They Can Divide us by Tactics Alone

by anubis2814

I got unfriended by someone on facebook by someone I respect for the first time.  Belief and politics wise we are pretty much identical.  We’ve been facebook friends for years now.

The problems I’m having the most issues on is discussing tactics and communication. The issue at hand was about using violence in a democracy and if it actually can make things better.    Now mind you it doesn’t help that I was in one conversation, on the subject, thought it was posted by the same group, then went into the discussion was the mindset of dealing with the other group.  I have not seen any evidence that violence changes things in a democratic society.  Any time I tried to use arguments against it, they pretty much all shot me down with the fact that I was privileged and weren’t actually affected by the issues at hand.   I used every argument I could and every social tell I could to let them know the I was one of them but as they could not see my face and how much I cared and how much empathy I had, they read troll on me and called me an elitist snob.  He ended up blocking me because he didn’t like my arguments against violence.  Since I wasn’t for violence, I obviously didn’t care as much as they did, and my privilege was shut down.   

This is one point where we share disagreement, tactics not substance, and the bubble was tightened, one trip up, one disagreement on even the smallest level and you get removed from someone’s bubble.  And since they can’t tell if you are genuine or not and can’t see your emotions, you must be a troll and I can’t really blame them.  

Another discussion I had was with an issue on communication, it was on the topic on mansplaining vs other kinds of communication of feminism to men.  I left the tactics against mansplaining and manterrupting other sources but was trying to focus on what scientists said about how communication works and the best tactics.  All of a sudden I got dogpiled by people accusing me of mansplaining, and nothing I could say could save me from their taunts.   My being a man was enough to shut me down.  Questioning tactics is off limits even genuine allies.  

Unfortunately once again because they weren’t there with me in person and see I was genuine they heard every well actually smug male asshole you could think of.  Every time the bubble closes off, people have divergent evolution on thinking and when they come back together they are unrecognizable in language and beliefs.  This division is what caused the Bernie/Hillary divide in the party, Bernie supporters were talking about stuff we had no idea what they were talking about because they only talked to other bernie supporters.  We all want the same thing but we are divided by tactics and if your side doesn’t want or approve of the tactics your group uses they are secretly colluding with the enemy and are just as bad.   

This has to stop, or they will continue to divide us until we are nothing.  This is how the spanish civil war happened with partisanship reaching violent levels and any form of disagreement met with violence leading the the rise of fascism as a backlash to the leftist violence.  The left and right were fairly evenly matched and the left looked like it was going to win, but the left ended up eating itself because they disagreed on tactics and they couldn’t compromise at all and new fights broke out between factions.   Thanks to the internet and you can surround yourself with people who agree with you or at least don’t openly disagree with you for fear of unfriending you can happily live in a bubble thinking you are the most righteous.  Pick your battles, there are certain things worth blocking over, there are certain people worth blocking or attacking, but the assumption that everyone is an asshole or a troll for disagreeing with you is exactly what their strategy is and we can’t organize or compromise on anything or we aren’t purist enough.   MLK was able to get the pro violence black groups and the anti-violence conservative black groups to work together and they accomplished something amazing, and since we live in a democracy that is the only way to change anything.  If we can’t even question tactics without getting blackballed from the bubble, no change will come and violence will truly end up having to be the only answer.