If you’re ever bored, I’ve got a niche pastime for you. Pick any controversial figure who visited Cambridge and have a laugh over the rant they posted on Instagram immediately afterwards about how hostile and anti-intellectual Cambridge students are. From Braverman to Shapiro, this literally happens almost every time – I’m not joking. It makes me think CUCA did Tom Rowsell a favour by cancelling his event; goodness me, the kind of reception he would’ve received if some UCLS members found their way into that one…

Observing this phenomenon got me thinking – are we really too hostile? Generally speaking, I don’t often feel particularly compelled to express some deep level of sympathy for political figures that likely want to make a ruthless viral clip or straight up mockery out of their opponents just as much as we do (putting extreme cases of personal disrespect or physical violence aside). But I do think hostility is plaguing us in some other way – we have embedded it not just into our external political actions but into our internal political thought, and that’s a more dire mishap than you think.

“It’s not extremity that I despise, but closed-minded politics that judges political righteousness on a scale of audible hatred”

Almost every conversation that I hear from your classic Sidge-loving Cambridge leftist is entirely glued to the confines of ‘oppressor versus oppressed’, ‘good guy versus bad guy’, etc. (insert any overly simplistic binary you want). It’s not a slogan representing their political position, or a helpful signpost as to what the position roughly is, it is the position itself. What’s particularly ironic is that this very same person would’ve likely just come out of a lecture that taught them, in some way, to think more critically than this – more nuanced than what the binaries teach us. Speaking about the world’s most pertinent issues in this way within the walls of one of the world’s best universities is almost insulting.

Don’t worry, I can hear you. I can, somehow, already hear your objection. It’s one I get quite a lot, actually. It’s the biggest, most common, and most irritating misunderstanding of my stance. It’s the assumption (or, by some people, the declaration!) that I’m some kind of centrist who pleads for deradicalisation on important topics. That I’m the guy asking the left (and right) to just ‘chill’ and be a little less extreme in their actions, or indeed in their thinking.

My favourite anecdote about this is being praised at the Cambridge Union after a short floor speech I made about Israel/Palestine. A man approached me after the debate to praise my “somewhat moderate take” on the issue – um…thanks, I guess? (But you didn’t really understand me at all).

And that’s the type of response I find myself giving most people (although, on that particular occasion, I ended up just smiling awkwardly while the man introduced me to his wife). So let me say something now that I wish I would’ve said then – on the issues that I care about, I’m pretty much anything but a centrist.

“If you want to hit ‘the man’ where it hurts, you have to fire actual bullets, not just loud blanks”

I just think there’s more to radical activism than pure hatred and ranting. It’s not extremity that I inherently despise, but closed-minded, unsympathetic, almost robotic politics that judges political righteousness on a scale of audible hatred.

Still can’t help yourself? Still can’t believe that I’m not asking you to hold more centrist positions? Can’t equate ‘sticking it to the man’ with anything other than screaming, shouting, and a big banner with your terribly reductive opinion on it? Fine, in that case, I’m pretty happy to opt out of the whole ‘sticking it to the man’ thing anyway.

Again, let me do some pre-emptive damage control. Banners with your opinions on it are cool. Slogans, chants, shouting, screaming, passion, all of the above: great. I should probably do more of that, to be honest. Act in this way all you want – it’s effective, admirable, and probably gets your thoughts out there in the right way.

But don’t let yourself restrict your thoughts to just this – to just that slogan you put on your banner. If you do, you’ll be missing out a whole lot. And if you extend that hostility you showed whoever it was that pissed you off at the Union that one time into the way you think, contextualise, and reason about issues, then yes – I’m afraid you’re getting a little too hostile. You’re losing the admirability of political passion and gaining a depressingly narrow politics which talks past, rather than to its opponents.

Sticking it to the man should be about action. It’s about rowdy, loud, uncomfortable, in-your-face activism that makes those who’d normally stick a boot up our throats think twice about doing so. But it’s not a philosophy – it can’t be. If it becomes one, we automatically limit our thinking about every important issue to binaries that immediately erase the credibility of whatever it is we want to say (or shout).

“Justice for x”, “Free y”, “all eyes on Z” (gosh, don’t get me started on that one again), these are (mostly) cool slogans – but they are not political positions. If you want to hit ‘the man’ where it hurts, you have to fire actual bullets, not just loud blanks.

Sticking it to the man, then, isn’t really all that, especially when ‘the man’ keeps you up all night and dictates every single thought you have. That sounds more like the ex you’re still hung up on than whichever political enemy you’re currently trying to defeat.