%b3bRynusXfTlPSwoaXIen07tcwng/596ySVjOdmjE8M=.sha256@andrestaltz I appreciate this pause for reflection and I hope that my obviously compromised sense of safety can be helpful in opening up to some of these difficult issues.
I confess I am still troubled by the perspectives being brought into the dialogue about fascism.
I don't disagree with the 3rd of these linked posts- I think most internal changes in people happen relationally and that this is where we can have our deepest impact. Perhaps it would be useful to know the data I have on this: I have clocked 188 hours of desk time in conversation attempting to resolve these issues. Usually desk time is 1/2 - 2/3 of the time I spend on governance, strategy & management work; but this particular work was disproportionally intrusive into messaging apps on my phone. Still, let's be conservative and call it ~276 hours spent in conversation, mostly doing emotional labour to the benefit of White men's ignorance. And this does not even begin to account for the brain-space consumed by fretting at how to calmly address unconscious bias; or loss of focus, chronic stress and anxiety, lost sleep, waking up with heart palpitations every morning for months, digestive complaints, fatigue and all the other second-order effects that come from feeling a need to assert your right to exist in a hostile environment that does not want to care.
I am confident those conversations took up a lot of Eric's time as well, and the time of many of HOLO's employees. There were related conflicts going on within the organisation that have also consumed time and money. Time spent not building better futures. Slight sidenote, but if we want to have a dialogue about the real quantifiable impacts of tolerating hate speech and bigotry in communities, then let's have HOLO's employees release their timesheet data on this too. How much time and money have they spent suppressing conflict in efforts to include Moritz & those who enable him?
You should also know that I first asked Holochain's community manager for support in addressing Moritz' beliefs with him at DWeb Camp '22. I was told that the idea "felt manipulative", and asked to reflect that perhaps I should have more empathy for others who could be confronted by my physical appearance. I spent the week camped in the same bungalow as somebody I knew to be opposed to my existence. I then had the confidence of a private conversation broken, was lovebombed and cornered into silence and compliance in the back of a car leaving camp. Later in attempting to resolve the betrayal with the community manager I was asked to hold space for his hurt after explicity stating that I did not have the capacity to do so. He has never been mandated unconscious bias / sensitivity training as I requested with HOLO- they simply didn't renew his contract to save face. He remains unreformed and I hear reports of him continuing to cause damage in neighbouring communities. I am only choosing to keep his name out of it due to Art's attempts to scapegoat him. His bromances were an integral part of upholding Holochain's systems of exclusion and oppression. To this day, all has ever said to me about it is that "he just loves Moritz".
In any case, I hope these short summaries help to illustrate how many attempts at generative interventions had preceded my earlier XTwitter frustrations.
Of course, I did not know then what we know now. If I'd have seen evidence that Moritz was in bed with White Nationalists and hate groups I would never have attempted to engage him in dialogue at all. Perhaps nobody is ever beyond helping, but I think it's a bit of an imposition to expect oppressed peoples to be in warm and amicable dialogue with those who oppress them.