Refusing to Choose Is a Choice

I recently found this quote on social media and quite liked the sentiment:

You can say “all are welcome,” but if wolves and sheep are both welcome then you’re only going to get wolves. The smart sheep will go somewhere else and the naive sheep will be eaten and processed. If you welcome Islamophobes and Muslims then you’ll get Islamophobes. If you welcome Klan members and people of color then you’ll get Klan members. If you welcome nativists and immigrants you’ll get nativists.

Refusing to choose is a choice. It’s a choice in favor of the people who prey on others and who refuse to acknowledge the humanity of those they hate.

The quote didn’t have a source but was attributed to someone named Adam Bates. With the sorry state of Google and glut of people sharing it out of context, it took me a little while to track down the original quote on Facebook; it’s part of a longer post denouncing anti-LGBTQ+ & anti-immigrant sentiments within the libertarian movement.

See also Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance:

If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

Rebecca Solnit: On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway:

Nevertheless, we get this hopelessly naive version of centrism, of the idea that if we’re nicer to the other side there will be no other side, just one big happy family. This inanity is also applied to the questions of belief and fact and principle, with some muddled cocktail of moral relativism and therapists’ “everyone’s feelings are valid” applied to everything. But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?

And how not to become a Nazi bar:

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”

And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”

And i was like, ohok and he continues.

“you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

(via @tressiemcphd)

Tags: Adam Bates · politics