Why I logged off Twitter for good: A personal reckoning with its descent into hate

Shout into the void, get zero likes, and still somehow feel attacked. But maybe zero likes is better than drowning in hate.

I haven’t posted on Twitter for a couple of years now; the majority of people that I knew on that platform have either abandoned it, or jumped ship. Including myself. I’m here, posting this here, instead of over there. And I’ve finally figured out why — Twitter seems like a dystopian hellscape. It’s a collection of the worst people, anonymous by design, shouting into their infernal echo chambers. It’s racist, xenophobic, and despairing. There’s too much hate being platformed on it in the name of free speech. It was always going to end up like this, but there was always this hope that maybe — just maybe — Twitter will survive the X-ification that Elon Musk unleashed upon it. How naive, we all were.

Every time I open it nowadays, it’s the same version of talking points over and over again — Muslims are terrorists, Islam is a cancer, brown folks are replacing European descendants. There are giant mega threads dedicated to utterly insane and xenophobic discourse about how “immigrants” have made areas “no-go”. It sounds unhinged and insane, but the collective echo chamber effect reinforces these beliefs over and over again, until they become part of your infernal and rabid psyche. And honestly, it’s a chicken and egg situation. Like Mehdi Hasan says, there was always a racism problem in the West, but it was hidden because it's common courtesy to not be a fucking race baiter. Well guess what? In the neofascist age that we’re living through, it’s become quite fashionable (and lucrative) to be an open racist and bigot. And it’s not just anon accounts fanning these flames, it’s congressmen too.

Of course this whole discourse is a pivot to distract away from their shortcomings, and how pathetic they really are. Charlie Kirk, Ted Cruz, Randy Fine to name but a few, are now so severely spewing Islamophobia, that it’s become their whole personality. They’re doing it because they don’t want people talking about their moral failings and shortcomings. They keep getting reamed in, but they double down. Because as I said earlier, it is now advantageous to be racist and xenophobic. The world is making that pivot, and these bigots want to get in on the ground floor.

The world is scary, but logging onto Twitter makes it feel 50 times worse, because all you’re subjected to repeatedly is how much you’re hated because you’re not a European descendant with the correct “genes”. The skin of your color is the defining characteristic of whether you’re worthy of any consideration, or if your value is relegated to the “subhuman” category. The whole setup is so broken. Instead of being hopeful and optimistic, we’re entering a doom spiral where everything feels hopeless and pessimistic. I don’t know how and where this cycle will end. In the meantime, log off Twitter. The xenophobia won’t magically go away, but at least you won’t have to worry about living with an existential crisis everyday.

“Violence is justified, as long as my party is perpetrating it.”

Naeemul Haq of the PTI (pictured) slapped Daniyal Aziz of the PML-N on TV

Violence. The great means to the great end; the great end being the establishment of the Naya Pakistan. For if the end is the creation of Naya Pakistan, who cares if a few people get slapped along the way, right?

For those who still don’t know, Naeemul Haq of the PTI slapped Daniyal Aziz of the PML-N, on Muneeb Faruq’s show on Geo, after Daniyal Aziz called Naeemul Haq a ‘thief.’ What a noble man is Naeemul Haq, that he gets offended when somebody calls him a thief. Clearly, we must all side with him for he is the radical revolutionary we have been waiting for, the one who will deliver us from our penance, and then we can start actually building the Naya Pakistan.

Whether you find this sad, alarming or hilarious, there are those who actually believe everything I’ve written up there.

You see it started in 2014, when the great Imran Khan of Mianwali decided it was OK to mainstream uncouthness into Pakistan’s politics. When it was pointed out that more is expected from the leader of a party that claims to represent the educated, urban lot of Pakistan, his followers came out of the bushes like snakes and consistently asked ‘so what if he uses uncouth language?’ Well so his lackey slaps a minister on TV. That’s what. It doesn’t take a genius to draw that line. One would’ve hoped the great Khan would reprimand Naeemul Haq, like he is wont to do with Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif, but his Twitter account sits quiet today.

But Imran Khan not berating Naeemul Haq is not out the ordinary. In fact, one might go so far as to call it “mundane.” Imran Khan who indulges in uncouthness himself is hardly the kind of person you would expect to come to the aid of Daniyal Aziz, or tell his minion to apologize, or say that this is not how civilized people behave. Imran Khan then, is like Khadim Hussain Rizvi. When Rizvi was asked about the filthy, vulgar language he employs in his sermons and his homilies, he said even at the time of the prophet the companions used such language. It is nothing bad, or out of the ordinary. It didn’t take too long for that vile language to turn into a full fledged war on the state of Pakistan either.

So it should come as no surprise then that the followers of Imran Khan — the ones who claim they are the educated, urbanized, progressive, modernist people of Pakistan — say Daniyal Aziz deserved being physically assaulted because “he was taught a lesson.”

It’s absolutely what a danyal aZiz deserves ... in Pakistan if you call a passerby one bad word he runs after you hence danyal was slapped and taught a lesson

— Naz Fatima (@NazFatima17) May 23, 2018

According to the perverted logic by this person, it would be quite OK now for any PML-N supporter to go and “teach” Imran Khan a lesson by punching him in the face, or “teach” Asad Umar a lesson by throwing a shoe at him, or “teach” Jehangir Tareen a lesson by violently accosting him. I mean, it is OK to use violence to teach people a lesson apparently.

This periphery that we’re standing on, is unacceptable. You may hate the words and actions that your opponent uses. You may hate their guts. You may hate the fact that they refuse to see your point of view, but know that you are in the wrong if you stand behind the person who violently accosts another person just because you don’t like the words that he’s saying.

I’ve seen Naeemul Haq up close. He can usually be found sitting at the Burning Brownie cafe in F-11 Markaz in Islamabad on weekend nights. I’ve always been put off by his vibe, but I never imagined that this lazy, cantankerous waste of human flesh would have it in him to slap a person from an opposing political party. Clearly, our politics has reached a point where this is an acceptable modus operandi.

This is not the Naya Pakistan I had envisioned when Imran Khan first coined the term. Instead of it meaning something positive or good, Naya Pakistan has become a pejorative term; the kind you want to disinfect yourself from. I really hope Imran Khan will put his money where his mouth is, and reprimand Naeemul Haq. Because if not, this will just be one more item in the list of hypocrisies Imran Khan has committed and is known for.

When the election turns into a selection

Khawaja Asif

Imran Khan likes to refer to Nawaz Sharif as The Godfather because the Supreme Court in its infinite wisdom decided to reference “The Godfather” (a fictional book by Mario Puzo) in the Panamagate verdict. He likes to use it because because the analogy reinforces the idea that Nawaz Sharif is a don (head of the PML-N), surrounded by his henchmen (top leadership of the PML-N), running Pakistan’s version of the Sicilian mafia. Today, the Islamabad High Court disqualified another one of Nawaz Sharif’s henchmen — Khawaja Asif, for life. Khawaja Asif said he’ll appeal the verdict in the Supreme Court, but we all see a lost cause when we see one, right?

Or maybe we don’t. This is more fuel to the fire. First, they went after Nawaz Sharif. They technically couldn’t do much to him because hey, nothing — not the offshore companies and not the accursed flats in London —  was actually in his name. They were either under his sons’ names, or they were under Maryam Nawaz Sharif Safdar’s name. So what did they do? They pulled the lamest excuse in the entire universe, that Nawaz Sharif is dishonest and untruthful because he did not declare that he could have received a salary from the company of his son, registered in Dubai, and even though he actually did not receive that salary, he still could have received it, to disqualify him from the prime ministership. You still want to say they weren’t out to get him from the start?

Khawaja Asif’s case is different. He has an iqama of the UAE — a residence visa — which allows him the ability to flitter between Pakistan and Dubai should the going get tough; which it seems to have gotten. But the judges said it was not his iqama that was the problem; it was the fact that he was receiving a monthly salary from Dubai, and had not declared his employment in his nomination papers. This made him ineligible to contest the elections in the first place. In 2017, Usman Dar of the PTI filed a petition challenging the legality of Khawaja Asif’s election and thus, Khawaja Asif was also found dishonest and untruthful much like Nawaz Sharif and now, he’s out on his butt for the rest of his life. The establishment’s blue eyed boy celebrates wild today.

We are part of the democratic process. This means that when a judge passes a ruling, we are bound by our civic duty as upstanding citizens of our country to accept it. But even the judges in this case had to concede that this ugliness has gone on for far too long now. Justice Athar Minallah wrote in the judgement that:

“It would have been been appropriate if the petitioner [Usman Dar of the PTI] had gone to the parliament to deliberate on this matter, before invoking the jurisdiction of the court.” 

But Usman Dar did not go to the parliament. He used the precedent set by the Supreme Court, which weaponized Articles 62 and 63 of the constitution of Pakistan, and used it as a sword to cut off Khawaja Asif’s political legacy.

The judiciary (and by extension, the PTI) has made a complete mockery of the democratic and political process in Pakistan. It is the people of Pakistan who elected Nawaz Sharif, Khawaja Asif, Chaudhry Nisar, Imran Khan, Usman Dar, Jehangir Khan Tareen, Asad Umar, and it should be the people of Pakistan who should decide how to punish those who lie to them. And the ladies and gentlemen that the people of Pakistan have elected to sit in the parliament of Pakistan, should deliberate on what needs to be done to those who violate the sanctity of the oath that they’ve taken. That’s the democratic process.

Instead, we’ve got power hungry maniacs invoking a judicial martial law and using it again and again to fire at those that they’re opposed to. The judiciary’s role is not to adjudicate on the political destiny of Pakistan; that is the job of the parliament and the people of Pakistan. The judiciary’s job is to ensure that due process and the spirit of the law is followed.

As it turns out, the PTI would much rather have the judiciary of Pakistan decide the political destiny of Pakistan, even if it means the spirit of the law gets trampled beneath the heavy boots of irony.