Confusing frustrations (Alt-right and online debate crap)
The continual alt-right technique of projection and appropriation of arguments is perpetually confusing to me. I mean that not in the "I don't get it" sense, but in the "I can't figire out who's right and who's wrong" sense.
The latest flare ups have seen people on both sides chiding others for their lack of self awareness, calling everyone facists, and so forth. I can't navigate online spaces anymore, because everyone's using the same reasoning and saying the same things. Just aiming it in a different direction. I can't understand why people are tolerating and supporting what looks like hatred, but seemingly those same people have massive support, and I begin to wonder if my assessments are wrong. I'm also continually afraid of people professing that violence is the answer.
Full disclosure, I also fully anticipate that my being squeamish about violence will cause people to regard me as a liability, and an enabler of evil.
It's very confusing and I feel myself just wanting to give up, because I am either too impressionable or dull to know what's what anymore. And maybe if I just evaporate and disappear, at least that will make everyone's life easier because I won't be supporting the awful people, even if I don't know who the awful people are.
I'm just too easily overwhelmed, and weak.
Confusing frustrations (Alt-right and online debate crap)
@Phorm Your feelings are real. You are not a bad genie for feeling them. I can share my thoughts if you'd find them helpful, but I'd rather focus on making sure you feel like you're being respected and understood. What right bow would help you feel safer?
Confusing frustrations (Alt-right and online debate crap)
@literorrery Honestly at the moment, I just want to know what I can do to increase the safety of others, most critically including reducing the harm I do to others. I just have zero idea if I'm better off removing myself entirely from everything, if I'm bending to the will and thoughts of evil, or if I'm unconsciously enabling evil. And overall that makes me feel completely unsafe, because I may become actively or passively harmful to people who are already in peril.
My apologies for making noise about this, by the way. But my vast appreciation for your thoughts on the matter.
Confusing frustrations (Alt-right and online debate crap)
@Phorm I think that it's entirely possible for people to have mutually incompatible goals or needs without anyone being morally flawed. It's very hard to deal with, but sometimes it's unavoidable. I don't have any pat answers for those situations, but I do think that coming to terms with those possibilities is critical for self-care. It's the starting point for deciding when to accede to others and when to assert the self.
Confusing frustrations (Alt-right and online debate crap)
@Phorm I think that speech which advocates for the suffering of others is a form of violence that we as a society have been trained to think of as harmless because it's "just words," and we're now seeing the consequences of that. As a result, there's a lot of "ambient background violence" to which people are now responding as one would threats of violence: declarations of boundaries and promises to respond in kind.
Confusing frustrations (Alt-right and online debate crap)
@Phorm I'm glad to do so, but happier that it's helping. =n.n=
As for how to counter the "just speech" claim, Sartre laid the groundwork for that in the 30s, calling out anti-Semitic language among the proto-Nazis as verbal violence that should be treated as such. I don't have the link handy but it should be easily searchable online.
Confusing frustrations (Alt-right and online debate crap)
@Phorm All the permissiveness towards exclusionary and dehumanizing speech has created a culture, or at least a subculture, that's so steeped in such concepts that some members are acting on the ideas contained within their words, while the rest continue to hide behind the smokescreen of "just words." In response, a lot of people are now saying, "no, it's not just words, and we will defend ourselves if you keep going."
Confusing frustrations (Alt-right and online debate crap)
@Phorm Unfortunately, it's also inspired a bunch of folks on "our side" -- inasmuch as there are sides and we have only one -- to see the lack of punishment for such speech as license to do the same, to lash out preemptively and cite the admittedly long history of violence as a justification. "They did it first" is no excuse.
Confusing frustrations (Alt-right and online debate crap)
@literorrery I very much appreciate this perspective, because it's one that I think I've been unable to identify. The violence of speech that advocates suffering is routinely dismissed, downplayed, and ignored - To the point that it seems many people ridicule those who respond to it.
I think that's been a very large part of my frustration recently. While I can recognize the vile, contemptible nature of such speech, I've been at a loss to counter the idea that it's 'just speech' and therefore should be easily ignored/that is has no consequence.
Thanks much for sharing your thoughts on this. It helps. ❤️