Would Optics Matter If You Had Power?

Are optics a cope?

Every movement I've seen or been a part of has been concerned with optics. Optics are how the group is perceived. While there are endless discussions in movements about optics, it is less common for any group to have open honest discussions about power. Yet power is the more important goal for a political movement.

No amount of optics alone will give a movement political power. Even if you look perfect, the dominant system won’t hand over power simply because of your pristine image. While activists obsess over their image, many in power look awful yet face no consequences.

When someone has bad optics but remains in power, their bad optics are a flex. They can look bad, while the rest have to watch how they behave. Their bad behavior serves as a status marker. The rules don’t apply to them. They’re above it all. You’re not.

If that optics aren’t necessary for power, why do movements care about them? Bad optics are often paired with disempowerment. When a dominant power wants to abuse an incumbent movement, they will justify their actions with the movement’s bad optics, digging through everything the movement has done to find out-of-context distortions to justify abuse. If no justification exists, bad optics are manufactured through hit pieces and lies.

Movements that suffer this abuse sometimes mistakenly believe that the abuse occurred because of their bad optics. In reality, their opposition wanted to harm them and then found justification for their abuse, not the other way around. Like a battered wife who thinks if she could always obey her husband he’d stop hitting her, optics-obsessed movements think that if they could always act perfect no one would ever write a hit piece on them or try to hurt them.

In other words, obsession with optics is a cope. Those who don’t have power always have to be on their best behavior. Those that have power can do whatever they want. The better situation for any movement would be if they could have bad optics without consequence. In that situation, whether or not a movement avoids “bad optics” actions would be due to personal preference rather than fear of external punishment.

If the goal of a movement is change, they should optimize for power rather than optics. Those goals often overlap, but if the two come into conflict, movements should choose the action that increases power even if it causes some people to claim it makes them “look bad.”

If someone claims a person or action makes a movement “look bad,” the question to ask is “to whom?” Whose approval does it lose? Do we care about their approval? What are the consequences of not having their approval? What power or support does it gain or lose? Analyze the optics of the situation through the lens of power rather than image.

There might still be situations where optics matter for a particular goal. In those situations, questions about power will lead the movement to become clear about whose approval they need and why, rather than having a generalized concern for “optics.”

This also prevents enemies from shutting down winning actions through claims about optics. There is a saying that “if you’re taking flack, you’re over the target.” The phrase suggests that the opposition will increase their attacks as you approach your goal. The more effective a leader is the more opposition will claim they “look bad.”

Those who do not want a movement to succeed will always claim that winning actions are bad optics. From their perspective, they are correct. It doesn’t look good when a movement gains power — for them. From the perspective of the movement itself, nothing looks better than winning.