To a serial abuser in leftist spaces, denying them their own comfort and public face is abuse, and they will find ways to push out people who quietly dissent. It's sometimes essential to have a direct and public conversation about what's going on if you want anything to change.
I don't generally talk about anything too heavy or personal, but I wanted to throw this into the conversation because I've heard a few people talking about the racism discussion on cohost as if it won't effect them either way, so they're just waiting for either everyone else to figure it out, or for everyone to leave for somewhere new. Do not leave this to other people to figure out. People using these methods to be racist are often going to use the language of inclusion and anti-ableism to control the conversation and maintain the status quo.
I was in a few leftist discords over the past few years where the person at the top fell into multiple of these. In both of these servers, the leadership would engage actively on the problems of "our server is too white, how do we fix this?" while also falling back on these exact behaviors constantly to police and control the people in the server.
In one case a very talented black artist would be frequently held up as a pillar of the community by the server admin, but in group discord calls would be singled out (and only they would be singled out) and criticized for tone, voice volume, how hard they laughed, etc. When confronted with this, the server admin would spin it as a matter of disability, and try to frame it in such a way that the person in the wrong was the one pointing out that they are consistently policing the language and emotional expression of one of the only actively engaged black people on the server. They in turn never criticized the myriad white people who would be stoned and equally or much more boisterous on calls. There was always a Reason for why you, the person pointing out that the admin was being racist, is actually being ableist by calling out that racism!
These kinds of people will often have an array of reasons at the ready to explain away abusive and racist behavior - they might even have a self-diagnosed condition that you yourself have been diagnosed with and treated for in a clinical setting for a decade or more, but instead of recognizing the ways it influences their behavior and try to correct against that, they use it to justify and empower their abuse and racism. "I have this condition, so I am going to behave abusively, or I'm going to scold black people for being too loud because of sensory issues, and it's ableist to ask me to change because I Can't Help It" is a common refrain from these kinds of abusive personalities. It would never occur to this sort of person to simply turn down the volume on someone on a call, instead they insist that the other person change how they express themselves completely, and place themselves in the position of constantly policing that expression. Self-diagnosis is not something I'm against generally, but when you diagnose yourself with a condition and use it as a foil to avoid criticism for abusive behavior, do not think for an instant that everyone does not see what you're doing. In doing so you are painting people with that condition as inherently abusive, which is actually incredibly harmful and absolutely ableism at its worst.
And don't think to yourself "yeah... but I'm white so this can't get used against me..." and assume you can just keep your head down and fix things non-confrontationally and quietly. On both this and the follow-up server made from people who fled the first server, the head admin would use the language of inclusion and personal comfort to victimize and abuse people emotionally and sexually. Both admins personally pressured me for sexual favors and would grow abusive and lash out when I rebutted them, using the language of leftism to explain to me why I'm harming them when I withdraw my consent. Then the day after their resulting abusive tirade, they'd slap me with a bunch of new rules for interacting with them, so that "I don't set them off" again. When I'd point out that the inciting incident was telling someone they had done something inappropriate, a simple disagreement about a matter of fact in a server channel, or that they were doing this in response to me withdrawing consent, they'd couch it in the language of ableism and scold me for making them feel bad.
The people who use the methods outlined in the post above to control and manipulate conversations about racism are probably also using them to control and manipulate a lot more that you can't see on the surface, and you should not give people doing this the benefit of the doubt! It's important to call this stuff out too. If all you do is DM the person responsible and give them a chance to save face and not "look racist" in front of everyone else, chances are they will use these methods to make you look like the bad guy again, or might actually label your own behavior as abusive, for bringing their abusive behavior to attention. Then they will go back to publicly musing about how weird it is that their community is all-white, and ask the community to brainstorm ways to fix it. But not fix it really, just think of fluffy, easy fixes that won't make anyone feel bad. :)
