And so what if we treat unabashed bigotry as just another opinion, as worthy of debate as any other? What if we tolerate the organization of political blocs with this as their primary platform, with nothing but healthy debate in opposition? Being bigoted becomes the same as being an environmentalist or believer in the free market? What eventually happens to our politics when we have to compromise with them? When it's considered acceptable to vote for them? What if they get popular and pass legislation?
Communists have killed millions of people across the world, including a few of my own relatives. Despite this, I would never advocate that people go to peaceful Communist events to go throw bombs at them, beat them up on the street, willfully lie to portray them in the worst possible light, etc.
And I wouldn't advocate throwing bombs at a white nationalist event or willfully lying about them. But low-level confrontation? I'm not entirely convinced it's a bad thing.
* You make a hell of a lot of people besides Literal Nazis nervous when you start explicitly hunting down people for thoughtcrime. You can reassure the conservatives, the moderates, the right-libertarians, etc that you're only really going after Literally Hitler, but those reassurances ring hollow because you do have Bigot Mission Creep, where yesterday's "reasonable conservative" is today's Nazi. "Liberals get the bullet too" as they say. In a situation like that, you're basically forcing the Right as a whole to close ranks or be annihilated, and that's the exact kind of situation that lets bigots actually get new recruits. Suddenly, Tommy Trump Supporter is thinking "I thought those Nazis were pretty bad guys, but one of them had my back when masked Communist thugs attacked me for my political beliefs, maybe the Nazis aren't so bad".
This is the argument that I most acknowledge. But should be counter-acted by outreach to everyone not Literal Nazi wherever possible. And this is something the left is admittedly failing horribly at, and I have got in multiple heated arguments in recent months with other progressive people for shouting-down behavior in manageable debates and playing into the smug liberal stereotypes. There is absolutely a tendency to be overzealous in condemning people, and treating progressive stances and sacrosanct, inherent truths. It's a horrible, frustrating as shit problem that I'm sick of seeing everywhere.
But anything will backfire if executed badly. As just mentioned, you can botch talking to people to, and I think a widespread epidemic of botching basic communication is how we've reached this point. Doesn't mean people shouldn't continue to try talking. And just because other types of conflict in response to an ideology that, need I remind you has literal physical threat inherent at its core and deserves to be treated as such, can turn into failures doesn't mean that it should never be done.
* Certain topics of discussion being verboten because they conceivably could lead sometime to come to a bigoted conclusion. I've spent plenty of time arguing with Race Realists about race and IQ and their position is not exactly the strongest position around. But rather than allow these topics to be freely debated, certain people act like even entertaining a racist idea is basically the same thing as implementing racist policy. The result is that these discussions either don't come up, or they are answered with weak justifications like "Human intelligence is just too complicated to be inherited" followed by something along the lines of "and you'd better accept that justification if you aren't a dirty no good Nazi". So when some kid comes across someone on the internet pointing at racial IQ correlation as evidence that segregation is cool, it looks incredibly convincing when the counterargument to this is "Shut up or we'll make you regret expressing that viewpoint".
I have two problems with this.
One of the difficulties we face is weak positions are also more easily communicated. They're soundbites that usually take some more in-depth exploration to unpack. They're messages that are easy to flood into popular consciousness, because someone can absorb them through repeatedly hearing them in passing, and then require extended active attention to counter what has already been absorbed.
And more troublesome is Literal Nazis don't give a fuck if their argument is more rational. There is no winning an argument with a genuine, unabashed bigot who is fully aware of and happy with the sort of person they are.
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.
If you care about such a person's prospective victims, then they are your enemy. Plain and simple. And the only reason to debate them is if you have some further audience that is likely to pay attention to more than soundbites, or you think you can beat them at some bullshit troll posturing to make them look bad. These things are not normally likely.
The situation is a flood of poison, and we're talking about the difference between plugging the holes or waiting for it to spill out and then soaking it up with Q-Tips.
* There are people behind hateful beliefs. You can conceivably convince a racist to stop being a racist, but you can't do that when your answer to their arguments is "You're a bigot and I refuse to acknowledge your arguments" or a fist being thrown. That's how societal change happens: you expose people to new ideas and try to convince them honestly.
Yeah, if you can identify someone who is not fully committed to their ideas. And that is the best sort of societal change. It really is. When I'm talking with cultural conservatives, I pay really close attention to whether their stances are rooted in genuine psychopathic self-importance or in misguided fear and ignorance. I always do my best to kindly address the latter. But I think the former is a real thing that cannot always be changed with rational debate and kindness, and while you're actively focused on the very difficult task of doing so anyway, they can very quickly and easily spread misguided fear and ignorance.
Here's a question that really gets at the root of this whole thing --- how do you think advances in civil rights were achieved over the past 60-70 years?
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