Black History Month 2026: Pretending to be Offended
Day 23
I’ve been politically active for over twenty-five years and one of the recurring themes with the Right is lying about being offended. When a right-winger claims they became right-wing because “liberals hurt their feelings,” many people will scramble to find out how they can make their message less “offensive.” My question is this: how do we know they were telling the truth?
I frequently encounter this behavior from the Right. How do I know? Because they will fight tooth and nail against me over something like universal healthcare only for me to find them agreeing a day earlier with a post about universal healthcare made by a wh1te person. Unless they had a change of heart overnight, they weren’t fighting me because of honest disagreement. This is why I don’t believe most of the things right-wingers tell me.
Even though it happens to me often, I don’t believe it’s a race issue. I’ve seen the Right direct their fake outrage at anyone who espouses a view to the left of Ronald Reagan. I’ve seen them do it women, LGBTQ people, immigrants, disabled people, poor people, and even cishet wh1te men. No one is safe! The Right will specifically seek out left-leaning people and try to weaponize their crocodile tears against them.
It’s the oldest trick in the book. Humans are social creatures built for cooperation. This means most people don’t like offending other people. People on the Right take advantage of this by acting offended when someone speaks about an issue that’s important to them. This often leads to the person dialing back what they said and/or being more hesitant to speak up again. That’s what the Right really wants: to silence their opposition.
So, what can we do? Show a bit of skepticism. Make them work for it. If someone on the Right claims saying, “Black Lives Matter” is deeply racist, ask them to prove it. Or, if you’re feeling frisky, ask them why you should care about what they think. If they try to claim you’re just pushing them further to the right, ask them why you should care. Seriously. Are there lasting effects of one person moving further to the right? Probably not!
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