The war in Ukraine is not about you

In times of war and strife it’s only natural to feel anxious and worried. It’s a normal, primal reaction. What’s not normal, however, is to conspicuously advertise that fact, and to use a calamity to let the world know what a deeply concerned and conspicuously compassionate person you are.

Not for the first time in living memory a serious global issue has been reduced to the self, refracted through the prism of me. This week the war in Ukraine has provided a pretext for celebrities, social media users and newspaper columnists to talk about how they feel and how scared they are. Such narcissistic behaviour has long been normalised in the age of the selfie and Zoom videos, so it’s no surprise that many see the war as less about people in Eastern Europe and more about us in our bedrooms.

Most egregiously, we had this week Anna Lynne McCord, a Hollywood actress and self-styled ‘Human Rights Activist… Anti Human-Trafficking Ambassador… #endslavery’ Twitter campaigner deliver a poem directed at Vladimir Putin.