One of the most consistently employed arguments used to detract from an activist cause is the 'double-standard' attack. Essentially, the attack – which is a disingenuous attempt to delegitimize activist work in a given area – often reads like this: How can you be so focused on 'Cause A' when it's clear 'Cause B' is infinitely more important?
This 'double-standard' attack, used solely to delegitimize 'Cause A,' is seen in progressive and conservative circles alike, often to great effect despite its logical absurdity. For example, ask any privacy activist concerned about government spying, and they'll tick off the ways it's been used against them. (How can you focus on the NSA when poverty/gun laws/climate change are actually impacting peoples' lives?)
Ask any immigration reform activist, and they'll tick off the ways it's been used against them. (How can you focus on immigration when we've got so many citizens who are homeless/imprisoned/unemployed?)
Ask any critic of Israel's military occupation and denial of Palestinian rights, and they'll tick off the ways it's been used against them. (How can you focus on Israel and treat it with a double standard when Syria/North Korea/Iraq are so much worse?)
At first glance, the 'double-standard' approach might seem legitimate. After all, isn't climate change objectively more grave a threat to human existence than NSA surveillance? I don't think anyone could argue otherwise. And yet, this fact doesn't make the double-standard approach a meaningful or intellectually-honest one. Here's why: by definition, activism demands selectivity. Everyone who chooses to champion a cause must, by definition, ignore activist work in other areas. After all, this is not just the nature of activism, but the nature of any passion or endeavor one might choose to embrace.
An activist who chooses to focus his or her outside energies on U.S. health care reform must, simultaneously, choose not to invest activist hours in other areas. Does that mean such a person's activism is illegitimate, meaningless or nefarious because people are dying of Ebola in Africa? Does it mean such a person is treating the U.S. health care system with a double standard by not focusing equally on global health care collapses?
Of course not.
Which is why anyone who has their activism attacked by one using the 'double-standard' argument should remember that every person has a right to choose their personal passions and their personal activism. It's why privacy activists should be able to engage in their work without being branded as anti-American for not simultaneously focusing on security threats. It's why immigration activists should be able to engage in their work without being branded as anti-American for not simultaneously focusing on the unemployment of 'legal' citizens. It's why anti-occupation activists should be able to engage in their work without being branded as anti-Semitic for not simultaneously focusing on North Korean work camps.
For this is the nature of activism: choosing a cause amidst an infinite number of global issues.
Without global citizens choosing the causes that matter to them, there would be no political protests, no social upheavals, no mass movements to protect the rights of those oppressed, those abused, those in desperate need of activist work.
No, all there would be is paralysis and perpetual victory for those in power.
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David Harris-Gershon is author of the memoir What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, recently published by Oneworld Publications.