Politics is a Game of Stories.

06 Apr, 2026

One of the wildest realisations of the world of the online left is that some people's perspectives are informed more by what polling data says than the narrative that surrounds that data.

I think a textbook example was during the election of Zohran Mamdani. The right leaning contingent of the server I was in told me that Mamdani wasn't polling well with black voters in some kind of fake idpol own. Openly I ignored this point because it was irrelevant, but internally I called bullshit. And I was right. Not because I asked more people than the pollsters did, but because I had a cohesive understanding of Mamdani and Cuomo's politics that made such an outcome seem like bullshit. So much is made out of asking voters what they will believe, and so little is made out of why they would believe it. To ignore the why is to forever be stuck in a shifting impossible to read present, to never be correct about anything until after it's too late. A statistic without narrative explanation is useless. It tells you about nothing beyond it's own existence.

The other problem with this line of reasoning is that numbers are simply not convincing. Every WaterAid advert starts with a story and ends with a graph because you need the story to tell you why the graph is important. The numbers need tangible emotional weight, we need to know there are people behind them.

This is also why some of our colder liberal friends are so willing to shrug their shoulders at the loss of human life. A life without a story is another statistic. One cannot understand the suffering of millions without the perspective of one.

People often point to the numbers in reference to the tide of public opinion well and truly turning against Israel. But the numbers were never in their favour. The difference was the frequency of stories. The internet and the desperation of Palestinians manifesting what were statistics into suffering, living human beings. A pro Israeli spokesperson said that when she talks she is "talking through a wall of dead children"¹. Anyone advocating for what will kill children should be talking through a wall of dead children.

But so often this is not the case.

In our once universal media environment it often wasn't, Vietnam and Iraq weren't unpopular in the end because marginalised people were suffering, their stories weren't covered, but because of the white soldiers who suffered, and that's why it took so long for the tide to turn.

In our now segregated media environment, it still isn't for a lot of people. The reason Zionists are unconvinced by numbers has nothing to do with their legitimacy and everything to do with what stories they have heard. A Zionist could believe in every statistic you throw at them, but if they've only heard the stories of those killed on October 7th, their perspective will remain unchanging.

Without stories people are not people, they are just numbers.

The lesson to take from this is that every number you throw or statistic you use needs a story to tie into it. If you want to talk about Palestine, you have to talk about Palestinians as people and not as numbers.

Indeed, if you want to talk about anyone, you have to talk in stories.

It is completely unconvincing to tell someone who votes Reform that anti Muslim hate crime is on the rise. It is significantly easier to make people gasp when they hear a bomb was thrown into an Islamic centre in Belfast. Such stories help break the bubble of our segregated media environment, if we were to compare the extent of the coverage of the Belfast story to say, the coverage of the burning of the Golders Green ambulances, we can show somebody that the media environment is deliberately suppressing stories where Muslims are the victims, and platforming ones where they are the perpetrators of hate.²

Debatebros on any part of the political spectrum are often terrible at this. The "debates" typically consist of a based chad rattling off numbers and technical definitions to a clueless caller or college student.

The opposition is never convinced by this. Only humiliated.

This is, intentionally or otherwise, inherent to the way they argue. No person can ever be won over without understanding the story they are telling themselves. Very few have changed their political ideology because they got owned on the internet.

You are not trying to win. You are trying to talk someone out of a tragedy.

Privilege may benefit you relative to the oppressed, but bigotry is a truly miserable state of being. You are left with less people to love, and more people to worry about. The story of the bigot is a tragedy, often of misplaced anger at a world that has failed them, or a submission to the worst and most toxic aspects of their culture.

Bigotry is often a cult of misery, in search for a happiness that will never come. Present your own worldview as happier, you exist without fear or obsession over a minority, but in the embrace of those around you.

Introduce a bigot to new cultures, to new experiences and to new ideas, show someone the world they are missing.

You live in a nicer story.