A post we made 2 days ago titled "Stop Thinking You Are Better Than
Trump Supporters" generated more than 200 comments (see link in
comments). It was about organizing
against Trump without hating or demonizing his supporters. Many people
accused us and the article of trying to "normalize" Trump, but this is
not the case.
To be
perfectly clear, because we are a values-led media organization, we plan
on fiercely opposing Trump and his regressive policies for the many
reasons we and others have listed, in the same way we have opposed
similar policies regardless of who was in office over the last 10 years.
We're simply advocating doing so without dehumanizing our opponents -
without doing to them what they do to us.
We're seeing a common
fallacy that understanding or having compassion for Trump supporters
equals acceptance, normalization, or passivity. This couldn't be further
from the truth. The goal is to fiercely oppose just as much as the
militant would do, but to do so with love rather than hate. Anger is
quite healthy too. Hatred is something much different and that's what
we're drawing attention to. We can be angry and we can fight without
dehumanizing the people we're fighting.
This is all basic MLK Jr.
nonviolent activist philosophy - to defeat toxic ideas rather than
people. We're sorry there has been so much misunderstanding over this.
We really are *still* on the same team despite many folks making some
mistaken assumptions about the point of this philosophy.
The same
misunderstandings we saw in the comments are the same misunderstandings
that people have always had with nonviolent, love-based activism. For
more on that, check out this excellent article.
Last, it's worth
clarifying that love itself is not the activist strategy being
advocated. No one expects that love alone will magically make Trump or
his supporters stop Trumping. There are over 200 forms of nonviolent
activism. We are suggesting that we deploy those 200 methods with a
love-based foundation rather than a politics that seeks to dehumanize
and demonize our opponents.
