Hard agree. I have pushed for using the tactics of the enemy against them for a long time. It is usually met with “high road” flavored resistance.
Let’s appropriate the word “re tard”, apply it to Republicans. “That’s what the ® next to their name stands for after all.” This shit practically writes itself.
When someone says that’s offensive to people with mental disabilities, act incredulous. “Why would I refer to someone with a mental disability as a re tard? Not everyone with a mental disability is a Republican.”
While I fully agree, I can’t even say that in Lemmy, it’s the “word of peak performatism” that leftists cling to to paint people as “bad” like many other pointless, cringe social battles that don’t lead to outcomes of any kind, much less good outcomes.
We have to stop policing language, we have to stop policing people who have bad attitudes or dumb-pseudo-racism that we all know can be turned around with 10 minutes of conversation if we made the effort. We have to realign our priorities to the life-threatening, existential threats to our lives and futures, like wealth inequality, oligarchy, wage theft and unemployment, education and social safety nets and preparing for climate change. These are not areas that the right has a leg to stand on, nor a real desire to fight broadly, we just get turned off by the small minority who are loudest. We have to stop butting heads with people who do not care about the things we do, thinking if we just “frame the perfect argument” they will suddenly care about other humans. We CAN change people though if we make the effort, if we have a shred of emotional intelligence we’re still a thousand times smarter than them, so it’s wild so many on this side are so afraid to engage. We don’t make the effort to talk to them because too many sensitive tulips on the left perceive insults and schoolyard taunts as “oppression” and use that as an excuse to hide, to stay in safe spaces like this one. (Of course real oppression exists, but we have to get better at identifying what hurts us and what just hurts our feelings, the lack of nuance on both sides is killing us.)
Too many on this side are exactly the same as the right, in that they want vindication and vengeance instead of a better world. They want to see the people they hate suffer, and still are the side who point out “hypocrisy” as a rhetorical weapon. They don’t want to organize coordinated narratives and storylines for dumb people to connect with, they want to police other leftists for using specific words or not being gentle enough with their audiences or pets.
We’re going to end up the most morally superior refugees being herded into the camps by robots.
The problem has never been the words, but how they’re directed.
The right broadly has no concept of “punching down” and just see anyone different than themselves as threats that need to punched. But they do love to twist our words against us, to use our kindness and empathy to get us to reconsider our language, leaving us spinning in circles worried that the actual effective ammunition we have against them might hurt the wrong people.
Meanwhile they will carpet bomb entire populations with hateful policies and rhetoric without second thought. This is their strength, it’s why they are gaining numbers and have won so much ground.
I don’t think we should make a “movement” to be “allowed” to use slurs, but we definitely have to stop caring about and policing those who have no qualms about directing painful language upwards.
Hard agree. I have pushed for using the tactics of the enemy against them for a long time. It is usually met with “high road” flavored resistance.
Let’s appropriate the word “re tard”, apply it to Republicans. “That’s what the ® next to their name stands for after all.” This shit practically writes itself.
When someone says that’s offensive to people with mental disabilities, act incredulous. “Why would I refer to someone with a mental disability as a re tard? Not everyone with a mental disability is a Republican.”
Apologies for the spelling. I’m on .ml
While I fully agree, I can’t even say that in Lemmy, it’s the “word of peak performatism” that leftists cling to to paint people as “bad” like many other pointless, cringe social battles that don’t lead to outcomes of any kind, much less good outcomes.
We have to stop policing language, we have to stop policing people who have bad attitudes or dumb-pseudo-racism that we all know can be turned around with 10 minutes of conversation if we made the effort. We have to realign our priorities to the life-threatening, existential threats to our lives and futures, like wealth inequality, oligarchy, wage theft and unemployment, education and social safety nets and preparing for climate change. These are not areas that the right has a leg to stand on, nor a real desire to fight broadly, we just get turned off by the small minority who are loudest. We have to stop butting heads with people who do not care about the things we do, thinking if we just “frame the perfect argument” they will suddenly care about other humans. We CAN change people though if we make the effort, if we have a shred of emotional intelligence we’re still a thousand times smarter than them, so it’s wild so many on this side are so afraid to engage. We don’t make the effort to talk to them because too many sensitive tulips on the left perceive insults and schoolyard taunts as “oppression” and use that as an excuse to hide, to stay in safe spaces like this one. (Of course real oppression exists, but we have to get better at identifying what hurts us and what just hurts our feelings, the lack of nuance on both sides is killing us.)
Too many on this side are exactly the same as the right, in that they want vindication and vengeance instead of a better world. They want to see the people they hate suffer, and still are the side who point out “hypocrisy” as a rhetorical weapon. They don’t want to organize coordinated narratives and storylines for dumb people to connect with, they want to police other leftists for using specific words or not being gentle enough with their audiences or pets.
We’re going to end up the most morally superior refugees being herded into the camps by robots.
I’ve taken to saying that I’d call them that, but I wouldn’t want to disparage the mentally disabled
The problem has never been the words, but how they’re directed.
The right broadly has no concept of “punching down” and just see anyone different than themselves as threats that need to punched. But they do love to twist our words against us, to use our kindness and empathy to get us to reconsider our language, leaving us spinning in circles worried that the actual effective ammunition we have against them might hurt the wrong people.
Meanwhile they will carpet bomb entire populations with hateful policies and rhetoric without second thought. This is their strength, it’s why they are gaining numbers and have won so much ground.
I don’t think we should make a “movement” to be “allowed” to use slurs, but we definitely have to stop caring about and policing those who have no qualms about directing painful language upwards.