It's not bullying to harass war criminals for committing genocide.

Against "Bullying Works" As a Phrase, But In Defense of What I Think People are Trying to Say With It

The only other thing I have to say about it is that I really don't like the phrase "bullying works”, because "bullying" is simultaneously infantilizing and power-serving. Infantilizing: makes it sound like our interactions are slap fights between schoolchildren rather than arguments over important matters. Power-serving: "Bullying" is always punching down a power gradient, otherwise I don't consider it bullying. I got bullied in childhood and I’m sure so did a lot of people on this very queer very autistic site full of people with too much empathy and compassion for the fascist programming of western “civilization” to mold into obedient collaborators. My goal has never been to become the bully, so I do not like community self-defense in the form of dog piling and dunking on reactionary interlopers being called “bullying”. It is not. If I post in response to some wandering shitlib who accuses me of being a Russian bot because I don't think genocide and land-theft is good, that's not me bullying them, that's being confrontational and perhaps using some jester's privilege to rattle them. That is me being part of our collective set of porcupine spines to keep these asshats away. It's not bullying. “Bullying works" is a problematic phrase we should ditch because it legitimizes or defends bullying. But we should not throw away dunking and adversarial confrontation, nor should we discard the powerful weapon that is humor, because we made the mistake of conflating those with bullying. We aren't even doing bullying .

The way that bullying "works" is by terrorizing and brutalizing people into conforming with societal norms -- cishet, neurotypical, white, fascist. That's not what we're doing if we dogpile a shitlib. We aren't even making them conform with our leftist norms, we're just telling them to get out and stay out.

The phrase is also bad PR, IMO. Everyone, bullies included, will agree that “bullying is bad”. So if we bill ourselves as the cool bullies we’re portraying ourselves as people who deserve to be viewed with contempt. Posting PPB is only bullying if it is done down the power gradient, and with proper discipline and situational awareness we should not be doing that. Posting PPB up the power gradient is an act of community self defense and love. And that last line is I think what people are trying to say with the problematic phrase "bullying works".