This is a fascinatingly erroneous application of the concept of thought crime. I can see where it’s coming from but it’s off the rails a bit in some rather interesting ways.
The concept of thought crime, and by extension the proposed “thought benevolence”, refers to things that exist entirely within the mind, the original idea being that you’ll be punished for not “thinking right” as a commentary on the idea that one should have a right to their own thoughts (that’s roughly the idea, at least). Looking at the post’s presented examples of “thought benevolence” we have reading theory, arguing on twitter, and talking. None of these exist within the mind, they all involve direct interaction with the outside world. They aren’t thoughts at all, they’re actions.
People reading this may or may not have noticed, but this is actually very well aligned with the way conservatives use the concept of thought crime. We’ve seen time and time again people loudly call for violence against a marginalized group, receive negative responses, and then claim they’re being persecuted by the “liberal thought police” for their “difference of opinion”. It’s treating action as thought, just like here.
This misuse serves a different purpose though, which you can see by comparing the “thoughts” (reading, talking, arguing) to the “actions” (voting, puchasing, donating). The purpose here is to present some actions as not accomplishing anything and others as making progress. Notice how all of the “actions” here are very polite, follow the status quo, align with neoliberal values, and can be talked about publicly without issue. The idea presented here subtly becomes “if I/polite society don’t approve of the action you’re taking, then you aren’t even taking an action at all, you’re just thinking and doing nothing”. Even the goals of such a person are presented as existing fully in their head (they want a “fantasy revolution”).
We can sit here arguing all day about which actions are more or less effective, but I think we should all at least be able to agree that actions are actions and thoughts are thoughts. To be clear I don’t think OP set out to trick anyone, but in their thought crime related “revelation” they actually demonstrated the effects of propaganda very well, because it’s altered their very idea of what “taking action” means and watered it down to a list of state-approved behaviors which they present in contrast to a strawman “do-nothing leftist” who’s actions have been literally minimized out of existence.
