why are you fine with bigotry so long as it doesn't come from a politician?
This is probably the first anon ask I have gotten that wasn't outright spam in like ten years and it's such a piss on the poor ass take on what I said I really couldn't help but give you a reply while I have ten minutes between doing something actually useful with my time, so here goes.
The word bigotry actually means: obstinate or narrow-minded adherence to one's own opinions and prejudices. This is applicable to both left, right, and centrist viewpoints. A leftist person can be bigoted. A republican can be bigoted. A libertarian can be bigoted. Bigotry is made actionable in a facist regime by suppressing people of differing viewpoints and weaponizing those differences against others in harmful ways. The United States Government is currently using white bigotry toward people of color to justify a kill factory that turns law abiding citizens and immigrants into dead people for the sin of only being brown. They are using gender bigotry to strip trans people of their rights to exist as people in public spaces for the sin of being who they are. This is categorically more important to me at this stage of the current political climate than an already disenfranchised person currently under seige in this political sphere saying one shitty thing online a decade ago.
Refusing to accept that there is some measure of prejudice in every person around you is a child's view of the world. Everyone you know, in your entire life, has said something problematic, fetishistic, or outright racist in their life (and I KNOW that the instinct is to be like "no not me! I would never!" But even as a child you probably had some shitty opinions of POC, or Women, or trans people, out of nothing but ignorance and not knowing shit about these people, it fucking happens don't be a martyr abt it) and I simply refuse to believe those people (i.e. fucking everyone alive) are incapable of changing and growing into a better person. People make mistakes, and unfortunately in the world we now live in with an online record of all of those mistakes, sometimes they come back to haunt you well after you have changed immensely as a person.
And the fact of the matter is: I don't have fucking time between keeping myself alive, keeping my community alive, and doing what I can to advocate for those who cannot advocate for themselves to give even half a fuck about someone who said a slur. Yeah. Sure. That sucks of them. Inarguably shitty thing to do. They should not do that and maybe we should talk about that. But later. I'll consider action about it when I don't have all the previously listed shit on my plate. I am not going to put them in the pillory for it right now when we have people in elected positions casually calling for the deaths of thousands of people. The pillory will hopefully be occupied by the people actively causing deaths. It is called "Picking your battles".
To answer your question with another question: Why do YOU care so much what some individual with zero real power on the internet is doing when your neighbors are starving because the government is making it illegal for them to exist in public? Why are you jumping down the throat of a person who made a mistake years ago, before some pretty major things happened in their world, when you could be doing something useful in your community to help others instead? Is it becase it's a lot easier to be mad at someone you've never met online than to actually make time and put in effort to do real mutual aid? Because like, man, do I get that! Sure is a lot easier to sit on my phone and be pissed off about injustice than to actually go out there to do something about it! But you have to realize: division between people right now just means they win.
Endlessly debating us vs them discourse, who "counts" as part of the community, who should be turned away, just ends with more people hurt. Refusing to see that people can change, can see the error of their ways, and grow into better people just cuts those people off from being ABLE to change. Because if you do something wrong (and you will, everyone does, people all make mistakes) and you see the light, but the community you hurt refuses to accept you back even though you have shown you have changed and grown, then where else do you turn but right back to where you came from? The only other place that WILL give you community, the exact people hurting us. All of us (white americans to be clear, since you seem to have a lot of bad faith already) have a lot more in common with a racist republican redneck than the technocratic elite trying to built a facist regime in our country, and despite what people may think it is a LOT easier to turn those people to the cause with information and education and general kind welcome hospitality than it is to ostracize and exclude them and try to still keep a movement going. The effort is worth it, redemption and rehabilitation is worth it, and I simply don't have the energy to turn my neighbors away because they have flaws (even if those flaws suck shit) when the numbers on our side are already dwindling because of bullshit like this.
Have a good fucking day, be good to each other. Everyone eats, feed the hungry.
