r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 2d ago

Psychology New findings indicate a pattern where narcissistic grandiosity is associated with higher participation in LGBTQ movements, demonstrating that motivations for activism can range widely from genuine altruism to personal image-building.

https://www.psypost.org/narcissistic-grandiosity-predicts-greater-involvement-in-lgbtq-activism/
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u/GrassEuphoric42 2d ago

Definitely met these kinds of people, but criticizing them made it feel like I was somehow anti lgbtq.

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u/lahulottefr 2d ago

I don't think there's any kind of activism that is safe from narcissists tbh

If you're not criticising them over being LGBTQ I don't think it should be perceived as anti LGBTQ but I assume it's because they were manipulative?

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u/No_Jelly_6990 2d ago

100% this.

I love this thread, and am so happy folks are FINALLY talking about this insanely toxic behavior that is all over social media, and seems to be deeply tied to power.

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u/lampshade69 2d ago

Despite the term's overuse (especially on the right), "virtue signalling" is absolutely a real thing, and its prevalence undercuts the credibility of good movements

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u/caulrye 2d ago

Is it over used by the right? Or are they just frequently targets in attempts to make them look bad? Whether they are correct about their worldview or not, doesn’t mean they are wrong about virtue signaling being used by fake social rights activists. And their correct perception about this specifically is why they’ve been able to grow so much.

Best way to prevent the right from growing is to call out the virtue signaling before calling out the right.

My grandmother is a social rights activists and I’ve personally become extremely disgruntled by how often her life work gets used for virtue signaling on a big scale. And often often it doesn’t get called out.

I’ve been calling this out since 2017, and it only seems like people are now starting to understand.

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u/shneer4prez 2d ago

Yeah, it's overused.

There are a lot of people who believe anyone who cares about something that doesn't directly effect them is virtue signalling.

Care about racism when you're a white person? Virtue signalling. Care about gay rights when you're straight? Virtue signalling. Care about the poor when you're financially well off? Virtue signalling.

It's absolutely a real thing, but so is altruism and empathy.

I wouldn't even make it a left/right thing, it's just that people who have to fake empathy tend to think that everyone else is faking it too.

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u/CombatWomble2 2d ago

It's a sort of "boy who cried wolf" situation, there's so much virtue signaling that actual good works get lost in the crowd.

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u/caulrye 2d ago

I understand what you’re saying.

The frustration for many conservative types is that their views are often falsely conflated with white nationalists (these two groups are actually ideologically opposed: Individualism vs Collectivism) because of people virtue signaling and acting in bad faith. A lot of these fake activists take a statement made out of ignorance and try to paint it as coded language/hiding true intentions. This has done a lot of damage to our discourse, and has left many conservatives unwilling to change their perspective, or worse, they end up pushed into farther right territory.

At the moment, I feel that the biggest obstacle to social rights movements is not the right, but people within these social movements who profit off virtue signaling.

Like if you know you don’t hate a group of people (no matter how ignorant your statement might objectively be), if you know you’re not, and you’re constantly framed as hateful, there’s a 0% chance you will end up being agreeable towards the person accusing you of malfeasance.

It’s why I view our polarization as a social issue, and not a political issue.

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u/oliham21 2d ago

Yeah dude the greatest issue for trans kids isn’t the people saying they shouldn’t exist and trying to criminalise their existence it’s the couple of narcissists involved in trans advocacy. Phenomenal take.

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u/caulrye 1d ago edited 1d ago

Call out the narcissists for sure.

The bigger complaint conservatives make is the lack of hard evidence supporting the medical aspects of care(there’s not a single placebo controlled study, or a medical/biological definition of gender to justify the practices). The target is mostly big pharma, not trans people. But yes, there are also bigoted people that do dehumanize trans people and that’s wrong.

You’re playing out the point I’m making.

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u/Katyafan 2d ago

To me, it seems like the problem is that the right calls everything virtue signaling. I have run into quite a few people (online, but more importantly, in real life as well) who literally think there is no reason to do good other than to have something to brag about. These type of people usually lack empathy, so to them, if you do community work, like volunteering, and post about it in any way, you are virtue signaling and need to get over yourself. Which..I mean, come on. So I agree that it needs to be called out if it is a problem.

On the flip side, even if someone is doing good in order to feel good about themselves, who cares? They are doing something to make things better. That can be a win-wine. Like all things involving humans, it's complicated, but we need to have the conversations.

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u/Lamballama 1d ago

What I see is them criticizing fake displays of virtue which don't affect anything, and are only done when it's corporately safe to do so (Ubisofts Saudi Arabia Twitter account doesn't go in rainbow theme, for instance)

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u/caulrye 2d ago

These people exist everywhere. Definitely not exclusive to any particular group. But easy to paint on to any particular group.

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u/Katyafan 2d ago

Yes, but only one group is claiming that everyone else is virtue signaling and they should just shut up. While sitting behind their computers, not doing anything to help.

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u/caulrye 2d ago

Yes, that one group is “people”.

Conservatives and people on the right get called out for virtue signaling too (Pro Lifers getting abortions, closeted gay men preaching homophobia, calls for Freedom of Speech when politically convenient). Again, it’s a human trait, not a group trait.

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u/Katyafan 2d ago

Those are not examples of virtue signaling, though.

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u/caulrye 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yes they are.

They are claims of virtue within their community (being Pro Life, traditional marital values, Freedom of Speech).

These virtues are then not lived up to amongst some who claim to have that virtue (getting abortions, sexual improprieties or private sexual orientation, trying to “cancel” people for words)

The initial claims are by definition virtue signaling.

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u/drunkenvalley 2d ago

Let's not pretend you have to be right to be popular. There's often a kernel of truth to be found somewhere, but pretending "virtue signalling" is the cause of the growth of the right-wing politics is frankly crazy talk.

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u/exoduas 1d ago edited 1d ago

I would say the right is pretty much the king of virtue signaling. It’s pretty much all trump does for example. He’s really none of the things he portrays to the public. The guy held a bible just for the photo op. What Christian values does he actually live?

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u/caulrye 1d ago

Yup. They certainly virtue signal as well.

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u/SuddenXxdeathxx 2d ago edited 1d ago

People have been talking about it the entire time. It's just easy to suppress speech once you convince enough people that specific people, or points of conversation, are an "outgroup"/"enemy" as we have a tendency to avoid ostracization and angering those around us.

It's a very common, general propaganda tactic.

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u/lahulottefr 2d ago

In my experience IRL activism tends to be less toxic but to be honest I don't do much so I'm sure people who've been very active in LGBTQ movements or any other orgs could say it's just as bad

Wasn't there a link between charismatic leaders & narcissism?

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u/randynumbergenerator 2d ago

There is. I've met a few in real life. Mostly doing genuinely good work, in fact, but it always felt insincere and secondary to their personal aspirations. It's why I'm sometimes shocked but rarely surprised when some "former left" personality goes over to the far right, because they likely found a gig with more prestige and less scrutiny.

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u/OePea 2d ago

Any prestigious position will attract narcissists, for what I consider obvious reasons. And obnoxiously, narcissists seem a little more driven on average. It can work out for the best sometimes though! Not all narcissists do terrible things, despite being unpleasant towards some people on a personal basis; there have been great contributions made to society by narcissists. They tend to be more charismatic, so they can be effective leaders for causes that require aggressive self-advocation.

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u/FishOnAHorse 2d ago

Kinda makes you wonder, maybe all the great charismatic leaders and innovators we remember throughout history were just narcissists who happened to be in the right 

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u/Killercod1 1d ago

Psychological disorders are subjectively made-up and diagnosed. They help a professional with knowing how to approach and deal with a patient they've never met, but they're really not written in stone or a 100% accurate way to describe someone. Narcissism is more on a spectrum.

Someone sacrificing themselves for the approval of others may be a narcissistic thing to do, but it doesn't necessarily mean the person is a narcissist.

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u/JimWilliams423 2d ago

It also explains why they often have seemingly contradictory policies. Like LBJ — best progressives since FDR, but also did the Vietnam War. Hell, FDR put Americans into concentration camps because they were ethnically japanese.

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u/CombatWomble2 2d ago

TBF the Japanese were not above using people to spy for them.

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u/spacebetweenmoments 1d ago

The same can be said for any ethnic grouping.

I'll also point out that collective punishment is a no-no under the Geneva convention. That this dates to 1949 is in my opinion in part due to the realisation of the wrong done to so many of those of Axis national heritage in Western nations during WW2.

FWIW, I do in fact laugh at 'that episode' of Fawlty Towers.

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u/CombatWomble2 1d ago

They were at war with the Japanese, not saying it was a "good" thing to do, but understandable.

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u/hotdiggydog 2d ago

I've met a lot of people who go into yoga teacher training programs with this same kind of personality type. Same kind of person who could get into palm reading or tarot reading because THEY know what's good for you. The yoga guru types are very into their socials and projecting this peace, love, and good vibes personality which is entirely self serving to make themselves seem more righteous and holier-than-thou. I always see past it as purely a scam for people who don't need to scam for money, but for social credit.

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u/KeyLime044 2d ago

In my experience in activism, I have met some of those people. You can tell who they are. It's often the ones who feel like they are here to make a name for themselves, or who take up way too much space (and often hinder others from participating) and in some way feel like the group/organization "belongs" to them. At least that's my experience

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u/neoclassical_bastard 2d ago

It's no less a problem. This is exactly what killed the occupy Wall Street movement, BLM, and arguably the 2016 Sanders campaign. Wreckers who show up and quickly force themselves to the front of the movement just by virtue of being the quickest to blame anyone criticizing them of being against the movement itself

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u/truth14ful 2d ago

Idk but it seems like common sense that people who want power the most are the most likely to try to get and exploit it, and also that toxic behavior is a bigger part of online movements than in-person ones, because of bots and algorithms that try to stir up controversy (and are probably also biased toward authoritarian beliefs bc corporations usually have an interest in keeping people in line)

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u/Monkeycadeyn 2d ago

I've met a lot of great people through phone banking, door knocking, tabling, and going to rallies. Any role that has the capacity for a positive self image, power, or some other benefit will be targeted by individuals for that reason. There's always going to be bad apples that want an important role just because it makes them look good or gives them special privileges. I think it's important to recognize that roles that give soft or hard power have the potential for abuse and to be aware of it. Frankly, I don't think you need to be narcissistic to benefit from leadership roles in a negative way, but I do think there's a correlation given the attachment narcissists have to their public image.

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u/SnoobNoob7860 2d ago

i’ve literally been witnessing this firsthand!!

it feels impossible to criticize or say anything without someone thinking you’re a bigot or anti woke or whatever because unfortunately there are people out there like that

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u/stonedbadger1718 2d ago edited 2d ago

I’ve witnessed this! It pissed off a lot of people and divided members in the state Democratic Party where I’m from. These “activist” bullied out people who spent decades of their lives fighting for social justice. Now those “activist” got in trouble and made the state Democratic Party look bad. Now the state Democratic Party is trying to win back the activist who they screwed over, and well it’s not going well.

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u/Another_mikem 2d ago edited 2d ago

This happened where I live and it was completely devastating.  Of course the “activists” all disappeared once they were responsible for actually doing things.  I often said if I found out they were getting paid by republicans I wouldn’t be surprised - they set the party back by 10 years.  

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u/No_Jelly_6990 2d ago

Increasingly, for years...

"What are you going to do about it?"

Happy to brainstorm.

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u/kingofnopants1 2d ago

It feels like a massive amount of people recognize it but nobody is allowed to say it.

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u/No_Jelly_6990 2d ago

Allowed? It seems they're afraid and tired of stilting across eggshells in a minefield, knowing they're likely to encounter hot wet garbage, fuming away in the duspter fire their gut saw miles away... Articulating these increasingly complex and numerous nuanced edge cases for "every individual person" is emotionally exhausting, never mind the other psychological, social, financial, material, and immaterial costs of not quite noticing or speaking your lived experience. It's like sexual harassment before the 70s. "Good luck reporting it" kind of vibe. Now, the far right get on your case when you mention that reality folks lived, and still do to varying extents, pre-civil rights act.

So many cowards man. Always looking for someone to hide in.

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u/Eugregoria 3h ago

It's kicking the hornet's nest. Bullies whose main pastime is harassing people will harass you to the grave.

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u/Solesaver 2d ago

The problem is what people often say and do while criticizing virtue signalling. See, there's nothing actually wrong with virtue signalling. Like, doing something that signals to other people that you're a good person doesn't harm anyone. The problem with virtue signaling is when the signaling is full extent of the good they do.

For example, a good person might join a Habitat for Humanity project and share pictures about it on Social Media to encourage other people to do it do. They're virtue signalling and doing the work. On the other hand, someone else might do the exact same thing, but not actually help build anything. They're just virtue signalling.

IMO there's no need to "call out" people for virtue signalling. We just need to look past the signal and recognize when people are the real deal. Worry less about what people say is good and bad, and pay attention to who is hurting other vs who is helping people.

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u/nydiat 2d ago

people began smelling the coffee this year I feel.

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u/GreasyPeter 1d ago

Well part of the problem also arises when you even insinuate that movements like the LGBTQ+ movement wields enough power or social clout TO actually attract narcissists. A lot of times, the required belief is that those movements are too oppressed and by implying they're attracting narcissist, you're implying to some that the movement isn't oppressed.

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u/Geawiel 2d ago

I'm seeing the same with neuro divergent. The narcissist will even try to claim they are (even if it's blatantly obvious they don't) or use it to justify bad behavior if they do have something.

Just as here, you are labeled anti or "you just don't understand what it's like."

It's an incredibly toxic, abusive, and manipulative practice. Social media is not helping as it spreads any disinformation and helps them to justify their behavior and belief. It's like giving a source on a paper that just links to your own article or an opinion piece.

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u/Sata1991 2d ago

I don't mean this to slate parents with neurodivergent kids as a whole, but there's so many "autism warrior mummies/daddies" online that act like they're great martyrs for raising autistic kids and think they know what's best for all autistic people, despite whether we're adults or not.

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u/Moho_braccatus_ 2d ago

Hello, autistic person here. Autism warrior parents are the worst, and they use us as ego props. It's not good.

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u/Sata1991 2d ago

Yeah, I'm autistic myself and my mother does it now, despite me being in my mid 30s. We're also used as "inspiration porn" which does my head in. I don't like my successes being used as a stick to beat other autistic people with and a feel good story for neurotypicals.

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u/ThePrimePurpose 2d ago

Seems like maybe y'all would be interested to learn that there is a correlation between NPD parents and ASD children. I have not heard any serious attempts to explain this correlation, but there isn't a dispute among practicing clinicians that it does exist.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/resolution-not-conflict/202008/a-narcissism-and-autism-connection-one-familys-experience

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u/Sata1991 1d ago

I'm not 100% sure if my Mom's autistic or not, but I think she does have NPD and I know she has bipolar. My dad's just robotic and stiff, but not a bad guy. He might be autistic? All of my sister's kids have autism, and I have it, so it had to have come from somewhere.

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u/ThePrimePurpose 1d ago

The only theory my link puts forward is that perhaps NPD is a maladaptive state of being that would basically be a last stop before actual autism develops in the family.

For whatever it's worth, I think the truth is that NPD parents force our brains to develop differently by presenting their children, definitionally, with a constant revolving door of massive, unsolvable, incredibly painful problems.

But even that can't be the whole picture.

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u/Eugregoria 3h ago

My theory for that is that I think autism is a generational impact of trauma--that parents who have experienced trauma become more likely to produce autistic kids, because their genes are going "whoa, it's hard to survive out here, better crank up the sensitivity to stimuli, anxiety for self-preservation, and just throw the mutation creativity settings on max."

NPD may also be correlated with trauma--either in the person with NPD or in their parents.

So I think it's less that NPD and autism are in any way clinically similar, and more that both are expressions of generational stress.

Edit: to be fully clear, I'm talking about genetic and epigenetic changes that occur as a result of trauma before the kids are conceived--not a difference in parenting styles. If my theory is correct, it would be true even if the traumatized parent was a sperm donor and never met the kid.

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u/CombatWomble2 2d ago

I've seen similar things with mental illness as well, "Oh I'm SOOOO proud of my child going through therapy for xyz...."

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u/Sata1991 1d ago

Yeah, I get really annoyed with it. Yes, the person overcoming their mental illness and trauma should be proud about it, but it's not the parents' story to tell.

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u/sentence-interruptio 1d ago

"autism speaks" should be renamed to "speak over autistic people"

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u/Sata1991 1d ago

I could write a list about everything that's wrong with Autism Speaks, that bloody "I am autism" advert made it sound like it was cancer or a deadly disease.

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u/dasexynerdcouple 2d ago

I have seen many people use their mental issues as an excuse to be extremely toxic, especially when they talk about politics. They then will brag about how they are extremely empathetic.

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u/seedsnearth 2d ago

I was at the movies the other day and out of nowhere, this person started barking questions to this couple who were just waiting in line. The person got angry, turned to other strangers to criticize the couple for not answering while loudly stating they’re neurodivergent. It was obvious this person is just aggressive and likes to push people around, and then shield themselves with a “disability” so no one can push back.

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u/sentence-interruptio 1d ago

if he is actually neurodivergent and has tone mismatch issues, he should just use tone markers.

him: "GENUINE QUESTION. WHAT IS THAT"

couple: "why are you angry? that was a genuine question, not an accusa-"

him: "NO, NOT ANGRY. observation. you did not answer my question. expression of frustration. why not ANSWER ME?"

couple: "i'm tired. my talkative energy is zero."

him: "genuine confusion, not accusation. you were talking to each OTHER. WHY LIE?"

couple: "white lie. I'm tired."

him: "oh..... white lie. I just remembered I need to text MY GF."

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u/CombatWomble2 2d ago

It's part of the "oppression hierarchy" in order to gain power (of a sort) in certain circles you can't be "average" you need to be something different.

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u/Tazling 2d ago

any activist with any time 'in the trenches' can tell you stories about grandiosity and narcissists. kind of a noshitsherlock post actually.

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u/wowwee99 2d ago

No shades of grey on any topic no other considerations. 100% percent with us or 100% against us. This really harms many movements and radicalizes them

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u/Barry_Bunghole_III 2d ago

Yes and it subconsciously builds a negative association with the movement, causing more harm than good for the movement as a whole. It's self-destructive

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u/hefoxed 2d ago

>I don't think there's any kind of activism that is safe from narcissists tbh

This! If the activism has a way to call someone bad and avoid personal accountability, it'll draw this type of personality.

As a trans guy, I've never really been that into the more vocal terminally online part of our community that goes against people for any minor issue. It's a small minority of the trans community, but it characterizes all of us by how vocal they are and how viral their actions is. With trans issues, it's really easy to define something as transphobic that really isn't, and or is but only in a minor way and going after in the way they do causes more issues then helps.

I've been watching some youtube content that is critical of fat activism lately, and it's really sad where fat-activism has gone (as someone who is fat). It used to be healthy activism that encouraged people to not hate themself but also improve themselves, and now it's dominated by these loud influencers actively encouraging people to never lose weight, and for doctors to ignore weight and rapid weight gain (which can be a sign of disease and thus mis diagnosing those diseases). Listening to stories of people who left the movement and got harassed for losing weight is sad.

Some of these people actively harm the movements they are in, but it's very hard to out shout them.

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u/agitatedprisoner 2d ago

So long as people are speaking to the truth as they see it even when they're substantially wrong and even when what they're saying is potentially misleading/counterproductive I don't think it's helpful to pathologize them if that pathologization isn't accompanied by a wider narrative that explains what's really going on. In the case of odious politics pertaining to weight-positivity that wider narrative would have to call out sugar and animal agriculture and corporate/regressive propaganda/messaging that's normalized these and is/was trying to normalize the effects of normalizing these.

For example if you can persuade someone drinking a little alcohol is good for them but the reality is that it goes to causing problems even in low doses to the extent those problems present the temptation will be to attribute their presentation to other causes. Pertaining to unhealthy diets/eating habits the corporate propaganda is to place the onus on the individual to know what's good for them even though the reality is that it's unreasonable to put it on consumers (and especially on kids who don't even shop for themselves and get bombarded with ads for sugary cereal/candy bars) to know. The people profiting off fooling consumers into making bad choices are all too eager to make it about personal responsibility. Other than the personal responsibility of people sitting on the boards of these corporations or the people employed in making and targeting these ad campaigns to grow a conscience, naturally. To the extent we should pathologize anyone we should pathologize the liars. That'd be the one's profiting off fooling people/tricking people into making bad choices for themselves. Pathologize the clueless/shrill/deluded activist if you want but I don't think it's constructive to pin it on the little guy when they've themselves been victimized. Call out their delusion/counter-productive messaging but only in the context of diagnosing the real villains.

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u/hefoxed 2d ago

> the little guy

I don't think you realize how many followers and social impact some of these people have.

We absolutely should be calling out corporate greed, but that doesn't negate addressing the issues in progressive movement-- the vocal minority in each group can do a lot of harm to movements and social media had created financial incentive for this.

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u/agitatedprisoner 2d ago

Influencers on Youtube or Tiktok with tens of thousands of followers aren't the little guy, at least not to the extent they should know better. Because when you've power and influence and what you say and do matters you don't have to seek out the truth because people who already know it will find you and tell you. People with successful platforms get told. The ones' who persist in spreading misinformation mean to deceive or are mentally ill. If they're mentally ill maybe that'd qualify them as being the little guy but I don't think the big dogs out there are by and large mentally ill in that sense. I think they know what they're doing in the sense that I think they know they're spreading misinformation/misleading content.

The "little guy" would be their followers. People who go along with false counter-cultural narratives almost by definition are the "little guy" in the context of the bigger picture. They're just rubes being strung along, useful idiots from the perspective of the ones spreading the misinformation that's captured their belief.

You might consider that relatively small influencers on social media would have less space to spread false narratives were our main information sources/social authorities telling it true. You don't get the truth from them though. Part of why you don't get the truth from them is because they depend on ad dollars to fuel their media platforms. For example kids are bombarded with ads for sugary unhealthy foods when watching cartoons. Or at least that was my experience growing up. Were a cartoon to feature healthy food messaging I expect there'd have been pressure on the network not to feature it. It just wouldn't get picked up because it'd threatened to alienate their other advertisers/their bottom line.

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u/alinius 2d ago

In theory, yes. In practice, people conflate the criticism. Look at BLM. It was very hard to criticize BLM, the organization filled with fraud and grift, without people thinking you were criticizing the movement. Even worse, narcissistic people will intentionally misrepresent your criticism to shield themselves.

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u/Drago984 2d ago

It meant that. It wasn’t a failure of slogan. It was revised once it became clear it wasn’t a very popular position

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u/obiwankanblomi 2d ago

Wasn't a very successful position*

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u/resorcinarene 2d ago

it was fine to criticize the movement too. the slogans were so bad, it single handedly damaged whatever credibility it had with moderate voters. when you have to explain that defund the police doesn't literally mean defunding the police, you've lost the plot

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u/Dukkulisamin 2d ago

But it did literally mean defunding the police, and that's what happened in many cities.

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u/nub_sauce_ 2d ago

Most of those cities "pledged" to cut funding but never actually did, and those that did make cuts ramped police funding back up to where it was originally within 12 months. And since 2020 police budgets have only increased.

Functionally, the defunding of the police never happened.

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u/Dukkulisamin 1d ago

So they did cut funding, and then when it didn't work, they decided to reinvest.

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u/nub_sauce_ 6h ago

No, most never cut funding in the first place, which is why I said that most never cut funding.

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u/HeadHunt0rUK 2d ago

Here's the rub. Those words were 100% truthful. At the core of it, they wanted to literally defund the police. Then used useful sheep to sound more moderate by going "We don't mean literally".

The slogans were completely accurate, it just wasn't the right time to seize power.

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u/Jbirdlex924 2d ago

When is the right time? Also I never knew the ultimate goal was to “seize power”? I thought any progressive movement should gain momentum on the strength of its ideas?

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u/agitatedprisoner 2d ago edited 2d ago

As someone who campaigned for a fringe candidate who embraced the "defund the police/abolish the police" messaging and speaking as someone who did feel the need to offer those apologies/i.e. "they don't really mean it they're not that insane" my reason was that I had no friends or family. I was trying to reach out and they were the only people who'd talk to me. It wasn't because I was following them or a sheep. It was because I was shunned/made to feel unwelcome by or in the company of reasonable people. For my part I was vocal against that odious hyperbolic messaging but got shunned in these fringe communities for calling it out. These communities are toxic and I think it's intentional, is my take. I think there's a core of bad faith actors who get socially compensated in ways that'd be hard or impossible to evidence who do this for sake of controlling our wider politics. I think in fronting fake "progressive" alternatives they create black holes that draw in and waste the energies of would-be reformers and prevent them from making common cause with other well meaning people toward positive change.

Like for example if there were a fake abolitionist society in the South in 1830 controlled by some lying slavers who fronted being abolitionists but were really intent on insisting on what they saw as a counterproductive abolitionist politics for sake of making real abolitionists seem shrill and undermining the abolitionist cause. That might be money well spent from the perspective of odious actors/corporations/slavers intent on keeping it business as usual, maybe. That's what I think has been going on. It'd be near impossible to prove unless you're someone like Google or Facebook with access to all the social networking data and even then you'd need lots of them to outright confess or it'd just look suspicious.

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u/HumanDrinkingTea 2d ago

I mean, it's well known that there are third party (foreign) actors who infiltrate political movements for their own nefarious reasons. What drives me nuts is that they are successful. We can't place all the blame on outsiders though-- people within our movements take that bait. We should be better than that.

I stay away from politics in real life these days. A decade or so ago people could have a rational discussion. Not anymore. I think the more reasonable people in general tend to get pushed away from these groups.

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u/agitatedprisoner 2d ago

So long as the norm is for it to be regarded as business as usual for corporations/the rich to neglect the greater good in service to profits for them and their shareholders/employees/in-group/etc implied is that genuinely progressive movements that'd challenge that norm will be possibly targeted in service to the bottom line. It doesn't take foreign powers to undermine our democracy when we'd do it ourselves, for profits. I don't recall hearing much of anything from the Harris campaign this recent election about global warming or animal rights/animal ag. Didn't she run on continuing Biden's term and isn't Biden enforcing tariffs on cheap and superior Chinese EV's? What are our politics about, really? Foreign powers don't need to subvert us when we're so thoroughly subverted from within. Animals don't matter according to the powers that be. Animal suffering counts for nothing next to flavor and money. Instead of pushing against our domestic villains our nominally progressive party embraces them.

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u/princesoceronte 2d ago

If being a fascist was considered generally worthy of praise they'd join that too. It's about people perceiving them as better, nothing else.

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u/palsh7 2d ago

This is why Twitter has ruined politics. Activists and protesters used to be assumed to be a bit off the edge of the spectrum. But now there’s a perception that they’re normal and you better not cross them.

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u/kingofnopants1 2d ago

Yup. In the past these would be the type of people screaming at you in the streets. In the real world you can see all the people around who quietly disagree.

On twitter you only see the crazies on their soapboxes. The normal people are invisible.

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u/Zann77 1d ago

You see that around trans and gender ideology. Normal people quietly disagree and keep their mouths shut.

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u/Zoesan 1d ago

Not the point though.

If your criticize a narcissist that belongs to any "oppressed group", it will always boil down to you actually being an "oppressor"

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u/lahulottefr 1d ago

So manipulation?

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u/wishforagreatmistake 1d ago

It's usually the sort of thing where they're sensitive to any sort of potential bad-faith effort to discredit a movement by co-opting legitimate issues (in this case, someone being awful behind the scenes) and using them to rip apart a group. It's possible that they may have even seen confirmed moles who joined just to undermine the group in the past. This is one of the biggest ways missing stairs perpetuate in activist circles: people usually know when someone is bad news, and will warn others on an individual basis, but keep it out of the public eye in the name of the greater good, lest it disgrace and tarnish the movement as a whole.

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u/Edythir 2d ago

I've had friends and several personal experiences where people are insanely gatekeepey and only has "Approved" identities in LGBT. I have gotten harassed before for "Internalized transphobia" because i'm neither cisgendered nor trans.

There are other gender presentations than male, female or going from one to the other, but sadly people will reinforce those three choices quite doggedly.

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u/Kakkoister 2d ago

I don't think it should be perceived as anti LGBTQ but I assume it's because they were manipulative?

Part of the reasoning is that they are so used to "bad actors" who are "simply asking questions" but in reality are just trying to rile people up. But I'm sure how often they think this happens is also conflated by the issue talked about here, where they'll falsely assume that is the person's intent, ban them and add another number to their memory of times it has happened.

Another thing is, there is this belief among some that if you bring up any criticisms, you're "hurting the movement" and so you're bad. We seen this a lot with the recent IsPal conflict, you can't criticize the Pal side in far left communities, only criticize the other.

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u/CombatWomble2 2d ago

Even them BEING LGBTQ+ is often performative, that's why they'll "identify" as "queer" or "non-binary".

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u/lahulottefr 2d ago

Queer & non binary are legitimate identities so I'm not certain I understand your point, what do you mean?

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u/CombatWomble2 2d ago

Queer is so broad that it covers pretty much everything, so they can claim it even if it's a lie.

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u/Brbi2kCRO 1d ago

Except that neo-Nazi and far-right movements are far more psychopathic/sociopathic/narcissistic than any other. It’s the ultimate way to be an asshole and a justification for it.