To unfollow or not to unfollow #BlackLivesMatter deniers?

White radicalization is alive in our communities, although social justice takes our full focus, we cannot not afford to leave it unchecked

Vice News reports on white radical groups popping up at BLM protests. This puts not only our people physically in danger but also the very gains we’ve secured. Time for all of us to track which people in our communities may be on the fringe of radicalization and take precautionary measures.

‘We can disagree on anything, except racism!’ I nodded enthusiastically to the Instagram post, reflecting on the people I’ve unfollowed in the past. I have to wonder though, with #BlackLivesMatter deniers abuzz among my Facebook friends, to what extent do I have a responsibility to keep them from flocking towards the arms of white radical groups?

To be clear, I am not excusing racism, racists should be punished. I’m referring to how I should deal with people I have met personally and who are in my online community that I suspect of racism.

‘Systemic racism doesn’t exist, it is a fascist leftist rant of victim-hood’, said someone in some variation on your Facebook news feed.

Click unfollow. Continue with my life.

We argued a few rounds before. Nowadays we click unfollow and are surprised that white privilege remains unchecked. Anti-discrimination protests across the world led to aggressive push back from far right-wingers whilst hate-sprouting populist Presidents Trump/Bolsonaro/Orban/Modi thrive. If you’re wondering who is still voting in racist policies despite all these social justice campaigns, check out your social media to find the culprits in your life, be they from the office or old classmates.

The Fallacy of Social Media Echo Chambers

The adage that we should avoid talking about religion, race and politics — expired long ago. Today we confidently share our worldviews with all the people on our social media apps. In turn we are overwhelmed by the fast-paced world depicted on the news and unable to keep up with the constant chatter on social media.

No wonder so many of us are burnt out. We are unable to cope with disruptive interjections in the online extension of our personal space. We choose to rather block an individual from our community rather than to engage them in long drawn out debate. We forget our collective responsibility to be teachers.

The problem with debating within our well-groomed world of followers, having kicked out dissenters, you promote an ethics of conformism.

The result of our social media echo chambers is what we see in mainstream debate. Both sides accuse the other of being fascist and uninformed — thus failing democratic processes of compromise and promoting radicalization.

Radicalization begins in your community

When my cousin rocked up with her new husband, Markus, a reformed Austrian Neo-Nazi with a pit bull, we were shocked. Sure, we had all heard about how Islamic radicals recruit vulnerable people but white terrorists were usually cast off as mental cases.

Markus was not mental for the record. His story followed typical precursors for radicalization: a youth feeling lost, unemployed, angry at immigrants with a deep urge to belong. Slap on that the simmering white identity crisis, it’s a feast for dark forces to manipulate.

I’m not saying a person jumps from denying systemic racism to killing people.

However, there are a variety of nefarious activities one can get up to without needing a membership card for the local white supremacist group. One of them is posting misinformation not for discussion but with the intention to invalidate the statements of those oppressed.

On talking about white radicalization Christian Picciolini said that ‘fear is its father and isolation is its mother’.

As many of you would have noticed, debating with someone who rejects systemic racism, leads to nowhere.

I recognize that you are also right to decide it is not your job to teach racists. After all, these deniers drain us, they hurt us and force us to relive our trauma every time we have to explain ourselves. So we follow the easy fix, we delete them from our lives and they disappear into mist of right wing politics. Yet, our actions have consequences. It is by excluding these problematic voices we suspect of racism from our community, that we unwittingly become part of their radicalization.

Instead, to get our cause ahead we may have to do what seems counterproductive. It means taking time from our campaigns to engage deniers - developing strategy on how to hold a conversation, identifying whether certain words have different meanings and reigning in our emotions.

If anything Markus taught me, a part of it will have to be listening to their personal experiences in order to identify how the seed of non-white threat was planted. If we are to see some progress, we will be the bridge connecting them to the bigger world out there.

Ultimately as individuals we may find ourselves giving compassion where it isn’t deserved, in hope our investment nurtures the social justice that ends systemic racism.