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You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain
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This is a problem I have with many social movements and organizations. This problem transcends political ideology or stated goals. If your movement exists to fight something subjective, I will not trust you.
Think about it this way:
If the SPLC exists to fight bigotry and gets donations to fight bigorty, then why would they ever stop? Once actually hateful people have been exposed, your job is done and you will no longer make money. What do you do next? Continue looking and "finding" bigotry where none exists. This way you can justify the existence of your agency and continue profiting off of it despite being completely ineffectual. Once you start outliving your goal, regardless of what that goal originally was, you will warp into an entity which smears or misrepresents things around it so as to continue raking in cash while fighting against nothing.
Even if you don't make money doing it, there are still attachments people have to groups or movements and will continue to redefine what the movement is about to keep it shambling along. Many make this argument when it comes to the state of modern feminism. After the stated goal of legal equality between the sexes was achieved, the movement was over. Instead of peacefully fading, the members of the movement changed the goals to be about equity and not equality, as well as a host of other additions. Now it almost looks like what was a movement deserving of great respect has become a meme and this does a terrible disservice to what the movement traditionally stood for and accomplished.
How to fix it
If you want a social change, make it very clear what you want, make is possible to achieve, and pack up shop once you get it. Don't make it impossible, broad, or undefined.
Implying that's what the SPLC is for is very generous ;)
It doesn't hurt to be kind. Who knows they might even be watching me to fabricate some story to get more money lol
If racism is profitable it will exist. Before it was profitable to hate people because of their skin color to steal their shit and enslave them. Today its profitable to call everyone a racist and fan the flames of hatred. Then charge others to fight the racism they promote.
Its almost like markets can predict politics. End the incentives for racism, bigotry, sexism and it will go away. Not that anyone actually wants that.
You may not make money for your "attachments" to an idea or group, someone is. Groups and ideologies don't appear out of no where, someone is always benefiting.
exactly right man. If you can convince people there is an issue, and you can stop it (but only if you get patreon $$$), then you are set despite contributing nothing. Offense is a cottage industry. Damn that would have been a better title.
Curated for #informationwar (by @wakeupnd)
Relevance: Sharing the truth.