But ultimately many of us have strong feelings on many things, yet still possess the empathy to care about the well-being of those we disagree with.
In my experience, bullies may use a certain external “vector” to bully others, but they do so because of their own internal issues that they choose to deal with by inflicting pain on others by exploiting those vectors.
In some cases this might be anti-LGBTQ, in others it might be classist, or really any place someone can find and exploit a weakness [1] in someone else.
At that point, it doesn’t matter if the person you’re bullying is somebody “on your side”, because it’s not really about the surface issue to begin with.
Unfortunately it makes situations like this even harder to deal with, because it’s not just a matter of trying to impart empathy on the bully.
[1] which is not to imply any identity is necessarily a weakness, but rather may be something a person struggles with personally and therefore provides an opening for someone else to exploit.