Technology

Oh, hey, you're much more forgiving than me.

Not particularly. Like I said, unrepentant bullies should receive no mercy. I left "torched" undefined on purpose, to keep it open-ended. It's only the ones who demonstrate self-awareness and willingness to change who deserve a chance at redemption. Because they're the only ones who can be redeemed. Redemption can't be forced on anyone unwilling.

But blanket-shunning everyone including those who want to be better is self-destructive. It gives the enemy a larger recruitment pool, and it dwindles our own.

Many of those people were simply victims in their own ways: bullied and ostracized until they internalized the toxic patterns that were being used against them, and then projecting it onto others as they've learned to view it as the "norm." Those people are redeemable, they just need to be shown a better way. What they're missing is self-compassion. It's not possible to love others when deep down, who you truly hate is yourself.

I know, because I was bullied and ostracized throughout my childhood as well. To this day, I have very little patience with bullies and abusers. I often get myself in trouble with my open contempt for them.

But it took me well into my twenties to unlearn the patterns that had been ingrained in me by that toxic environment growing up. It didn't happen overnight, and it was painful, uncomfortable, and a lot of work. It would have been so much easier had I found a healthy support group or mentor, but everyone rejected me because I "should have already known" the social scripts and how to avoid the faux pas.

I'm not surprised that most people don't do that work on their own, that many who start don't see it through to completion, or that most of them end up taking the path of least resistance: moving to the echo-chambers full of people like themselves with similar qualms, who validate what they're feeling and accept them for who they are. Those are the same echo-chambers where right-wing extremists poach their new victims for negging, manipulation, and eventual radicalization.

If I didn't hate right-wing abusers and machismo culture so much, more than I hated suffering in isolation and constant rejection by the people on the left whose ideals I actually aligned with, then I may have been tempted to fall back into that trap, too.

But yes, the people orchestrating these right-wing radicalization funnels need to be forceably stopped. I'm not disagreeing with that. We just need to acknowledge that there are degrees of involvement, and not everyone who falls for their grift is a grifter themselves. And when their social structure is dismantled, we need to provide them with an alternative or else new grifters will simply take the place of the old, like a hydra.