Domination is Not Activism

As someone with national and international activism bona fides, this is one of my pet peeves. It happens often when new activists get dialed in on a single cause. There is NOTHING wrong with really caring about a single cause and devoting your activism in that direction. The problem starts when you chastise, harass, spam and otherwise treat other activists like they are not “doing enough” or “caring about the wrong thing” for having a different focus.

These activists with a Tumblr level pedigree in subject matter expertise spam the shit out of comments with demands for a single issue page to make a statement on something completely unrelated, or else be portrayed as for the wrong side.

For instance, a random organization dedicated to helping promote school lunches may find a bunch of newly minted internet-only activists flooding their comments with demands that they make a statement condemning a particular police brutality case or take a side in an armed conflict and so on. Now the cause being discussed in the comments may very well be worthy, but hijacking another cause’s feeds, email servers (ahem), or targeting staff with your demands is unhinged and predatory behavior.

That’s not passion. That’s derailment. Demanding everyone stop with the mission they are performing and redirect toward what you care about in the moment is not simply rude – it’s entitled. Expecting others to drop what they are doing to do it your way is toxic behavior and you need to stop. The amount of time, energy and effort people have for activism, advocacy and volunteering are personal to them. No one has the energy to refocus every time a random single-issue activist crosses their path.

This unhealthy form of domination has been destroying online activist communities for too long. Time to start calling that shit out and stop coddling people who should know better.