From a progressive Democrat:
You might not think of the knitting world as a particularly political
community, but you’d be wrong. Many knitters are active in social
justice communities and love to discuss the revolutionary role knitters
have played in our culture. I started noticing this about a year ago,
particularly on Instagram. I knit as a way to relax and escape the drama
of real life, not to further engage with it. But it was impossible to
ignore after roving gangs of online social justice warriors started
going after anyone in the knitting community who was not lockstep in
their ideology. Knitting stars on Instagram were bullied and mobbed by hundreds of people for seemingly innocuous offenses.
One man got mobbed so badly that he had a nervous breakdown and was
admitted to the hospital on suicide watch. Many things were not right
about the hatred, and witnessing the vitriol coming from those I had
aligned myself with politically was a massive wake-up call....
But
when I witnessed the amount of hate coming from the left in this small,
niche knitting community, I started to question everything. I started
making a proactive effort to break my echo chamber by listening to
voices I thought I would disagree with. I wanted to understand their
perspective, believing it would confirm that they were filled with hate
for anyone who wasn’t like them.
That
turned out not to be the case. The more voices outside the left that I
listened to, the more I realized that these were not bad people. They
were not racists, nazis, or white supremacists. We had differences of
opinions on social and economic issues, but a difference of opinion does
not make your opponent inherently evil. And they could justify their
opinions using arguments, rather than the shouting and ranting I saw
coming from my side of the aisle.
And s9ome of the comments proved her point.
But will the conversion stick, or is there apostasy in her future?
ReplyDeleteFond memories of my old knitting days.
ReplyDeletehttps://i.imgur.com/nhk8vnl.jpg