What people want from you when they ask you to openly condemn something is to make a broad societal change that normalizes that condemnation.
There’s nothing wrong with not doing it. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that some issue isn’t worth getting involved with, or you don’t think an issue is a big enough problem, or you don’t like how activists are going about it. Plenty of valid reasons but the crucial thing that you have to recognize that you’re making a choice, own it, and realize that it might have consequences.
I think your comment also exposes an ambiguity in the phrase "support the status quo."
One meaning is to affirm the status quo as generally acceptable.
Another meaning is to (implicitly) decide that one particular aspect of the status quo falls below the cutoff line of what you have the time or energy to deal with in the moment.
I don't know if conflating the two intentionally is a common occurrence, but I can see how doing so could be used to incite outrage amongst uncritical thinkers.
Also I don't want to have to be attacked or have to defend my position if I don't word things perfectly (more commonly don't show enough outrage, because I don't have as strong of opinions as a lot of people on social media), which seems to be a common occurrence nowadays.
This makes the word “support” meaningless because you can no longer distinguish between 99 percent of the population of the world that doesn’t have time and the 0.01% actively supporting the regime.
So you’re right and you’re wrong. The people in this example don’t care about racist activities of people they support, which in itself is indirect support to mainstreaming these issues.
Not understanding Estonian burglary law is understandable and forgivable, not understanding the negative impacts of racism is not. It would take willful determination to avoid learning even the basics of recent world history or current events and why it’s been such a problem.
It’s not that hard to say “I find some of the ideas by X interesting and useful, but also I don’t support racism in any way.” I get that they don’t want to do it, but that’s the level support that enables the problematic culture to be pervasive.
If, say, large subgroups of white nationalists LOOOOOVE you, and are doing things to try and provide you support... passive acceptance of that support is questionable. There comes a point where if you continue to accept the support and not condemn that group that you're willingly associating yourself with them.
2. There are soldiers (metaphor for politicians) and their job is to fight, so that civilians (citizens) could live free from violence.
3. The idea to put citizens to fight and to tell them to target the neutrals and opponents has to face this criticism: you are applying a huge multiplier to the sum of all violence in the world. You better do the multiplication and run the actual numbers to be sure that in the long run you'll come good.
4. If it turns out a group intimidated 100k people to free from intimidation 90k other people, they turn out not only horrible morally, but also crude simpletons.
5. The more opinions become weapons, the less opinions will be judged objectively by these citizens in future. Circumstances can change quickly and, in democracy, the only way to cope is to have masses of voters honestly predict the real life results of their choices. They need to clear their heads, not to wield opinions as weapons. (They have politicians for that after all.)
1: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
