leupagus:

funereal-disease:

So one thing I’m not seeing mentioned much but that I think is really important to acknowledge is: not every member of a hate group is equally radicalized.

See, a lot of our rhetoric re: dealing with them assumes that every member is a hardened lifetimer. But there are always many, many lackeys to every kingpin. Not every terrorist sympathizer is Osama bin Laden. Cultlike movements are largely composed of people who are isolated or gullible or otherwise vulnerable. Their leaders know this. They capitalize on an underlying dysfunction and turn it into something monstrous. In any such movement, there will be people who have doubts but fear being crushed for their dissent. And those are the people it’s critically important to reach out to.

I think a lot of people assume that compassionate outreach is about, like, nicely asking hardened leaders to stop. It’s not! I frankly resent seeing pacifism strawmanned so badly. It’s about undermining those leaders’ bases. It’s about getting through to people who aren’t yet in too deep. When we write them off as exactly as bad as the people recruiting and manipulating them, we’re implicitly yielding ground. We’re ceding a huge number of potential allies to hateful causes, and I am not willing to do that. I want as many people on the side of good as possible. To do that, we have to be willing to get in and help deradicalize.

It’s laughable to expect that someone like S p e n c e r will just wake up one day and realize he’s wrong. It’s not impossible, but it’s not worth banking on. But what about an eighteen-year-old flirting with dangerous ideologies? Isn’t giving up on him implicitly ceding him to S p e n c e r ‘ s side? Do not conflate the psychological profile of someone who’s just beginning to become radicalized with that of someone who’s been entrenched for decades. That difference matters.

That’s a point well taken but I think a question that gets lost in this perspective is “to whom does it matter?” Because I personally can afford to distinguish between an eighteen-year-old who makes ugly jokes about Muslims and say “well he’s flirting with dangerous ideologies” – but my Muslim friends do not have that luxury. My gay friends do not have the luxury of parsing the depth to which the person who just told them they’re going to hell honestly believes it. My Black friends do not have the luxury of deciding that the kid who threw a rock through their window is amenable to being deradicalized. And I, a Jew in the middle of Texas don’t have the luxury of reaching out in understanding when I get a swastika painted on my front door.

It’s important to try and speak to people who may be on the fringes, but it’s also important for me and you and everyone who isn’t immediately vulnerable to their bile not to expect those who are to be the ones to do the speaking. If someone wakes up one day and realizes he’s wrong, that’s great, but it is not the responsibility of any of the people who he denigrated to forgive him or even accept him. Realizing that you’ve been part of a hate movement does not entitle you to kindness from those you enjoyed hating.