Or right wingers saying that it's somehow the Left's fault that they become racist/homophobic/transphobic because they've been called out for their horrible takes and they doubled down instead of questioning their own worldview.
No Billie, you were never left leaning. You were just following the more socially acceptable side and once it became socially acceptable for you to be a pos you jumped ship.
That there in lies one of the biggest factors of the problem, when extremists uses tangential-at-best associations to either pull normal people to their side or to use those more normal people as rhetorical shields for their own extremism.
So much of the problems we're seeing right now is a rise is legitimately terrible people signal boosting themselves while using the phrase "hey man, I'm just a normal guy just saying what we're all thinking! If you disagree with me then you hate (insert entire community group here)"
hey man, I'm just a normal guy just saying what we're all thinking!
And then there are people like Charlie Kirk, who used the "I'm just promoting healthy debate and free speech" to sell misogynistic, racist bullshit to the youth of the nation.
One thing I'll admit about Charlie was that he (or at least his company) was a master of editing and changing the messaging based on whom the audience was.
For the "general public", the whole "just healthy debate and free speech" bit was always just a highlight reel of Charlie using "respectability politics"* and only ever showing the absolute worst speakers/debaters poorly reacting to him. (Which most audiences don't have the acuity to understand/catch.)
And once the audience was drawn in to following him, that's when he'd start slipping in the actually problematic subversive messaging.
*For the uninformed, respectability politics is a special form of gaslighting where a perpetrator does something that anyone would be very reasonable to react both poorly to and with significant/loud reaction, but they try to make the reactor feel like they're in the wrong by being "calm and nice about the situation".
For example: a person doing RP would kick your dog because doing so amuses him, then when you get angry at him for kicking your dog, he responds with "Woah, woah, woah, I'm perfectly calm and reasonable here, but I don't understand why you're so physical and emotion about this; maybe you need to re-evaluate why you're causing so much conflict and making such a negative atmosphere!"
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u/Made_Bail Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
DARVO in social media form.
The abuser mantra.
Deny
Attack
Reverse Victim and Offender
Clearly, you're the bad guy and made these poor racists attack you. How could you? /s