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