The horrendously wrong question

Interviewer: Do you condemn Hamas?

Me: Are you serious?

Interviewer frowning: I’m serious

Me: You can’t be when asking such a propagandized question

A long, painful break

Me: Of course, I don’t condemn Hamas. I support all Palestinian groups doing armed rebellion, including Hamas.

During interviews, discussions and such I’m constantly asked one particular brand of questions. It can seemingly cover a number of subjects, but it all pretty much boils down to this:
- Why are you a radical?
In which I reply without thinking twice.
- Are you a journalist?

The interviewer looks baffled at me.

- I am, why do you ask?

- As stated, a true journalist would never ask me such a propagandized question.

I pause a bit.

- You definitely ask the horrendously wrong question, one designed to propagate the oppressors’ view on a given situation and human society in general.
And the questioner in question glare at me, even if we don’t necessarily sit face to face, and then, after choking gin distress for a while:
- What is the right question?
- The question you should ask yourself is, I say, stressing the point, making it practically impossible to miss, even to the most brainwashed journalist or lackluster observer: - Why you are asking that question.
They come to me and other truly radical thinkers and observers and actors upon the stage with tons of baggage, a huge set of assumptions taught them by a society long since paralyzed by stale agreement. They are not used to have their perceptions challenged at all, and certainly not in such a fundamental manner.
The answer to the initial question is usually very easy, like this: «Because it is the right thing to do, especially the world has become the horror it has become».
But in those settings, the way I see it, it is wrong to answer such questions with the obvious answer, because it is far more important to challenge the preconceptions than to play the distractive game of questions and answers. As long as the world is a tennis court (and you the ball), or a stage (and you the audience with lots of guns directed at you), it is crucial to not play tyranny’s game, but turn it back on itself.