It was the adjectives that first tipped me off. I like adjectives, in moderation. I like them in a Charlotte Bronté novel. It was a dark gloomy morning, reader. This kind of thing. I hate adjectives in news articles and social media posts. I hate them even more than hashtags. When every name or noun in a news article gets its own adjective, you know you’re reading propaganda. Propaganda, written by good guys, is still propaganda. It is inherently untrustworthy, even if written “by us” and “against them.” The more you read propaganda, the longer the string of adjectives gets, the wider the divide between us and them becomes and the more intense the pressure to prove that you are “us.”

I understand how people get high on solidarity and the feeling of being right. But, coming where I came from, this is when I defect. This is what I love about Ukrainians. We always remain sceptical, especially of power. We know that every revolution has a potential to become a reign of terror. It doesn’t stop us from doing revolutions, but we don’t descend into tyranny. From what I know of Ukrainian history, we never had a home-grown tyrant.

Here is a funny story: I must have been nine when I got recruited into a school choir. Together with everyone. There must have been about ninety or a hundred children my age in that school and we were all in the choir. The ones who could sing were put in front, I was in the fourth row, which was the last. There is a theory, proven by practice, that in a large enough group even people who can’t hold a note eventually fall in tune. I suspect that I may be an exception to this rule, because I was the only child who was kicked out of the choir. Even all the way in the back, I managed to sing out-of-tune enough and loud enough to make other kids lose their tune.

The social media feed becomes more and more like the Hate Week in Orwell’s 1984. There is no more nuance, there is no more conversation. Instead, we are shouting slogans at each other. The ones who today are praised because they speak of justice are the same ones who yesterday advocated for violence. They say that none of us are free until we all are free. In reality, “we all” most often means “all of us, but not them.” The question is, who decides who “they” are.