I'm fascinated by how each of these restatements in some ways say the exact same thing but also strongly imply very different moral choices. Another restatement

I'm fascinated by how each of these restatements in some ways say the exact same thing but also strongly imply very different moral choices. Another restatement might be: "If you don't die on this hill, you leave me to die on it." I think the key difference between Tutu's phrasing and "if you're not with me you're against me", is that the former presumes some people don't have the luxury of choosing sides and they are requesting support from people who do. If you are, for example, Black in the US, you can't really choose to not make racism a priority, since you will experience its effects whether you like it or not. "If you're not with me you're against me" doesn't imply anything about the speaker's own agency. In that sense, I think it's a less compassionate thing to say, because the listener chould just as well ask them to change sides. Tutu's framing makes it clearer that not everyone has that freedom.