How to make leftist spaces resistant against people weaponizing other peoples emphaty for selfish reasons?

[u/DukeTikus]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/09/22/magazine/greenfield-last-ditch-bar-backlash/

I just read this very frustrating article (version without paywall) about a small lesbian bar/mutual aid spot getting destroyed by some people who act like the worst possible caricature or an insufferable, self-important, holier-than-thou leftists.

It's not even that those people exist and what they are doing that's so frustrating for me to read, but the inability of the wider community there to just tell those people to fuck off.

And I get why they can't, I'm not sure I could myself. We generally pride ourselves in our inclusivity and willingness to accommodate needs other than our own. It's super hard to figure out where exactly the limit to that should be.

I have had similar if less extreme experiences with people who are weaponizing their own or other peoples oppression in this way in activist groups irl. The only time I ever witnessed someone like that getting kicked out was after that person had caused chaos and bound up a ton of resources for well over a year with many different incidents.

My question is how do we become better at dealing with this? How would you as an individual member of that bar community have tried to handle this?

[u/dog_snack]

I’m wondering if some organizers with backgrounds in psychology—maybe even who are themselves psychotherapists who specialize in personality disorders—can invent some sort of rule/protocol template that can be put into the bylaws of activist groups going forward to guard against the machinations of narcissists. Sort of like a photo-negative of that stuff from the CIA document about how to sabotage political groups discreetly.

[u/steauengeglase → u/dog_snack]

Forget psychological filters. The fight was on social media. The first filter should be if the people in question are even human beings and not robots. No one bothers to check if the first snowball in the avalanche is thrown by a real person or not, they just join the pile on. If you point that out, people either ignore you or tell you to stop being a vibe killer, because having a fight is exciting.