I try not to write posts about things I see on the internet anymore, but occasionally I can't help myself. There has been a very silly discourse on Bluesky about how people on the left treat everybody's favorite pundit, Will Stancil. While I obviously can't speak for everyone, the general argument on the left is that he is a unrepentant shit-stirrer who has some odious takes for someone who considers himself progressive. The argument from centrists/liberals/what have you is that regardless of the validity of his stances or your feelings about his behavior, you should treat him well. This side of the debate feels so strongly about this that they even published something about on their little website. The key portion to this post, for your convenience:
"While those on the right simply hate Stancil for being a liberal, anti-Trump talker, his left-wing critics seem to believe they’re engaging in some sort of personal corrective activity by piling their abuse onto him. It’s simultaneously coldly cruel and inappropriately intimate. They do not know him, have no place to assume the depths of his character and soul, and yet they delight in mistreating him even as they claim it’s for a higher purpose. They are performing for one another and enticing each other to increasingly cruel behavior. It’s an anti-fandom in action.
Of course, none of this is unique to Stancil. This is how many such swarmings go. People perform for one another and they engage in showy abuse of the subject of the pile-on, telling themselves a fantasy narrative to maintain the belief that what they’re doing is somehow just—or at least justifiable."
Ignoring that the author is implying, with very little evidence, a level of sophistication and purpose in leftist "harassment" that I sincerely doubt few if any people have even considered, there's something more insidious going on here. To illustrate this most clearly, I will turn to a famed shit-stirrer of yesteryear, Jude Doyle:
There are two specific points to be made here. The first is that picking a fight based on a questionable reading of something and then running away by saying "we all have work to do" is wildly disingenuous. It implicitly assumes the truth of your own assumptions and the invalidity of any arguments to the counter. The second is that we know for a fact (link contains deadname) that they were part of an operation to spread bad faith narratives about the same exact guy for the same stupid reasons. Even thought the infrastructure of the Hillary Clinton campaign no longer exists, why should we ever assume good faith from them on this matter? And contrary to your advice, it sure seems like you are indeed trying to win an internet fight in 2016!
To turn this back to the original subject, this is exactly the sort of behavior performed by Stancil and his ilk. Their attacks on their enemies are not the same as attacks against them, because they're correct, they're special. And we should never assume bad faith or ideological poisoning of them, because how could we possibly know what is their hearts? What they are asking of their opponents is to ignore what they know, ignore the context surrounding all of this, and to submit to their version of reality. Not only is such an approach in service of such ineffective politics bad on its face; it's also sacrifices the very idea of politics at the altar of self-righteousness. It's not meant to convince or to build power but to browbeat the people they don't like. What's incumbent on us is not to "harass" anyone who does this but instead to firmly and sincerely refuse to accept this approach to "politics" as valid. How you go about doing that is up to you.
