You will see this over and over again. MLK and Ralph Nader. There are business incentives behind this, and lots of methods available to those with lots of money to sabotage opposition. The more lurid the smears, the more likely to dissuade people in taking part in or even associating with, what might be good effective actions, just because they either were promoted or originated with someone connected to someone who can be brought down. Sometimes people are set up or subjected to false allegations, but of course a lot of people who are able to get traction and attention are often vain, very imperfect, or even people with questionable motives or improper behaviours.
But for any movement or issue or cause, there will always be people out there saying don’t do it because it’s not the right organization, it’s not the right leadership, it’s not the right tactic, it’s not the right activists, it’s not the right people involved, it’s not the right time. Any nitpicking reason to convince you not to act. Or sometimes they just accuse any activist or organization of being not real, not grassroots, or make accusations of questionable funding.
Sometimes criticism will be correct and real, obviously. If an action or information is harmful, then attacking the messenger makes sense. If someone’s pushing something you know is problematic or really harmful, then attacking the person pushing the idea is the right thing to do.
The problem comes in when attacking someone who is not a nice person or is in fact really awful, but who happens to be involved in something that otherwise would be effective and you’d support, because this can undermine the cause itself, by attacking someone associated with it. It’s a very powerful tactic. And sick burns and saying “I told you so” is very satisfying. And your opposition will help you do those attacks because it works to undermine support for any legitimate action. It just helps to demoralize everyone into feeling like there is no good action, no trustworthy organizers, and no good groups at all, and that maybe nothing is worth doing.
So what do you do to warn people away from a bad person who might sometimes promote good causes or issues? You warn people quietly, through your personal networks, and tell people you know about what’s wrong with the person and why it may not be in anyone’s interest to associate with them or even acknowledge their involvement in anything and to ignore that person entirely. And you don’t boost their profile at all — don’t be a gift to rivals. Quietly undermining someone who you think will spoil something with their prominence works well enough in mitigating the damage, and it’s just not worth “taking someone down” publicly if you’re going to undermine your own cause in the process.
“Not just think about reacting to the message, but actually undermining or thinking about how to undermine the messenger. There’s a few ways we think about doing that based on what we see in the data in terms of what has been successful by a variety of folks who are trying to undermine the messenger.”
— Becky Fair, March 12 2024, The Cognitive Crucible Podcast