RE: At What Point Does Activism Become Assholism?
April 13, 2017 at 4:52 pm
(This post was last modified: April 13, 2017 at 4:53 pm by Regina.)
It's when you expect everyone to automatically agree with you on everything, and when you expect people to respect any opinion you hold just because you're a minority in some way, as if that means something.
People deserve respect, ideas don't.
And I would also add, part of the reason the political Right-wing are currently trampling all over the progress The Left have spent decades making is because of these types of people. If the best argument you've got to throw at someone is that they're "racist", they're "homophobic", they're "transphobic" etc, you better sit the fuck down and make way for activists who can actually debate, because these ad-hominem techniques just don't work anymore in the current political climate. People now shrug off accusations of bigotry as the total non-arguments they've become, because they've become so over-used they don't mean anything anymore, and that's scary. It opens up a lot of further arguments, some actually very bigoted, that we thought we'd put to bed a long time ago.
People deserve respect, ideas don't.
And I would also add, part of the reason the political Right-wing are currently trampling all over the progress The Left have spent decades making is because of these types of people. If the best argument you've got to throw at someone is that they're "racist", they're "homophobic", they're "transphobic" etc, you better sit the fuck down and make way for activists who can actually debate, because these ad-hominem techniques just don't work anymore in the current political climate. People now shrug off accusations of bigotry as the total non-arguments they've become, because they've become so over-used they don't mean anything anymore, and that's scary. It opens up a lot of further arguments, some actually very bigoted, that we thought we'd put to bed a long time ago.
"Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the road, and then getting hit by an airplane" - sarcasm_only
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
