Take Care Of Antipathy -By Micheal A. Adeniyi

Micheal A. Adeniyi

It’s the era of raucous, exhilarating, rambunctious political reform, debate and dialogue, rather than stale, formalised and stuffy state domination. An era ripe for progressives political Ideology, for sure, but by no means destined to make one. If progressives want to win the battle, they had better realise pretty quickly how real the era of anti-pathy is, and how extensive their responses need to be.
May I say that In a group of progressive there should be nothing like ANTI-PARTY activities. What we should have is ANTIPATHY? And this is what is really manifesting right now in Nigeria.

ANTIPATHY, If you look at the Greek roots of this word anti-(meaning “against”) and pathos(meaning “feeling”), you can see that antipathy is a feeling against someone or something while Anti-party simple mean sudden hatred and atagonization of one’s political party activities. Antipathies are considered people with feelings that are kept at least somewhat under wraps and are not out on the surface.. ANTIPATHY is a noun which means contrariety or opposition in feeling.

Unlike Anti party opposition, Antipathy opposition is about feelings and when we want to combine it with activities, then it becomes ANTIPATHIC activities. ANTIPATHIC in this case is an adjective that qualifies the noun activities.

Yet, the progressives have been trapped by the anti-party mood. They haven’t realised people’s antipathy towards a part of its political class viewed as morally and practically bankrupt, and a party leadership viewed as uncaring and authoritarian. It’s not that party member have suddenly become Opposition, but they have embraced Anti-Pathy. They thoroughly despise the party cartel, and the corrupt idiosyncratic traditions. With no doubt party institutions and their achievements can and should be defended, and Party still remain dearly valued, Party leader can’t be leaving it at that and ignoring the very real threat to the health of its democratic institutions mistake.

So what is to be done, then? Party’s should be building a certainly rings true, credible excos, credible primary elections. I would advice that we need to understand anti-pathy a bit more, rather than simply reject it or defend the status quo. Yes, political party gathering is highly political, rather than non-political, and they are here to stay. At the same time though the stakes are incredibly high, perhaps higher than the party excos recognises, and this is why anti-pathy as a concept matters. The intensely political pressures in our democratic parties need to be channeled into genuine democratic renewal, rather than simply ‘slowed down’, or the Anti-party signal may take over. As events in political lives show us, letting ‘the political’ run wild can have terrible consequences.

The politicians need to adapt, radically, to the challenges of the mediatised world so deliciously lampooned in The Thick of It. Token Twitter feeds are not enough, politicians kept lying and standing with people they like and against those they hate, and this must stop, spending much time writing press releases, taking up valuables, rather they must ‘Pop-up’ democracy and fostering of its local fraternity and ensuring ethical Ideals are the way forward, recognising anti-pathy exists and utilising resources to make things happen on the ground are very essential.

Micheal A Adeniyi
@9jaclicktivist
tapreadwebmaster@gmail.com