xkcd comic showing a person on their computer. Someone says to them, "Are you coming to bed?" "I can't. This is important." "What?" "Someone is wrong on the internet." Image source. |
Recently on the progressive/liberal side of the internet, I've been seeing this phrase pop up many times: "the cruelty is the point."
For example, maybe someone writes a blog post about a "pro-life" law which doesn't even allow abortion for a fetus with a health condition such that it can't survive. Why? Why? Why? What could possibly be the reason for this law? How can you force a pregnant person in that terrible situation to continue to carry a pregnancy, and suffer all the health problems and risks that come with it, along with the emotional trauma of knowing their baby will not survive? The comments section on such a blog post will be full of comments saying "the cruelty is the point."
The first time I heard this idea, "the cruelty is the point", I *did* think it was meaningful. If you can't make sense of what might motivate someone to do something that negatively affects other people, well, maybe we should consider the possibility that they genuinely want to make other people suffer. After we've tried so hard to figure out someone's motives, and we've come up empty, here's a novel idea. That was how I first understood "the cruelty is the point," and I did think it was helpful, if understood in that way.
But recently I've been seeing comments like this everywhere, and I don't like it. People discussing policies proposed by Republicans which would harm immigrants, trans people, poor people, women, etc- these policies are cruel and we need to fight them. But in general I don't think it's true that "the cruelty is the point," and by saying this, we are spreading misinformation about the motives of people who disagree with us. I don't like how I'm seeing this comment everywhere now, like it's the go-to response when we read about a cruel conservative policy.
(When I say "everywhere" I just mean the parts of the internet I spend time on. Maybe you haven't seen this phenomenon, in which case you can pretty much ignore this post. But please be skeptical of "the cruelty is the point" if you ever come across it in the future.)
"The cruelty is the point" can explain the motivations of some fraction of people. Maybe they're just sadistic, or maybe they think there are certain groups of people who deserve to be punished, so it's right to make laws which cause those groups to suffer. But in general, no, I don't think this is the main thing that motivates people to support policies which we would call cruel. By jumping so quickly to "the cruelty is the point", we are reducing people to a caricature. This is misinformation.
There are plenty of other reasons people might support bad policies! They likely have different beliefs about how the world works, which lead them to conclude that these bad policies are actually good. Maybe they believe that policies which you might not like will help you to be a better person in the long run. Maybe they want members of their in-group to view them positively, and voicing support for certain political ideas will accomplish that. Plenty of reasons. Not *good* reasons, but more realistic and relatably-human than just "the cruelty is the point."
It is just NOT TRUE that people who support conservative political ideas are mainly motivated by cruelty. Maybe it's true in some cases, but overall, no, it's not. Does it matter what their actual motives are? Well, not necessarily, because we have to fight back against their bad policies regardless. But if your goal is to talk to people and persuade them to change their minds, then you should find out their actual reasons first. If that's not your goal, well that's fine, you're not required to understand bigots, but at least you shouldn't claim that you know they're simply motivated by cruelty.
And think about how it comes across, if somebody supports bad policy xyz for reasons that they think are good reasons, and then they see people on the internet saying that the people who support xyz must be motivated by cruelty. Their response will be "wow, this person doesn't know the first thing about this actual issue" because we're out here on the internet confidently making completely wrong assertions about other people's internal thoughts.
Maybe let's not do that?
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