try, on most days, to read the news, to let these upheavals sink in. For news outside of Pakistan, I turn to Al Jazeera; for news within, I turn to Twitter or my comrades. When our VPNs fail, I find myself doom-scrolling on Instagram.

There is no denying that Instagram has become a more political space of late, also because of more political groups and organisers turning to it for time-sensitive matters and crises. With Twitter's decline and reading generally on the wane, audiovisual platforms provide people with the medium they need to show evidence of wrongdoings in more palatable, urgent ways. Images and carousel posts capture and trigger something that is hard to ignore, unlike walls of words, which require time, diligence, discipline.

If you go by what you see on your Insta timeline, you will see that everyone is sharing and saying all the right things. Everyone seems supremely evolved in their politics. People’s feeds are curated to perfection; you see a carousel about Shia murders, you share it—and you’re done for the day. Meta may block or shadow-ban scores of accounts on a daily basis for supporting Palestinians, being a Palestinian, but even its algorithm is susceptible to being gamed by social media users hell-bent on circumventing it, ensuring that the indomitable spirit of Palestinians crushes the tyranny of flawed, tyrannical, imperialist codes.

Visual immediacy certainly helps to communicate political struggles, but I do not know if it sustains them. It transforms the visuals of a political struggle into something aspirational; revolutionary ideals become an easily adaptable personality trait. However, it also flattens political struggles in a way that makes them like a moodboard, to be pinned on our (virtual) walls to admire and cheer on from our bedrooms—and that is it. Shabash, self, for sharing all the awful things that happened in Pakistan and beyond! Cue "I Feel Good" by James Brown: a fitting soundtrack indeed. 

It’s like post-feminism; we are all feminists! Now we are all political, so post-leftism, post-socialism, everything has finally been achieved in one fell swoop. Pack up and go home boys, aagaya ji inquilaab, well done well done. 

Post, respond, share—repeat. And what of those who don’t share stories of the injustices of the day? Well, they need to check their privilege! Why are they going about their day, posting pictures of their nonsense lives, and not acting like a 24/7 khabarnaama?! 

Every other story I see on my Instagram these days tends to be shouty as hell. Someone is telling some imaginary apolitical person off, and I keep thinking, sis/brother/jaanu, who the hell are you talking to? Who is this anger for? Given how class-divided Instagram is in Pakistan (I mean, it’s certainly no TikTok), we are essentially preaching to the choir while trying to address some imperialist bogeyman. Shouting about Palestine: bhai even JI protested for them, and if you’re following Zionists….don’t? And what good is your glut of Amazing Political Opinions doing for movements and organisers sweating it out and doing the actual labour of building something not for their personal validation or projection, not to compete with others on who has APOs (meaningless things call for a meaningless abbreviation), not to disperse or fracture collective power, but to sustain it? 

So yeah, spare me the social media moralism and Insta stickers and shaming if you can’t get your ass to a political organisation near you. Because people seeking purity in politics are in for a surprise: it doesn’t exist. I do not think it is possible to be pure in one's politics, and our politics is all the poorer for constantly seeking cleanness. So PSA: quit being a saintly critic online. One must take much bigger risks to leave the sidelines and venture beyond the comfortable, cutesy, online reality they know. Knowledge is only enriched and disciplined by experience (and vice versa).

It would do us all so much good if we stopped seeking out this narrow sense of political engagement and actually realised the very urgent need for organisation or discipline. Stories are great! Share everything you see online about the atrocities unfolding in front of us in real-time, do it by all means…

Or don’t. Political work will continue, and your opinions will remain opinions: lost in the ether, and completely divorced from the gruelling, unending work of movement-building.

[sharing a picture of this mandala to show one of infinite possibilities of what we can do when we put our phones down and actually build something together]