What about you

I spotted a comment this morning saying someone was enjoying watching me become “alt-right.” On the same day I lost about 400 followers on Instagram — I’m guessing for something I wrote. Both are instructive.

The kind of person who reduces living, breathing, thinking humans into neat boxes — alt-right / not-alt-right, sane / unsound, approved / unapproved — is often the same person who complains about how polarised the world has become.

Me? I’m not frightened of polarisation. The opposite of difference isn’t harmony — it’s uniformity. A single approved script. A safe, padded consensus. A boot stamping on your face forever.

Words like “polarisation” and “populism” are often used as shorthand for: the wrong people are speaking. The wrong people are voting. The wrong people are thinking out loud.

In Invasion of the Body Snatchers, all you have to do is fall asleep and wake up part of the hive. Unified. Calm. Repeating approved phrases. Converting the unconverted. That’s not me. If refusing that makes me “alt-right” in someone’s taxonomy, so be it.

I’m from the so-called stupid class. I didn’t go to university. I have no credentials to wave. If I lived in Alaska I’d probably own a shed full of AR-15s and a snow shovel.

Being unfollowed isn’t punishment. It’s choice. If someone doesn’t like what I write, they should leave. If I’m tone-deaf, clumsy, blunt, mistaken — fair enough. I’ll own it. But I won’t be told to “stick to what you know” as if thought requires a licence.

I don’t write to make friends. That’s easy. I write what I’m thinking. Sometimes it’s wrong. Sometimes it’s raw. Sometimes it might even help someone. Maybe it only helps me.

Labels like “alt-right” can be descriptive. They can also be weapons — a way to stop conversation before it starts. The same goes for “contrarian,” “hate speech,” “problematic.” Sometimes they’re accurate. Sometimes they’re just a hand over someone’s mouth.

I’d rather live in a world where disagreement is normal. Where we assume good faith before malice. Where difference of thought is treated as part of diversity, not a threat to it.

All I can do is play the man I am.