you don't need to be persecuted to have a good reason to fight against persecution

Posted Sep 24, 2018 3:25 UTC (Mon) by Garak (guest, #99377)
In reply to: After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker) by drag
Parent article: After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

That is, generally speaking, the people who are being destructive are not people who are the actual victims of personal attacks (or whatever), but are the people who feel compelled to act out on behalf of the victims... whether or not the victims themselves actually want it, ask for it, or benefit from it in any possible way.

I think your comment does a disservice to those (perhaps far fewer) people who are being constructive, are not the victims of personal attacks (or whatever), and feel motivated to act on their own behalf as well as the behalf of the victims, whether or not the victims actually want it, ask for it, or benefit from it in any possible way.... ..... because they perceive it an entirely reasonable thing to do in the pursuit of 'justice' which would benefit themselves and the victims in obvious possible ways.

I.e. suppose a nation with half a dozen predominant categorizable races. r1, r2, r3, r4, r5, and r6. A person might be in category r2, receiving benefit due to national racist history, and see victims in the r5 and r6 categories. They might feel motivated/compelled/whatever to act out against unjust treatment reported by those r5 and r6 victims, *BOTH* because a desired end result of equal justice under law for r5 and r6 types would benefit the r5 and r6 types, *AND* equal justice under the law would benefit r2 types that are not of the subcategory that thinks national racism intersecting with the justice system is ever acceptable.

I'm not saying there aren't some destructive people of the type you describe, but your comment does not seem to be in sufficiently good faith that you acknowledge there are also constructive people of the type I describe.

What makes it even more confusing is that in the majority of cases these 'social justice' activists are willing to make the lives of the "victims" worse as part of their pathological campaign to stamp out negative elements of communities they are not even a part of.

I call bullshit, I'd bet money you made that statistic up. Though certainly the sentiment rings true with many a dramatized situation where an individual or group making the choice, in the presence of conflicting attempted persuasions relating to that choice, to stand up for non-unjust treatment from some powerful group or individual, understands that they put themselves at great risk of overall negative outcome to do so. The old "you don't get freedom for free" thing. But of course, there is a full spectrum of idiots on all sides of major issues. If you feel like cherrypicking and making up statistics you can always spin it any way you like. I'd doubledown on your appeal to complexity and suggest that the most politically contested issues also often involve false-flag extremists as well as functionally equivalent useful-idiots.

you don't need to be persecuted to have a good reason to fight against persecution

Posted Sep 24, 2018 7:43 UTC (Mon) by paxillus (guest, #79451) [Link]

" ... whether or not the victims actually want it, ask for it, or benefit from it in any possible way.... ..... because they perceive it an entirely reasonable thing to do in the pursuit of 'justice' which would benefit themselves and the victims in obvious possible ways."

I wouldn't want anyone to self-appoint themselves as my social justice champion if I didn't actually want it, ask for it or benefit from it in any possible way, simply "because they perceive it ...".

This type of "pursuit of 'justice'" sounds too much like The One True Way.

you don't need to be persecuted to have a good reason to fight against persecution

Posted Sep 24, 2018 11:27 UTC (Mon) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link] (1 responses)

This important issue, and an autobiographical example of its coal-face aspects, is described in https://quillette.com/2018/09/14/social-justice-in-the-sh... .

you don't need to be persecuted to have a good reason to fight against persecution

Posted Sep 24, 2018 12:00 UTC (Mon) by paxillus (guest, #79451) [Link]

"Beware of the false prophets of social justice"

Indeed

you don't need to be persecuted to have a good reason to fight against persecution

Posted Sep 24, 2018 12:32 UTC (Mon) by nilsmeyer (guest, #122604) [Link] (1 responses)

> I.e. suppose a nation with half a dozen predominant categorizable races. r1, r2, r3, r4, r5, and r6

Let’s not suppose that. Just because the United States puts everyone in somewhat arbitrary racial categories doesn’t mean it has any basis in biology, culture or character. These connections are hard to make I believe. And a lot of people seem to ONLY differentiate between white and non-white, presumably because they don’t like white men (if I’m being unfair).

you don't need to be persecuted to have a good reason to fight against persecution

Posted Sep 27, 2018 1:21 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

> And a lot of people seem to ONLY differentiate between white and non-white, presumably because they don’t like white men (if I’m being unfair).

????????? did you forget to insert a "non-" in front of "white"?

I live in Europe. AFAICS, the USA has a president who was voted into office mainly because of people who don't want to "differentiate between white and non-white, presumably because they don’t like *non-*white men" (emphasis mine).