Won’t you sue my neighbor?

*I’m not saying you are saying otherwise or were speaking on more than this one instance- but just the way it reads to me makes it seem like asking of the masses for a cause is a negative thing, and I just wanted to clarify it is not, and it is something Fred Rodgers did daily. Part of what makes him so special is that he “led by example” and for all we know of him lived the way he asked others to live as best he could.

Ah yes I only think it's a bad thing when you ask the masses to act against someone. As you said, promoting peace and encouraging people to live with kindness and respect is only positive.

Yes. I can agree with advocacy for a cause, trying to promote ideas or stop/mitigate etc. actions, but the modern cry for a figure head and blood isn’t very noble. Where laws have been broken, Justice will bring people to justice. Where grudges are concerned, the mob isn not the place to handle such things.

" I’m sure that if those people were genuinely sorry and didn’t do it again he’d be willing to forgive them, probably even spend some time with them and try to guide them to a better path so long as they could be civil in his presence and show manners. " - What, do you think there's good people in the KKK too?

Yeah I do, at he very least there are people who can be good people with a few choices. Gandhi was a racist and a classist who used slurs to refer to Blacks and was upset because he didn’t think Indians deserved to be treated as poorly as blacks did by the British in South Africa within any single person is the ability to be both a good person and a bad one at once, let alone a whole organization. Amongst all the Tripp’s of all the peoples of the world you’ll find those who have committed war crimes, rapes, pillaged from civilians and the like. Can we call every single one a bad person, or irredeemable?

There are members of hate groups from fundamentalist political and religious terrorists to racial radicals who have been transformed. Walked away from those lives and changed, and gone on to do good works and help communities and others. Amongst the ranks of even the SS, amongst Nazis and Soviets and any organization you can name are people who went on after their part in their conflicts were over to become citizens in the very societies they once stood at arms, even killed, against.

There is statistically at least one single person in the KKK who is or could choose to be a “good person” given the right life experiences. Not every member of the KKK has been in or would actually choose to be in a lynching, and many people who don’t join or wear the hood are just as or even more racist; or have done/are willing to do harm to those they hate.

So yeah. That’s what I’m saying more or less- that there are people in these organizations that if you take away their hate they are good people. And to the message that started this post, meeting their hate with blind hate doesn’t usually help them find or want to find their way, and arguably it doesn’t make us any better than them to label their whole group as irredeemable “bad eggs.” What’s the solution to that? Kill them all? Exile them and allow their hate to fester on the isolation of an echo chamber where those who might be reached by tempered words will likely never hear anything that isn’t extreme?

You can refuse to tolerate hate without giving in to hate. I do not support the KKK, I do not support their philosophies. I dislike that such an organization exists let alone that enough people would harbor such awfulness in their hearts to make it possible for it to exist. I do not hate them. They are lost. Many just want something to belong to, are angry, ignorant, proud. The hand that was there, the voice, was one of hate. So they took it. It gave them friends and purpose and a way to exercise the negativity they were feeling and aim it somewhere besides self hate. They largely lack the tools to cope in life and many are mentally sick. Those are the sort of people who need the most help in seeing the way. If they can change- I say let them. People are idiots. We do dumb things. You won’t save everyone. Can’t. But that doesn’t mean you should write everyone off either.