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shinelikethunder:

Bullying in the name of a good cause does not, like, transitively gain nobility from the worthiness and importance of the cause it hitches itself to.

What’s the point at which normal anger and conflict (and abrasiveness, and self-righteousness, and the usual array of often-justified reactions to injustice) unambiguously becomes bullying? I’d propose that if someone consistently opts to destroy, tear down, and humiliate people, even in situations where that’s actively detrimental to fixing the injustice they claim to be fighting–if they consistently, when faced with practical opportunities to solve problems and make the situation suck less, jump right to whatever bad-faith interpretation will let them escalate conflict and identify enemies to destroy–the murky questions of “at what point do anger and militancy turn counterproductive?” become a lot simpler.

At that point we’re not actually weighing contributions to a cause against collateral damage. They’re not contributing. They’re exploiting people’s anger and people’s need to see perpetrators get called on their bullshit, they’re using it to satisfy their own thirst for cruelty and domination, and they’re doing it at great cost to the cause they’ve attached themselves to. These fuckers don’t just sabotage constructive work and thwart coalition-building and outreach, they destroy communities from the inside. Because getting called on their bullshit is nothing but a golden opportunity for them to turn community members who might’ve had the standing to hamper them into yet another entry on their “enemies to destroy” list. If anyone who disagrees with them on methods or calls them on being counterproductive gets declared not just wrong but an agent of The Enemy, take it as a great big flashing alarm light that their judgement on who is an agent if The Enemy should not be relied upon. And, you know, maybe reassess your opinion of their judgement and trustworthiness in general.