Trying to get a balanced view from mainstream media was challenging.

My “bad take” sensors were immediately on the alert when the words “far right” was just thrown around casually by the mainstream media. “Othering” the other side is a very fast and unfortunately, efficient way, of drowning out contrary narratives, so I quickly moved on from the mainstream media to other sources of media.

Asking social media what is happening in Britain, especially on left leaning Mastodon, was probably not the mentally safest way to do so. I doubted that I’d get a nuanced view, and I knew I’d be exposing myself to some outrage for daring to even ask or have an opinion about the situation, but I really wanted to know what folks in Britain were thinking about the riots in the UK.

I got interesting perspectives which helped me evaluate what the voices from the left leaning crowd were saying.

Then I moved on to Youtube.

I know, I know. This is not the best place ever lol.

Oddly, or maybe not oddly, Youtube kept recommending me vitrolic, anti-immigrant rants. Huh.

So, I gravitated towards long conversations between academicians rather than quick, dramatic outrage videos that are so de rigour among political pundits. I also try to get a more global perspective: Europe, Asia, Africa, for example.

Some recommendations

Here are some that I thought were a good listen, which offered a bit of nuance:

“Everyone is far right all of a sudden … the average person who has no political affiliation, no extremist views just want to be heard. They can’t be heard because they’re being labelled as far right. … You’re not allowing people to actually have a conversation.”

“The rest of the world knows England in a way that it doesn’t itself.”

My thoughts: If you have time to only listen to one, watch this. One of the issues they talk about is how they highlight the fact that the higher classes are sniffing at the lower classes who often are hobbled by their poorer quality of education, which impacts their critical thinking skills. Frankly much of the ills of a country, and this includes Malaysia, is the growing divide between the upper and lower classes. The governing elites (and this includes media personnel), are often from the upper classes due to their better access to education and opportunities, but due to this disconnect, policies are often not made for the people of the lower classes, whom they have no connection or relations with.

“Failing to give people a sense of purpose and direction … (the government) doesn’t seem to be interested in governing but just responding to events. In an economic crisis situation, the pressure cooker is becoming much greater. … It’s outside the normal pattern of usual summer riots that we fairly see regularly in Britain.”

It’s kinda sad that people have to go through all this effort to understand what’s going on in the news.

However, I do wonder if all my effort was necessary as that’s a lot of time spent contribute to an area outside my circle of competence.