Man, the way this channels a mix of "it is the children who are wrong" and sheer impotence is hitting me hard. I mean, it really explains so much about modern activism.

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 24 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (18 children)

I attended my first protest thirty years ago. Modern activists need to be more clever. Learn the law so you know how to circumvent it. Turning things up to 11 just gets you discredited as “radicals” in the media. It’s a fruitless attempt at awareness that will just get you charged.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 26 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Turning things up to 11 just gets you discredited as “radicals” in the media.

Radicals need to exist in order to make the less-radical activists look reasonable by comparison. Otherwise they just get painted as radical no matter how milquetoast their protest is, and the Overton window moves away from their cause.

[–] Grail@aussie.zone 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Disrespectability politics!

https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/introducing-disrespectability-politics-50f6e2622ce4

[–] grue@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

First of all, this is great and deserves its own thread.

Second, there's a fatal flaw: authoritarians and capitalists (same difference) are predisposed in favor of fascism, and that's why the behavior of fuckwads like Trump keeps getting free passes and attention. When leftists try the same thing, they get ignored, censored, COINTELPRO'd, or even just straight-up murdered.

In other words, it's a good strategy and should work, all things being equal, but all things are not equal and that makes it a high-body-count strategy (even if there's no better one available).

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