Some reflections on Sri Lanka’s political “memers”

By Uditha Devapriya

For many of us, the only hope for the country lies in getting out of the country. This is by no means a recent phenomenon: we have been seeing the best among us depart these shores for greener pastures over the last 30 years. The reason used to be the war; now it’s politics. It’s as though peacetime has unleashed all the ugly things about the nation that the war had bottled up. Back then we had bombs in buses and snipers at day to think about; now we have bribes and graft, nepotism and despotism, to rage against.

When the best news you think you can hear is a politician being stricken by the pandemic or booed by his supporters, especially on social media, you know how the rift between rulers and ruled has widened. This is hardly a welcome development.

Of course, there’s really no one to take up the politicians’ cause these days. Nor should there be; especially with regard to their handling of the pandemic, both government and opposition have been, if I may be charitable, ambivalent. Such issues are controversial and debatable and need not detain us here: what needs to be noted is a glaring absence of empathy in the handling of the worst public health crisis since the Spanish Flu.

This problem, of a yawning gap between what is being done and what needs to be done, has engaged ministers, health officials, students and, teachers, and trade unions. It has provided us with a never-ending series of debates between the government and the opposition on the one hand, the government and the state machinery on another, government and citizens on yet another, and supporters and opponents of the government on another. Different as their viewpoints may be, they focus on one question: whether or not to lock down.

These interest groups articulate different concerns. For the government, the most pressing concern is the economy; for health officials, it’s the nation’s health; for students and teachers, the education sector and salary anomalies; and for unions, their members. For many daily wage earners, there’s the struggle to survive. The government’s announcement on August 20 marked a conjuncture between them: with the fourth lockdown we have seen here thus far, everyone has had their way.

The politician has emerged badly from this scheme of things. I don’t mean only the regime here; even the opposition has attracted censure over the last year. This is not to suggest that people side against them unconditionally: some have turned their anger towards health officials, students and teachers, and trade unions. But there is no doubt that politicians have turned into the ultimate object of hate.

Indeed, whatever they manage to do or not do, the public interprets it as more evidence of their incompetence. In the court of public opinion that is social media, moreover, criticism of politicians has become so democratised that even disinformation, as long as it conforms to the popular view of them as inept and corrupt, gets accepted. This is, if not concerning, certainly symptomatic of our disillusionment with politics in general.

The lengths to which such criticism can go make it imperative that we draw a line between genuine critique and hysterical hogwash parading as critique. One does not have to absolve politicians to concede that any assessment of them should meet the litmus test of verifiability and be consistent and valid, and that while the right to criticise must be open, abusing it will not help with any campaign against incompetence, corruption, and apathy.

In other words, criticism of politics, whether of the government or the opposition, requires critical thinking. It’s only through critical thinking that one can evolve a cohesive critique of politics. Yet, for many, such thinking appears pointless and peripheral in their crusades against the evils of those governing us or leading the opposition.

How do we differentiate between critique and hysteria along these lines? Critical thinking requires cohesive engagement with observations and perceptions. It’s about precision, clarity, accuracy, depth, breadth, and fairness, and consistency, application, and analysis. It’s about placing critiques in their context; there’s no point arguing against government action here, for instance, by summoning an analogy from 18th century France. Even if such analogies appear valid, it is vital that we account for the differences.

I am not suggesting that we don’t dig into history; merely that what is true for one period may be true for another period, and not so much to our context. When critiquing politics by summoning parallels from elsewhere, therefore, it is necessary to take stock of the validity of those “parallels” before turning them into social media agitprop. Unfortunately, for a semi-literate electorate that veers between nationalist and neoliberal forms of authoritarianism, the importance of verification before assertion has simply not been made clear.

If the internet has blurred the line between facts and factoids, social media has transformed into a petri dish of misinformation. Facebook memes offer an illuminating case study here. Criticism of government apathy is easy to make on these platforms, since they offer critics a measure of security lacking in other outlets such as street theatre and wall art. It also brings them closer to their audience, which often happens to be their personal circles.

Here, Sri Lanka’s meme culture deserves much more than a brief perusal. From what can be gathered, it’s clear that critics of national politics have found in them a tool through which to vent out their frustrations. They frequently pick on analogies from elsewhere to drive home their point: hence when the All Ceylon Bakery Owners’ Association announces a price hike in response to flour prices, they cite the most popular analogy, Marie Antoinette’s infamous (and largely imagined) expostulation on the virtues of eating cake.

Still another popular analogy: when condemning, not governments, but for those who vote for governments, these pacifist-neutralist “memers”, who disavow any political affiliations, jump on statements by colonial officials who rejected demands to extend the vote on the grounds that locals were not ready to govern themselves.

Sri Lanka’s constitution gives pride of place to popular sovereignty: that is why, while sovereignty is exercised through institutions, it resides in the people. Yet the depths to which politics has deteriorated in recent years have converted Sri Lanka’s Facebook “memers” into critics of this laudable and progressive principle.

Disenchanted by the status quo, they idealise the past and jump on statements that confirm their scepticism of the wisdom of voters. The statement they cite most approvingly, in this regard, seems to be Henry McCallum’s argument, made in 1910 on the eve of the Crewe-McCallum reforms and in response to bourgeois demands for the elective principle, that Sri Lankans were as yet not ready for self-government.

Perhaps what’s most intriguing about these posts and analogies is that no one seems bothered by the fact that more than a couple of centuries divide the present from their parallel. Indeed, it’s hardly registered that the analogy being summoned may or may not fit our situation. What are noted instead are the details which resemble that situation; the differences, crucial as they are to the wider picture, do not seem to bother “memers” at all.

That McCallum made his observations about the wisdom of extending the franchise, not surprisingly then, is not placed in its proper perspective: that his remarks reflected the times he and his contemporaries lived in, that they were framed within conditions of colonialism, is not referred to at all. Instead, we are told to accept what a Governor said more than a century ago about the wisdom of our voters merely because we vote poorly today.

In liberal democracies and soft autocracies, political crises produce a variety of responses from the upper classes and, perhaps more frequently, middle classes. The levels of frustrations are such that those who project their anger against the government or the opposition end up spreading misinformation in their critiques of establishment politics.

It’s no doubt a reflection of the irrational times we are living through that misanalogies have become authentic and legitimate for critics of governments. False as they may be, they are an insight into how these critics jump into whatever historical reference they come across. It’s inevitable, though disconcerting, that such critics end up as guilty of spreading factoids as their opponents. These “memes”, then, are a reflection of the discontent of the many. They are also a measure of the cultural conditioning, perceptions of local and international history, and class background, of Sri Lanka’s irrepressible “political memers.”

The writer can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com