You remember the post I made not too long ago about the Temptations of Activism? I divided activism into passive and aggressive, and gave a warning about activating in a way that hurts the cause. In the end, I linked to a couple of other blog entries about Trolls. One of those was to Recursive Paradox's Genderbitch.
She also posted an entry about activism styles, but divided the styles up into four methods: Nuker, Appeaser, Logic Bomber and Emoter. She writes about the strengths and weaknesses in each methods, the likely personality traits that contribute to each, and gives some guidelines to maximize the efficiency. You can read more of her post, but I've quoted those guidelines below.
1: Keep Your Group Mixed: Have Nukers, Appeasers, Logic Bombers and Emoters present within your activist network, working for the needs of your group. Make sure you have at least some switchers around and people who walk middle lines. Having someone for every context is always a good idea and will maximize your success.
2: Be Mindful Of Flaws: Make sure you are self aware and externally aware about the disadvantages of your methodology. Specifically Appeasers, who are in the most dangerous position of all. Nukers, Logic Bombers and Emoters can’t effectively be turned against their own as weaponized tools but Appeasers can. If you practice Appeaser methods, be extraordinarily careful that what you see as progress isn’t just you being co opted and used to silence Nukers and others or used to conceal other problems through lip service progressivism. Nukers clearly have to be mindful of intersectionality and their own privilege as well as allies with anxiety or conflict issues. And the other two need to be mindful of who they’re speaking to and whether they’re wasting energy.
3: Don’t Infight Over AMO’s: Seriously, this is a huge fucking one. The biggest advantage the oppressors have over you (no matter what group you’re in) is numbers. They don’t have to all agree and they can infight all they want. There’s more of them and they already have more power. We can not afford to. Now if someone is failing at 2 above, then yes, criticize them. But keep it in house. Don’t make public spectacles of it, don’t silence, don’t attack. The bigots eat that shit up. And more often than not, such infighting isn’t even in the presence of a fuck up on rule 2 but simply philosophical disagreements. Quite frankly, philosophical disagreements are a shit poor reason to engage in energy sapping infighting. If your philosophy does not connect with someone’s methods, well that’s something to discuss on down time, civilly and without argument. Jabbing at people because you think their Nuking is violent and wrong or because you think their Appeasement is an utter useless waste is not acceptable. The infighting divides us and it’s part of why we’re staying conquered.
4: Tag Team: Using multiple methods of communication in your AMO or having different AMO Communicators to back you up when you’re in the field or on the front lines maximizes your potential. If you do a little bit of Nuking and the person is getting pissy and whiny or seems to be withdrawing, call in an Appeaser to put it in gentle terms. If you’re getting ignored completely as an Appeaser, call in an air strike from the Nukers to get the attention centered on your movement’s needs. Logic Bombers and Emoters working together are especially invincible, because what works better than rational arguments mixed with things that tug your heartstrings? Remember, the stakes are intensely high. It is worth it to manipulate the majority, because chances are that’s the only way we’re going to get what we need.
5: Always Have Substance: This I can’t stress enough. It doesn’t matter how much attention you get as a Nuker, or how well you can string together an argument and logic as a Logic Bomber if you aren’t right and you don’t have content within your method. It’s irrelevant how gentle and caring you are as an Appeaser or how well you can play the heartstring violin as an Emoter if you’re wrong or don’t have anything useful to say on your group’s needs. Always make sure you know what you’re talking about, don’t speak for those with different experiences and make sure you actually have something to say. Communication methods won’t save you if you don’t have anything to communicate or you’re dead wrong about something.
It's a very good read. So go ahead and give it a look!
