I see a lot of people reacting negatively to minorities and leftists breaking down on social media over something seemingly trivial. They will often say “wow they are making us look bad, we need to make sure to stop anyone near me from doing that”
The thing about that though is right wingers will push and push and push. They will spend all day every day harassing someone until they finally break down and have an outburst. It doesn’t matter how much of a model minority you think you are, you have a breaking point. The straw that breaks the camels back doesn’t look significant on its own, that is the entire point. There is no way this will ever look good for us, and there is no way we can all tank it to the face forever. The mentality that these “make us look bad” is exactly the reactionary thought we are trying to fight.
In essence people are seeing reactionary action done in response to our open existence, and thinking preventing our existence to reduce reactionary action is the right way forward. Reactionaries are attacking because it is not what they want. I don’t want a world where reactionaries are content not to fight, that just means they’ve won.
They will get those clips one way or another. They will loot in riots themselves and record it if they have to. They will spew their shit regardless of what we do. The best thing we can do is accept it and actually get shit done.
Irony? I think you’re perhaps assuming that my argument for not ceding space to conservatives is a call for equal representation of ideologies in spaces, but it’s not.
I fully believe conservatism (not to be confused with many groups that overlap with conservatism in particular places, e.g. religious people, who are not in fact all conservative) is a harmful ideology, and should be driven out of public spaces like assholes should be kicked out of bars when they harass people.
I’m not making an argument against echo chambers, just ceding space to conservatism.