It’s this time of year again: we can witness thousands of people (mostly men of course) come up with ridiculous excuses to defend a powerful man who has been (once again) accused of misconduct.

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And you know what, this exact behavior is part of the reason why men in power (yes, in our society it’s almost universally men) are so often ignoring the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior. It’s because everyone around them is only telling them how great they are. All their flaws are politely ignored or even actively denied, so they never bother doing anything about them.

But your heroes are mere human beings. Regardless of their great achievements, they will have flaws. And without anyone telling them to stop, they will just keep doing the same harmful things over and over again until decades later the whole thing blows up publicly. “Hey, what happened, this was always fine?” Well, maybe not quite like that in this particular case, I’m reading that many people did tell him to stop.

Either way: you can be grateful for the person’s achievements without idealizing that person and ignoring the harm it is doing. Please by default believe the people speaking out against powerful men – it’s a fight that will typically achieve little while costing them dearly, so your knee-jerk reaction “they are probably lying” is very wrong 99% of the time. No, the remaining 1% isn’t itself a valid reason to distrust testimonies.

I want to live in a world where people in the positions of power use that power responsibly. This isn’t going to happen unless their peers hold them responsible.

Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️‍⚧️

@[email protected]

Maybe they knew, or maybe they didn’t care enough to vet him, but CCC and Assange and Snowden gave him power and that needs to be part of this conversation, because we need look no further for proof that hero worship and the cult of belief is pure poison.

https://jakegate.ghost.io/violet-blue-but-he-does-good-work/

This is from when Jacob Appelbaum was being evicted, but oh boy do history just keeps repeating itself :neoghost_drowsy:

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In that sense, I don’t want to deny you this quote from a Terry Pratchett book:

“…and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, but he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you’re a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.”

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I’ve seen too many bad takes recently, many of them very typical. So please excuse my long rant, I have to get them out of my system.

“It’s not a crime”: No shit, Sherlock! Are you saying that anything short of committing a crime won’t trigger your moral compass? Then you need to get your moral compass seriously adjusted. But I suspect that you are merely hiding behind the legislative system, well knowing that it cannot (shouldn’t) possibly prohibit each possible kind of wrongdoing, and even if it does many people will never be convicted , and even if they are the process will take years. Giving you lots of opportunity not to care about an issue that you don’t want to care about.

“He has a right to have this opinion”: Yes, he does, and freedom of speech guarantees that he won’t be persecuted for it by the government. This doesn’t mean that he is entitled to a platform for this opinion however, and neither does it mean that you have to accept it. In fact, it was still your choice not to find that opinion repugnant and not to voice your disagreement – freedom of speech doesn’t let you off the hook there. And deplatforming is a perfectly valid consequence for people voicing harmful opinions, we should all support that. Those of us who aren’t complicit of course.

So if let’s say someone vocally advocates for adults having sex with minors, does it many times over decades and only somewhat retracts their statements – you don’t hide behind freedom of speech instead of calling this disgusting and a blatant abuse of the person’s position. They can continue having this opinion in private, but no person and no organization should enable them to share it. So if out of a whole bunch of accusations you choose to refute this one (because most defensible? most relatable?), that’s telling a lot about you.

“He is old and sick”: Yes, maybe. He is also in a position of power. He can still continue being old and sick after being removed from a position where he does considerable harm. Did you check whether any of the people he harmed are old and sick or are you merely using it as an excuse?

“This is a FUD campaign against him, paid by big money”: Like big money would bother. No campaign can do more damage to his cause than he does by staying exactly where he is. But this is a very convenient argument: if the accusations are anonymous, you can refuse believing them. And if there is a name attached, you (and others like you) can attack that person and make sure they regret ever speaking up. Either way, you’ll defend your hero because he is your hero and heroes can never be wrong.

“I want people in charge who fight for the cause instead of doing politics”: Yes, we got it. Other people’s safety is “politics” and irrelevant to you. I’m not going to say what other people think of this stance since you clearly don’t care. But your cause can always benefit from more people fighting for it. Having a person there who alienates a large part of the community and pushes people out isn’t really helping the cause. But it helps this person’s standing, them having less competition and particularly getting rid of the people who can think for themselves.

“But he does great work”: Maybe. And he also prevents lots of other people from doing great work. Please drop this cult of a lone genius who is worth more than thousands of other people. Unique abilities are far less common than you seem to believe, yet toxic personalities pushing out anybody who might contradict them are pretty common.

“Look, this isn’t against trans people at all”: Sure, like you would know. One typical strategy of anti-trans movements is that they claim to care about trans people. “Look, we are all for trans people, but this will hurt women! This will hurt children! Better use this solution that will do better for everyone.” And if this isn’t about your life, this argumentation might even seem logical. So please, when it comes to groups other than your own – you don’t pass judgement about what is or isn’t harming them, you listen to them. No, not the likely false flag comment pretending to be trans but actual trans people please.