Liberalism On Instagram

News

Instagram, The Show of Liberalism After Floy’d Death

If you’ve logged into Instagram in the days following the murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis Police Officer, the platform had been unrecognizable. Instead of the typical series of photos, you’ve likely seen an outburst of hyped-up content that didn’t have a name. The News Republic, however, termed it as “Instagraphics” – an infographics slideshow-style. You’ve probably seen various titles like the following below:

  • Transformative Justice 101
  • How to Talk to Your Racist Family Member Now
  • What is Abolition?

If you use Instagram, you’ve likely seen a similar situation following the weeks after the death of Floyd. Millions have gathered on the streets in cities country-wide. Resources say that these Instagram pages that featured Instagraphics were given a boost by services like buy Instagram followers to increase their engagement and reach.

What is Liberalism?

The word liberalism is conveying very distinctive position in political sense; one is that, a pro-individualist theory of government and people and the other is a pro-statist or what’s better coined as social democratic conception. Students who are into political philosophy have to be mindful of the two theories to be able to steer clear of philosophical confusions that may be resolved by clarifying terms.

Movement in Liberalism

The “Great Switch” as how cultural historians Jacques Barzun notes taken place in late 19th century; this is a switch wherein the product of shifting political grounds towards social democratic or socialist policies are under the umbrella of politics and liberal parties.

Etymologically, the latter is a better description because liberalism is actually derived from “liberty”; that is toleration and freedom instead of the notions of justice as well as interventions that took on board in 20th century. Still, pro-statist connotation pervaded modern thinking that it’s hard to separate its concept from previous meanings without reclassifying one or another. The former is typically referred as classical liberalism, which leaves the latter to be unchanged or, adapt to the social democratic liberalism. Modern liberalism is easier to understand term and shall be used until there’s more emphasis laid on socialist leanings of modern liberals.

As how the Public Sees and Understands

In a broader scope, the current accepted term the modern liberal is accepting rights to entitlements like education and healthcare and rights against a person. The two positions don’t go well, at least philosophically but, they are producing tons of great potential as well as recurrent contradictions and inconsistencies that may be solved only by stretching the freedom’s definition.

There are instances in which it generates hard and insurmountable issues and challenges for those who are seeking to combine modern and classical doctrines. Nonetheless, modern liberal project is pursued actively by known thinkers like Ronald Dworkin, Will Kymlicka, John Rawls, J.S. Mills and so forth. Among these writers, historical emphasis on plurality, justice and toleration underscores their work. They differ on interpreting private and public roles, toleration and perceived needs for opportunities be created or not.