Michael Walker of Novara Media had an interesting segment yesterday where he talked about this interaction and then introduced three notable people (yes, one of them was Jack Ma). (Youtube | Invidious)

Someone from the UK trans community would know best but from the news I’ve been following, “Your Party” (i.e. the people aligned with Zarah Sultana at least) could turn out to be the most dedicated to trans rights but they’re probably the least likely to win a seat anytime soon, while the Green Party has the right to self-identify on the platform for both trans and nonbinary folks, and is gaining in momentum. Plaid Cymru in Wales also has this.

I believe there already is a coalition of people in favour of human rights and hopefully they can make a difference somehow, but the problem is that the country has gone so fascist that the majority of people are in favour of this kind of content and rhetoric. It’s not just bad apple soldiers and prison guards.

There have been many interviews, polls, and other public cultural instances to document that most of the public is largely in favour of ethnic cleansing, prisoner abuse, and even more war. There need to be arrests of war criminals, but also some kind of psychological intervention to get the ones who weren’t actively involved to realize how much of their humanity they’ve been discarding. De-Kahanification, I guess you could call it.

Interesting question. Most people in general are at least somewhat trapped in their identities (i.e. the survival instinct defining who we are and where/with whom we believe we do or don’t belong), if they lack the self-awareness to detach from it at least a little. Many people get more and more entrenched in various aspects of their identity as they grow older though, regardless of how compassionate or misanthropic they are.

“People who like people” is an extremely imprecise term. Depending on upbringing and early life experiences, even folks with a “rich social network” aren’t guaranteed to be empathetic/compassionate people. Such people may have a better chance of hitting that ideal on some level, but they’re at risk of duplicating the status quo (maybe with slight improvements?) unless they were able to have meaningful social experiences that humanized a diverse swath of people from their wider community, thereby reducing blind spots. If they only saw people like themselves all the time, then what they really have is just a social advantage (connections) that they may well take for granted or treat as the “norm.” On the flipside, people who had a hard upbringing or severe trauma but were able to work through healing their traumatic wounds to a certain extent? They can end up becoming the most emotionally wise and compassionate people around. It’d be cruel and ridiculous to expect that from everyone though, so I liked a suggestion I heard from a researcher a while back to have mechanisms to address potential deficits in a politician’s likelihood to care about their constituents.

All propaganda is part of an ongoing war of ideas (and identity, really). If people only hear from one side all the time and other viewpoints aren’t even debated but just get socially discouraged or outright suppressed, most are liable to just believe what they hear the most &/or what reinforces (or flatters) their personal idea of who they are. Even if they see good evidence of errors, omissions, or fabrications in the most widely accepted narrative, if people feel like they’ll become an outcast or that they’re losing a part of their identity by questioning what they’re told, most will give in to the natural inclination to run for what’s “safe” and comfortable in the moment. It takes a lot to pry people away from even small parts of the conventional wisdom they’ve heard non-stop from family, friends, news, entertainment, their employer, their colleagues, etc.

To be sure I’m addressing your question properly and that we’re not talking past each other I’d need to know which specific people you’re thinking of, but just speaking generally off the top of my head, this is a sample of the kind of thing I meant:

• Generations of propaganda promoting countless forms of division and/or social hierarchy. This dilutes democratic efforts by pitting people against each other who should be on the same side. Not just the most well-known forms of bigotry but also the tendency of a lot of people to adopt the everyday elitist attitude that they’re smart while most other people aren’t, or that something obvious to them because of their own life experiences or education should be obvious to everyone else regardless of other people’s varied life experiences or education.
• A human tendency to conform to and defend the status quo at all costs (because our brains are always seeking stability), even when it runs counter to our own needs or values. This has been increasingly exploited by major political parties across the West to get people to vote based on vibes and personal affiliations rather than demanding trackable progress toward specific measurable outcomes. The UK is now shaping up to become an exception to this. Over there, urgency to end austerity has caught on as the outcome most people want, and now the debate is naturally shifting toward whether people believe the right way of doing so is to tax wealth more than work (Greens), or to kick out immigrants in the (in my opinion misguided) hope the wealthy will then decide they’ve taken enough and gladly share with whoever’s left (Reform).
• Unfortunately, power in and of itself begets “people who don’t like people.” There is a well-documented phenomenon for people with any level of power over others (could be wealth, elevated social position, a prestigious job, etc.) in which their capacity for empathy becomes impaired, which leads to all sorts of cascading effects that get reflected in both public and private institutions. (I’ve heard at least one researcher talk about ways to directly counter this with special coaching for people who get elected as public representatives, but it was a long while back so I’d have to do some digging to find that discussion again.) I think this covers leaders who think they’re doing the right thing but are woefully out of touch as well as the dangerously ambitious ones who might have convinced themselves otherwise at first but really only got into politics for clout and prestige.

Even if they can be simplified down when speaking abstractly, there are so many reasons for that when speaking practically, it’s hard to know where to start. :/