Targeting the most vulnerable minority groups for political gain is the oldest trick in the populist playbook. It is also relatively easy to build new hate narratives recycling old tropes and prejudices that already exist in any given culture. Such ready-made tools are as effective as they are universal. From the perspective of technique, it really does not make that much of a difference who the populists decide to strike using this template of hate. From the human perspective, however, it does make a whole lot of difference, if the group being attacked is one you belong to.
Advocating for human rights requires us to confront such narratives and that is never without costs. The closer we are to the group of people who are vilified, scapegoated, and dehumanized, the heavier the emotional and physical effort becomes. Working as allies, we may even become targeted by association, falling under the larger umbrella of human beings who – according to the narrative – are non-grata. After all, according to the logic of polarization, if a minority is branded as evil, sooner or later their defenders will be called traitors. This, however, is still different from belonging to the minority itself and for one simple reason–you can stop being an advocate, but you cannot stop existing. You can quit the job, but not the identity.
Multiple sources + repetition + time = the perfect hate campaign
What the general formula for successful messaging tells us is that communication cannot be a one-off thing; we need to give it a chance to sink in by saturating both space and time by repetition. What it does not say, however, is what happens once you are not only on the receiving end but also when the narrative is about you.
Reading, watching, and listening to countless messages that are humiliating, denigrating, and overtly distorting who you are and what your actual lived experience is, becomes insufferable quite quickly. And while the shock of landing in the crosshair of very wealthy, very powerful people wears off quickly, the sense of dread, frustration, and hopelessness never really goes away.
If by any chance you end up working in communications, you will not have the luxury of shutting those messages off by going off the grid. You will be expected to not only follow but also address the campaign that calls for other people to hate you. Analyzing and processing such communications on a daily basis is like taking a dive in a gutter using an increasingly clogged snorkel. Like a character in a video game, you will be diving deeper, searching for the lever that shuts the pipe and ends the spill. Unfortunately, the game is badly designed, and no such lever exists.
So the bad news is you will not be able to stop the sewage from spilling. The good news is that, eventually, others will begin to notice it as well. All you need to do is not drown before they do. It is worthwhile then to focus on honing those survival skills in advance.
“It’s just politics”
First, prepare for people to tell you that you are overreacting, if you try to signal them. Because of your position, you will notice when it begins to happen, and they will not. They will tell you it is nothing unusual for this or that political group to use slightly more aggressive language during an election campaign and you should not be surprised. It will pass. They will not tell you it will get worse.
Second, prepare for people who support, even just a little bit, the politicians who target you to explain that it is not really about you. Your friends or family members, people you know from school or chat with online may end up trying to convince you that the hate you experience is not real. To them, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic narratives are about abstracts and concepts, not human beings. It is just a political strategy, so stop being so damned self-centered.
Third, prepare for people to expect you to live your life as usual. They will notice the hate eventually, but it will not impact their lives and so they will not understand why it impacts yours. If you tell them you are tired, depressed, or scared, they will not get it, at first. Most of them will only change their minds when they see actual physical violence.
There are two “I’s” in “activist”
How can you prepare for any of that?
First: lower your expectations and accept the fact that people, even those close to you, will be too busy with their own problems to acknowledge yours. They will try to explain the hate away not necessarily because they are evil and insensitive, but mainly because they believe they cannot really do anything about it. As an activist or advocate, you might try to change that by showing them ways of gaining a sense of agency.
Second: remember that abstracting an issue from the human beings it concerns is the first condition for any hate campaign to launch. Those narratives are always about the “gender ideology”, “foreign agents”, or “migrant tsunami”; never about Thomas or Catherine, Mariam or Abdul. Faces and personal stories produce nuance and may even generate empathy–the greatest threat to hate campaigns. This is precisely why storytelling should be your first and last technique of choice when communicating.
Third: surround yourself with people you can fall back on when things get too difficult. Make peace with the fact that some of the people you usually rely on will simply not get you. The good thing is that as the hate campaign progresses, you will meet new allies, new friends even, who will arrive in your life already convinced about the cause you are fighting for. Pay attention to them and keep them in your circle by staying in touch with them.
Regardless of what you may think your goal as an activist is, once you become the target, the main resource you should be taking care of is yourself. It is not only scarce and limited but also hard to replenish, so rationing is a necessity starting from day one. The tricky part is that you cannot really thrive alone. You need two “I’s” to make an activist.
Temptation of self-advocacy
When you start to dismantle hateful narratives with your own, meticulously crafted alternatives, you will notice that human stories can work wonders on the moveable middle and that is when you will become tempted by self-advocacy. Using your own voice and speaking your truth may seem easier and less time-consuming than looking for people who can share their stories, true, but there is a huge risk involved.
As you work with people who make their personal lives public in order to make the audience empathize and understand them a little better, it will probably be quite easy for you to see how vulnerable they become and how you–as the communicator–need to care for their wellbeing. They need to be given the choice to opt out, go off-grid, and go silent at any given time if they get overwhelmed by the response or sheer visibility. Although you should be applying the same rule to yourself, there is a high chance of either missing or ignoring the moment when you start paying too high a price. You might end up being very ethical when dealing with other people’s need for privacy while treating yourself as nothing more than a campaigning asset. This is where people around you should step in and tell you to stop hurting yourself. You can ignore them, of course, but save some money for a therapist first.
Communication-based actions in community
Hate campaigns can last for years, their intensity fluctuating over election or economic cycles. Sometimes they diminish but never really go away. They employ long-term communication strategies and long-term strategies must be employed to combat them. This kind of work requires levels of resilience and stamina that no one person can provide. Communication must be based in a community as the source of not just skill and know-how, true stories and shared ideas, but also mutual support and regulation.
We may not have the money or the influence the producers of disinformation and hate campaigns enjoy, but we can still accomplish great things as long as we remember to build our support networks of people who will catch us if we slip and fall.
Author: Hubert Sobecki
➡️ Hubert Sobecki is in charge of strategic communications at Love Does Not Exclude Association, an LGBT+ organization based in Warsaw, Poland. For the past 8 years, he has been working on campaigns and anti-disinformation action in a hostile environment fueled by state-sponsored propaganda utilized by the previous Polish government.
Background illustration: xbrchx
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