Five types of movement disruptors

In any radical movement or project, you're eventually going to run into *disruptors* - people who may not necessarily *intend* to sabotage your movement, but you can't say for certain either, and they're certainly having that effect. The exact dynamics vary from case to case, but a common factor among them is that they are often privileged folks who are unwilling to reflect, and often resort to abuser tactics as a defense response when criticized.

They can be difficult to moderate, because many people do not recognize their behaviour as being *overtly* abusive. Nevertheless, it's important to moderate such people, because if left unmoderated, they will destroy your movement from the inside. Crucially, their *original intention* doesn't matter here - if they are unwilling to reflect and change their behaviour, then they will cause damage regardless of whether it is intentional, and that is why moderation is needed.

So let's talk about a few such cases (and one person may exhibit more than one of them!) - this is not an exhaustive list, but hopefully it'll help to recognize these problems early in your movement.

THE GROWTH SEEKER

The growth seeker only seems to care about scale. They'll constantly focus on recruitment, expansion and growth, even if it comes at the expense of everything (and everybody) else. They will rarely stop to ask "can we actually handle this scale yet?", and generally won't have a plan for actually *dealing* with the growth - or when they do, their plan won't consider the needs of vulnerable and marginalized participants in the movement.

They generally will not recognize the validity of smaller-scale approaches, subprojects, or subgroups, and continuously insist on expanding their scope or group size. They may reject solutions to problems that do not immediately work for everybody everywhere, even if they would materially improve things for some people without downsides for anyone else.

Leaving them unmoderated will cause your movement to blow up; you will get overrun by people who barely understand the goals of your movement, and you will not have the capacity to deal with that. The growth seeker, if they refuse to accept that growth is not everything, should be removed from your community.

THE BUMBLER

They frequently end up saying harmful things or taking harmful actions, and don't seem to quite understand why they're harmful... but they also never seem very interested in learning about it, either - instead choosing to insist that "that wasn't their intention" and "they didn't mean it that way". They might argue that they can't be expected to know this because of their background.

They might superficially apologize, but show no real understanding of the problem, and likely reoffend soon after in a slightly different way - with a slightly different comment, harming a slightly different group of people, and so on. They're usually privileged (cis, white, men, etc.) and don't really recognize that privilege; often subscribing to a view that "everybody is equal" as if it's already established fact. Considering themselves "racially color-blind" is a variation on this theme.

Leaving them untouched in your movement will lead to marginalized folks burning out from the constant harm; and the bumbler will likely become angry if you keep subtly calling out their behaviour. If a direct confrontation on the subject doesn't help to change their behaviour, you should remove them from your community.

THE CONTRARIAN

They only ever seem to say "but". Whenever a plan is suggested, whenever a goal is specified, they will be there; trying to seek out the most obscure failure modes and counterarguments possible, and - and this is the crucial part - presenting them as if they are a major showstopper. They go well beyond "planning for failure", and seem to actively enjoy "playing devil's advocate"; they seem more interested in *challenging* you than in helping you achieve anything. They probably subscribe to "debate" (in the adversarial sense) as some essential facet of life, some essential tool in the toolbox to prevent unspecified disaster or societal collapse. The distinction between "debate" and "discussion" seems lost on them.

Left unmoderated, the contrarian will make your movement immobile. Nothing will get done; they will just forever tie everybody up in endless discussions about non-existent scenarios, only to eventually land at the conclusion that "well, I guess we can't do anything". If they refuse to accept that "debate" is the wrong tool for collaboration, you should remove them from your community.

THE COMPROMISE-SEEKER

Whenever there's a conflict, they're always the first to suggest a "compromise". Curiously often, that "compromise" shifts the movement further away from its original goals and morals. They rarely seem interested in getting at the root cause of a disagreement and figuring out a common solution (or determining that one party is just wrong); instead usually settling for something that is nominally "in the middle" of two other options. They usually show strong interest in working with other people and groups who do not actually share the movement's core values, sometimes on the basis of some superficial similarities, and don't seem to understand that not everybody has the same end goal. The "big tent" metaphor is a common example of this.

If left unmoderated, the compromise-seeker will pull your movement further and further away from its roots, until it becomes an ineffective progressive-sounding version of the status quo; because the status quo is so widely accepted, it is a virtual certainty that there will always be *some* people arguing for it, and so the compromises don't stop until you end up at that point. Try to make them understand that some differences are irreconcilable; if they cannot accept this, they should be removed from your community.