this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
2255 points (94.2% liked)

tumblr

3451 readers
359 users here now

Welcome to /c/tumblr, a place for all your tumblr screenshots and news.

Our Rules:

  1. Keep it civil. We're all people here. Be respectful to one another.

  2. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry. I should not need to explain this one.

  3. Must be tumblr related. This one is kind of a given.

  4. Try not to repost anything posted within the past month. Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.

  5. No unnecessary negativity. Just because you don't like a thing doesn't mean that you need to spend the entire comment section complaining about said thing. Just downvote and move on.


Sister Communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I once talked with an enlightened "pacifistic" centrist.

At some point I used the low hanging fruit - colonialism! do you think both sides were right? I felt kind of silly for not using a more sophisticated argument but- he said "yes, they should've just talked and came to some compromise :)". It didn't matter to him that one side was clearly an aggressor, because since the native people tried defending themselves that was enough for him to think both sides were bad.

clearly that fruit was a bit too high still, so I went with the good old - what about Jews and hitler? he replied that still, they should've tried to come to some sort of compromise- at that point I was very done talking to that guy. How on earth did he see a possible middle ground between "i'd like to live please thanks" and "i want your whole ethnicity eradicated" is beyond me

the lesson is - start with arguments you find simple and straightforward, ones with obvious answers, because some people can and will trip over even the lowest hurdles, and it'll save you a lot of time lol

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

The playground metaphor is a great one. And I love this quote:

Paolo Freire said, “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

It's not enough to remain neutral in a conflict, be it racism, fascism, colonialism, or otherwise. You have to be actively against it to hold a decent opinion, otherwise you're assisting the racists, fascists, and colonizers.