"Politicised", like its trendier, more modern version, "weaponised", is used by people as a means of discrediting an allegation or argument. When yet… - Hadley Freeman

"Politicised", like its trendier, more modern version, "weaponised", is used by people as a means of discrediting an allegation or argument. When yet another school shooting happens in the US, Republicans dismiss anyone begging for more gun control by telling them they are "politicising a tragedy". Antisemitism, Jews were repeatedly told over the past five years, was being "weaponised" against the Labour party purely to destroy Britain's socialist future. And it is a flat-out certainty that this winter, when the effects of the coronavirus begin to bite again and people, shall we say, vent their displeasure at the government for not locking down cities sooner/failing to provide key workers with PPE/lying about the safety or otherwise of care homes, ministers will accuse them of "politicising" the virus. But just because it might be people who don't like [Julian] Assange, or guns, or the Labour party, or the Tory party who are making these points, it does not follow that the arguments are untrue. "Politicise" and "weaponise" does not mean an argument is invalid – it means someone else knows they can't argue against it.
Disagreements are styled in such a black-and-white fashion these days: I am good, therefore anyone questioning me is bad. Are people really this absolutist, or are they just disingenuously pretending to be so in order to avoid awkward questions? Maybe both. But there does seem to be a general fear of ambiguity, or just a resistance to acknowledge grey areas.

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About Hadley Freeman

Hadley Clare Freeman (born 15 May 1978) is an American British journalist based in London. Since 2022, Freeman has written columns and features for The Sunday Times and previously, from 2000, for The Guardian until her 2022 resignation from the newspaper. She has also contributed to The Jewish Chronicle.

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Alternative Names: Hadley Clare Freeman
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Additional quotes by Hadley Freeman

In 1937 the Peel commission said the argument between Jews and Arabs was "right against right". Israelis and the Palestinians are right against right, because both sides have a historical claim to the land — but Netanyahu and Hamas are wrong against wrong. That is how I see the conflict, and it astonishes me that so many supposedly intelligent people insist instead on childish binaries, in which one side is all bad and the other wholly good. Binaries that are — OK, I'll say it — steeped in antisemitism.

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It was, if memory serves, the Louis Vuitton fashion show and I was there in my very professional capacity as a fashion writer for The Guardian newspaper. But someone caught my eye who made me feel a little less than professionally excited. I grabbed my notebook and stepped down from my third-row seat to the front row. "Um, Kanye West?" "Yes?" he said, looking up at me through his sunglasses. "Could you sign an autograph for me? It’s for my niece," I said, handing him my notebook. "Sure — what’s her name?" "Uh, Hadley — that’s H, A, D, L ..." The US Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who was sitting next to West, looked up and raised a sarcastic eyebrow.

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