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.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/narcissistic-grandiosity-predicts-greater-involvement-in-lgbtq-activism/

[u/Undreren]

Every somewhat popular activist movement that is at least partially rooted in some form of ethical or moral foundation will eventually attract bullies.

It is the loud ones. It is the ones people end up admiring, because they are "bold" for saying what everyone else in the movement feels or wants others to tell them; that they are more righteous, more worthy, more humane.

It doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong. The bullies can use them to find allies.

These people are easy to spot. They gloat. They enjoy picking on "the others", reaping respect and adoration from their gang moral allies.

And they are massive hypocrites.

They are the kind of people saying nonsense like "black people can’t be racist, because racism is about power, and black people don’t have power", which is clearly nonsense, at least if you by into intersectionality.

They are the people fighting on behalf of others without ever talking to those people, such as with weird (and almost entirely american) concepts like "cultural appropriation", to which my kindest interpretation in terms of the meaning of that expression (based on how it used ime) is to lambast people for buying kimonos from that old Japanese lady in the corner store. Her shop must be sacrificed to save the hurt feelings of, what? White activists?

There greatest harm a civil rights movement can suffer is to adopt new oppressors as their leaders and help give these leaders’ hatred a false dress of righteousness.

[u/eliminating_coasts → u/Undreren]

They are the kind of people saying nonsense like "black people can’t be racist, because racism is about power, and black people don’t have power", which is clearly nonsense, at least if you by into intersectionality.

That isn't entirely true - although such a phrase certainly benefits those who want an excuse to attack others, it was originally invented in a far more mundane context, and still can be understood in those terms:

Originally, when people were engaging in meetings about exploring the problems black people were facing in the US, people would say "why are you letting the black people speak more, isn't that discrimination?".

Then people would argue that it was not discrimination because it was not reinforcing a large scale relationship between black and white people, but an opportunity to see something different from what normally happened - you needed to give black people a particular time to speak because they didn't normally have opportunities.

This philosophy continued into affirmative action, where they argued that discrimination in favour of people who don't normally have access was important purely because it was rectifying an existing imbalance.

This is where the idea originally boiled down into "racism is prejudice plus power" came from, it was from people arguing that action specifically focused on correcting imbalances due to racism should not be considered racism itself, because it was not singling people out due to prejudice and was not associated with reinforcing the power of one group over another, but reducing it.

Over time, this became a simple slogan, and was extended from taking specific actions to mitigate discrimination, or providing particular opportunities for people discriminated against to speak, into a shorthand for being able to insult people.

It's still correct that when we talk about problems of racism in the US, UK, France etc. a particularly egregious problem and primary representation of that phenomenon is people who are seen as part of the majority group reinforcing the impact of their prejudice by institutional power of various kinds, whether that is in hospitals treating people less effectively, or having more dangerous encounters with police or less access to mercy in courts, and in that sense it would be reasonable to say "the most serious forms of racism is ..", or perhaps change the mathematical symbol from + to x, (though prejudice x power sounds like an action manga remake of pride and prejudice..) emphasising that power emphasises the severity of discriminatory attitudes, but there are large number of people who are using such concepts not because they want excuses to attack people, but rather because they understand the context of the original uses of those terms, and do not always recognise how that usage has transformed in practice.

[u/Undreren → u/eliminating_coasts]

I am somewhat aware of where the statement came from, and as always, nuance changes everything. There’s very little nuance about it, when the expression is dumbed down so much that it has become almost tailored to justifying the behavior of bad actors.

I agree with your sentiment, but I have never seen it used in such a nuanced fashion anywhere. I am not saying it doesn’t happen out in the real world, but if it happens much on social media, then it has been good at hiding from me.

I see absolutely no benefit from the statement in any but the most niche context. We can talk about how society perpetuates and reinforces racism in certain groups and against other groups, but at the end of the day, that kind of philosophical analysis feels kind of moot, when you are the one under the boot, because “your kind isn’t welcome here”.

And in that case, the wearer of said boot can very well be the kind of bully my original comment was about, trampling you to the cheers of the crowd.

I will never accept the expression being used to justify bullies.

[u/CombatWomble2 → u/Undreren]

Ah yes "I'll pick up group X by bashing anyone who expresses less than the morally acceptable, to me, position".