You know I’ve always fucking despised this new leftist “fascists are this way because they weren’t bullied enough as kids! We need to bully people more!” trend for being fucking disgusting, but the apex of this stupidity is seeing someone try to apply this logic to Stephen Miller.
Stephen Miller. The man who is famous for being a middle school bully who carried that mentality into the rest of his life. Encouraging bullying, the thing that made Stephen Miller the way he was, would have made Stephen Miller a better person. Get the fuck out of here.
EXACTLY.
Fascists are almost entirely bullies, they were bullies in their youth, and they are bullies now.
Their entire worldview is based on the idea that some people deserve to be put down, mocked, and crushed until they "know their place". They believe Might makes Right, that Kindness and Empathy are weakness, and that only certain people belong.
They were not bullied.
They ARE bullies, that were allowed to get away with it as kids and continue to do it as adults.
Its worth noting that bullying is beyond tolerated and always has been. When I was a kid in the 1990s, I was bullied. Physical abuse. Do you know what the school said to my parents when they complained?
"He just has to learn to live with it".
That's the response bullying has always gotten. I have never seen any indication that schools are in any way different now than they were then.
Instead of encouraging it to stop fascism (and making fascism worse), maybe we can try discouraging bullying for a change? Actually try something new and do good in the process?
Also bullying never went away and I hate that people ever imply that it did
I've barely graduated high school and I got bullied until I switched schools in high school then more at summer camp, my girlfriend and multiple friends of mine were bullied out of their high schools, my brother gets actively bullied at school and from what I hear it only got better recently because he learned how to defend himself better. And as a camp counselor I am extremely sorry to report that bullying is alive and well at least among the children at the summer camp I work at.
And having been on the trusted authority side of things at camp, we're not handling it very well.
What I have noticed though is that the bullying is always an enforcement of social norms. In the same way that the cops beat someone up for being in the wrong social group or adults will socially isolate someone for being weird, kids will treat their peers who they see as other accordingly.
I know where the idea that we need to bully the fascism out is coming from. It's the idea that if we make clear sanctions for fascist behavior then people will be discouraged from doing it. but bullying is the fascist behavior and the fascists are the bullies. Do sanction fascist behavior. If you see kids engaging in fascist behavior then teach them why what they're doing is wrong and harmful, but bullying it out will not work.
And the thing is, when the bullied fight back against the bullies, they get in trouble. Zero tolerance policies, saying they should have just grinned and beared it. It happened to me, it happens to this day. I read about that girl who fought back against a boy for making pornographic AI videos of her and he never got in trouble and she did when she couldn't take it anymore.
This is why leftists just want to bring back lynch mobs. They just want an excuse to be the bullies.
Maybe we need to make bullying unacceptable.
