Hmm yes, using ableist language to dunk on the evil tankies.
It’s targeted meanness. It’s a rhetorical tactic. It’s not for general use in conversations. It’s like calling fascists weird, making fun of a terf woman for looking ugly, or calling a transphobe a dumbass for demanding we respect his new pronouns because he put on a dress and makeup.
I’ll use tankies as an example. Tankies are evil demons because they want to use trans people for political purposes and kill us all for not being ideologically pure. If a tanky says they’re on the left call them a dumbass. And if anyone asks what a tanky is tell them that tankies are red fascists aka authoritarian communists.
To be clear, as a trans woman, I don’t want someone who uses ableism as a cudgel online defending me online or in real life. It’s not useful. It does nothing to forward the interests of neurodivergent people and it does nothing to push back on the people who want me dead. All it does is silence rhetorically effective critique of intolerant fascists and makes the person screaming ableism feel morally pure.
Again, it’s targeted. This does not mean we should being using ableist language for no reason or because we feel like it in casual conversation. It’s fine to call out meanness or ableism when it is being used in a way that serves no useful purpose.
Also, the goal isn’t really to use slurs but in theory they could be used. Whatever is useful in the particular social environment. The goal is to be mean to a specific target. This is about leveraging the way social media accumulates engagement and internet culture against intolerant people who we should not tolerate.
Refusing to use targeted meanness in a social war is like refusing to use guns in a physical war. It’s a great way to lose the war.
It’s called tailism and it’s throwing disabled people under the bus because you can’t find a better argument that the person you perceive as bad is actually bad.
You’d rather normalise ableist language to prevent the nazi’s from coming after you than make allies in disabled communities.
Edit: just to add, tailism is not even effective. Nazi’s promote it to pit marginalised groups against each other.
Meanness is part of society and so is this false notion of general intellect, which we cannot measure. Falsely championing disabled people and pretending targeted meanness isn’t effective when we all saw how calling specific fascists weird was effective isn’t an honest argument. Neither is hiding behind theory used as a straw man.
If Tim Walz had delivered a compelling argument about how fascism is self-destructive it wouldn’t have resonated with people the way weird did. People saw clips of JD Vance, they heard about the couch fucking, and weird resonated with them. Know who usually gets called weird and by who? Queer people by fascists. Did calling specific fascists weird bother queer people? No, because we’re weird and proud of it. Unlike the fascists who cling to a false sense of normalcy for the sake of their ego, queer people want to be themselves.
The reason this works is because it was targeted. Weird isn’t any more normalized against queer people than it was before Tim Walz used it. Calling specific fascists dumb isn’t going to normalize ableism even by using slurs. Which again using slurs may not even be the must useful rhetoric in any given scenario. But if a person finds themselves in a scenario where they can use slurs, even those that normally target queer people generally, to defend queer people effectively I would appreciate it if they did. The same way I would appreciate someone using violence to defend me effectively in a self-defense scenario.
Fascists aren’t going around telling us to be more mean. They would love for leftists to keep being nice no matter what and to cling to this obsession with moral purity because it renders us ineffective. Using a rhetorically effective word, phrase, or mannerism against a specific target isn’t any more reactionary than saying queer people should organize and arm themselves.
If leftists can’t get passed this obsession with moral purity it’s going to get us all killed. We aren’t going to be able to communicate effectively to our peers and other people in general in person or online. The fascists will mop the floor with us in their messaging. They’re willing to be mean to get what they want. Choosing an always share, rhetorically pacifist strategy is the same as choosing to be complicit in our own destruction.
The way leftists cling to moral purity is the same way that fascists cling to normalcy. It’s about leftists’ egos. Leftists don’t like the idea of being morally wrong. It’s why leftists couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Kamala Harris despite it being the useful strategy. And it’s why leftists can’t bring themselves to use slurs or abelist language or be mean against specific fascists who want to kill neurodivergent and queer people.
Killing people is wrong, but in some circumstances it is necessary. Being mean and using inappropriate language is wrong, but sometimes it is necessary. If everyone on one side of war is a pacifist, everyone they want to defend dies. If everyone on one side of a culture war is a rhetorical pacifist, everyone they want to defend dies. Refusing to say certain words in certain contexts isn’t protecting the neurdivergent or queer communities. It’s protecting leftists’ egos that depend on always being able to see a pair of clean hands.
If leftists actually care about marginalized groups then leftists should be willing to use the most effective strategies to defeat the fascists who want to kill those groups. Otherwise leftists should be honest with those marginalized groups and say they are only willing to give them token support because that’s what makes those leftists feel good about themselves. If leftists value their moral purity more than peoples lives then leftists should tell those communities that. That way those communities can find real allies who are willing to put people before their egos.
People with learning disabilities are frequently stereotyped and ridiculed with exactly the same language & body language op is using to portray the ‘tankie’. Imo it’s no different than using the r word.
I see what you’re saying, but it’s also good and fun to point and laugh at tankies/conservatives/fascists and call them stupid.
Sure, its a little ableist but it’s worth it, and nowhere near the r word. (As a person with fairly severe ADHD and probably a bit of autism in there somewhere since u probably care)
Hurr hurr most likely as it is closely aligned with the R word, and the jokes that came with it
Time to piss everyone off by calling all 3 of the portrayed ideologies equally as idiotic but in different ways like a true patriotic leftist infighter
While I approve of the intent; there isn’t 3 ideologies there 😅 one in the middle is just rainbow, so some queer representation.
Back when writing the comment, I had imagined the person with a rainbow to represent some liberal progressive ideology, that’s all about the social cause while actively avoiding the equally as important economic causes/aspects. Though now that I look at it, I suppose you’re right, it might just be a queer person and not a representation of any ideology.
The folks saying that this is ablesist. I hear you and I think I mostly agree. But this is one I kind of struggle on. Which “haha person is stupid” kinds of things are making fun of people who are mentally handicapped? And which ones are just making fun of people for being plain old stupid? Or is it ablesist to say that a person behaving stupidly is stupid?
Like, if you’re making a meme and want to portray the anti-vaxer or nazi or whatever as being stupid or cruel or whatever, how do you do that without being ablesist? (“Inteligence is biological”, “psychopathy is a disease”, etc)
edit: oh whoops. And fuck tankies. Forgot to add that
Calling something or someone ‘stupid’ is just evading actual criticism. The fact is that nazi’s and anti-vaxers aren’t necessarily ‘stupid’. And people with learning disabilities are often neither anti vax nor nazi.
Nazi’s are evil because they want to remove queer people, non-white people, disabled people etc from society (probably by either killing or enslaving them).
Anti-vaxers are either dangerously misinformed or so arrogant that they think they know better than scientists who studied years to understand the human immune system.
Nazi’s are evil because they want to remove queer people, non-white people, disabled people etc from society (probably by either killing or enslaving them).
To be clear, there are also additional reasons. Like the whole “world domination” thing and authoritarian power structures to repress and/or murder anyone who questions the in group.
Which “haha person is stupid” kinds of things are making fun of people who are mentally handicapped? And which ones are just making fun of people for being plain old stupid? Or is it ablesist to say that a person behaving stupidly is stupid?
Kinda, yeah. And this is somewhere some hard conversations have to happen in leftist anti-ableist spaces to figure out the way forward. Memes play on stereotypes and cultural shorthand to communicate with very few words, and the culture is ableist so our memes sometimes will be too. There’s a split in definitions - stupid can be a perjorative for disabled people, or it can be a remark on willful ignorance and self-sabotaging malice. And using SAT words to more accurately describe their behavior leads to the wall 'o text leftist ‘memes’ that nobody wants to read. But calling them stupid is still ableist.
In some cases you can get around this by playing on anti-intellectual stereotypes but then you’re usually just using classist stereotypes… am I just forgetting some or is every insult that doesn’t make you sound like an egghead punching down on someone?
IDK. Everything is fucked.
There comes a point where you can drive yourself crazy trying to be perfectly ethical with your speech. Personally, I say choose your battles and this isn’t one of em.
Was going to say, is there anything negative that isn’t something-ist?
In a deterministic universe, every negative behavior or attribute can be traced back to something outside of the person’s control. Therefore any criticism of anything can be traced back to something that isn’t that person’s fault and is therefore something-ist?
This has a whiff of the paradox of tolerance. Am I being reductive in choosing to skirt past childhood trauma and psychological disorder when I say that Hitler was evil? Yes. But also fuck that. He was evil. And I don’t give a shit as to the “why” of it. (Well, I do. But only to the extent that we can learn from it and try to prevent it from happening again).
edit: yeah yeah. Godwin’s law. It’s just such a useful illustration tool
A thing to note is that it’s socially okay to call people we dislike stupid because our society is naturally intellectually ableist. We are saying that a person has reached their incorrect views because they’re mentally handicapped, rather than pointing to other reasons for their intellectual failings.
At the same time, we’ve grown up in this environment and it’s difficult to remove that kind of language without some habits to replace it.
I too sometimes wear anarchism panties on my face.
Fuck tankies. I don’t know what’s up with the idiots arguing in this thread defending them or saying this point isn’t valid because of the original comic but it needs to stop.
These tankes are the same useful idiots who are simping for Russia and China while being LGBTQ and neurodivergent, despite those countries violent and hostile treatment of LGBTQ and neurodivergent people. The fact that people are sticking up for these dumbasses in this thread is frankly disgusting.
