Let's suppose, hypothetically, that there was a big company dumping toxic, radioactive waste in your neighborhood--used fracking chemicals, maybe. Some of your neighbors work for the company. They've mostly bought into the company's reassurances that the chemicals are safe, and whatever fears they do still have are offset by their desire to remain employed. These people are either quiet about the dumping, or they're vocally supportive of it.
Most people in the neighborhood are simply unaware of what's happening, and would be upset if they knew.
There are, however, two houses on the end of the street occupied by people nobody else in the neighborhood talks to. And the reason nobody talks to them is because of the giant Nazi flags they have hanging on their front porches. One dude actually dresses up like Hitler. Nobody in the neighborhood talks to them, but their neo-Nazi friends from a ten-county region get together at those two houses to do whatever it is racists do when they get together in large groups.
The people who live in those two houses are well informed about the dumping, and they're quite upset. Being passionate, politically active sorts who have some experience with organizing groups, they decide to do something about it. They start going door to door, knocking on doors and talking with the neighbors about the dangers of the chemicals being dumped in their back yards. They say they're forming a community organization to get out the word and to put pressure on local government to stop the dumping. Individual voices, they argue, would have no effect, given the influence of this big, wealthy company and the support of their employees. If the other residents of the community want to get the government to stop the dumping, they're going to have to pull together.
But the people leading the effort are literally Nazis. Worse, they can't seem to compartmentalize their Nazism from their concerns about the chemicals. All the literature they're passing out to alert people about the dangers of the chemicals has swastikas on it, and messages about "preserving the health of our children, and thus the future of the white race." Disturbingly, there are a few people in the neighborhood who don't have a problem with this and think that maybe they had misjudged the Nazis. Many more aren't at all comfortable with the Nazi stuff, but they are very concerned about the chemicals. Some of them thought of starting their own, independent groups, but they were talked out of it with the argument that, "We need to present a united front. If we let petty differences divide us, the polluters win."
The company that's dumping the chemicals looks at this situation and decides to run a public relations campaign smearing the environmentalists as being a hate group. Like the extremist leaders of the community organization, the chemical company depicts opposition to pollution as being inherently racist. They lean into their image of being anti-fascist and contact the media. The media runs with the story. Now, outside of this neighborhood, the whole country has heard about this battle between polluters and the residents of the place where the chemicals are being dumped, but they've only heard it framed as "Diversity, Inc. versus the enviro-nazis." And of course, every time the media interview someone representing the environmentalists, they go to the leadership, who have a habit of taking that opportunity to rant about wanting to exterminate the other races and whatnot.
Pretty soon, the whole nation is polarized into two camps. As far as most people are concerned--even people who've never been anywhere near your neighborhood--you either support dumping the chemicals in residential neighborhoods or you're a Nazi. Those are the two choices--cancer or genocide.
You live in the neighborhood, and you don't like either one of those options. You're opposed to the dumping, and you like seeing so many members of your community coming together to fight it, but you're not at all on board with the Nazi stuff, not one little bit. You can't just look past it or downplay it in the interests of advancing the environmental cause. You try to be independent and put out your own message on social media and whatnot, but people misjudge you. Every time you mention the chemicals, people decide you're a Nazi, and when you deny it, they just call you a lying Nazi. When you denounce the Nazis, everyone assumes you're on the company team and believe that the chemicals are safe and good for the community.
What do you do in this situation? Do you take on the role of "the weirdo nobody in the neighborhood talks to" that was formerly occupied by the leaders of the new community group? Do you isolate yourself like that? Do you organize your own, independent organization that, like those Nazis on the end of the street, is seen as a fringe group, only being able to increase its numbers by drawing on the support of people across a wide region? Or do you get louder trying to make yourself understood? Or do you get sneaky and try to infiltrate the enviro-nazi group with the intent of changing it from the inside? Or do you just try to be friendly to everybody on both sides and hope that things will work themselves out, never mind the fact that each side denounces you when they find out you're friendly with the other?
Let me know in the comments what you would do in this situation.
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