But what I got was dogpiled by a gang of self-righteous bullies. Parroting a bunch of thought-terminating clichés, and hurling bullshit accusations that had nothing to do with anything I actually said, or anything I've ever said, here or anywhere.

Life is too short to deal with that kind of networked idiocy. So I'm going to say this once, to anyone who thinks this is an acceptable way to carry on.

(2/?)

What if it was someone you care about, who you knew as a perfectly lovely person before they started hanging out on that dodgy gaming forum, or wherever they picked up the bigotry brainworms? What if it was your best friend since school, your sibling, your parent, your *child*?

Maybe then you'd think twice about whether it's good advice to tar and feather other human beings as bigots, and deny them all social contact with anyone not also pegged as a bigot?

(3/?)

If not maybe you're a fucking sociopath? Maybe you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror, and think deeply about Nietzsche's famous quote about fighting monsters.

https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/112782360387794556

Maybe you need to seriously consider the possibility that you're in a cult? Telling people to cut off longstanding relationships with people who don't share the group ideology is what cults do. Because maintaining old relationships is how you keep perspective, and avoid getting sucked into cults.

(4/?)

Frances Lee wrote about being excommunicated from the "church of social justice" (see the link here https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/110789459980665321). Lee was being polite, but let's call a spade a spade; what she's describing in her pieces on this topic is a cult. A 21st century networked cult, not mindslaves in a compound, but a cult all the same.

A cult that I refuse to conform to, or make any excuses for, just became it's ideology is a twisted parody of leftist and pro-diversity ideas I deeply believe in.

(5/?)

The identi-moonie cult has nothing to do with real world anti-bigotry or social justice work. It's the opposite; a crucial part of the conservative-to-fascist pipeline. So I say this to the cult members and their apologists and appeasers;

Stay out of my mentions with this bullshit. Or by all that is holy, I will verbally tear you several new arseholes. I will unleash all my fury with the Useful Idiots of the world on you, and I will enjoy every minute of it.

You have been warned.

(6/?)

Oh and in case it needs to be spelled out, as I said to the identi-moonies who dogpiled me as mentioned in the OP, I agree that nobody is obliged to educate bigots. If it's not safe for you to do that, or you simply choose not to spend your time that way, I respect that.

All I'm asking is that we stop publicly shaming people who maintain *pre-existing* relationships with people who've contracted bigot brainworms, and try to guide them back to sanity.

Surely that's not too much to ask?

(7/7)

@strypey I mostly agree.

I think we can be overly prescriptive in either direction: whether we tell people to disassociate with anyone who disagrees on a particular issue, or to make friends with those who disagree with their existence. Room for nuance.

Simultaneously, there are cases where shunning *is* the appropriate response.

And if we choose not to shun, we need to educate; we've (white people) put up with racism for far too long, silence is no longer an option.
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@wxhbxh @strypey (not accusing you of either extreme tbc)

There is a lot of ground between the acquaintance who makes an off-colour remark and the klansman, and for the social justice movement at large to cede all of that ground would be a tactical error.

But we also need to be willing to trust one another to determine our own level of comfort and make our own decisions about whose redemption we put energy towards.
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