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[Reelya]

One issue with what nenjin wrote, is that with extremely few minor changes you could turn that into how the conservatives feel about liberals. I think you guys aren't getting it because you're falling back on the "demonize the other side" argument.

The point's been made that only a small segment of the Right are actual neo-nazis, when justifying the "punch a nazi" meme. So nazis are a rare fringe element. But then you say things like "Do both sides have some very fine people, too?" which sounds like a rhetorical question, and is labeling all supporters of the other party as equal to it's worst element.

And then you go onto label sluissa as having reached the "same position as <trump>" just because he has the gall to suggest that both sides should listen to each other instead of shouting over each other. Which all kind of proves sluissa's pioint about mindless hostility replacing dialogue being the main problem. Anyone who doesn't shout along with you is automatically equated with the very worst of the enemy.

Look, perhaps conservatives do have some points that they get right, and liberals have some issues that they get right. Anyone who assumes that all the things they believe are "right" and that everyone who believes any different things are "wrong" and should be excluded from the conversation is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Any one philosophy is always going to be wrong about more things that it is right, that's just common sense, and it's why different philosophies need dialogue, not ideological stratification.

[wierd]

The problem there is just age old tribalism and identity politics.

You stop being a "TRUE LIBERAL" / "TRUE CONSERVATIVE" if you dont chant the party mantra and dare to indulge in thoughts that show independence in their arrival--- Let alone actually thinking critically about the party line, and actually try to evaluate the rhetoric of the other side; the highest sin being the assertion that "Hey, these guys got something right!!" 

You see this more in the conservative side, with epithets like "RINO", but you also see it in a less overt way from the more extreme liberal crowds as well.  They tend to get rather defensive and angry at you, lumping you directly in with the nazis, when you point it out though.

To be perfectly frank about it though, it bothers me MUCH more that liberals do this than that conservatives do, simply because of backgrounds of the two sides of the argument.  The conservatives come predominantly from a religious hardliner demographic, where independent and critical review are taken as defiance of faith, and as such demonized already.  The liberals however, come from the enlightenment movement. That they so willfully throw away such vital things, and embrace rhetoric and magical thinking like this.... disturbs the hell out of me.

What disturbs me most of all though, is that politics in the US has stopped being about actual issues, stopped being about what is actually right and helpful to the country-- stopped being reasonable at all in fact-- and has become a matter of which actual CULT you belong to.  (Yes, demonizing and ostracizing members of your own political affiliation for not being fanatical enough, devout enough, and complicit enough with the party line, and using that ostracism as a weapon to compel people to obey, when they would otherwise be reasonable, thinking people- Is basically just the reinvention of such practices as excommunication. The left likes to think they have moved past that shit, and then they pull crap like that out of their asses. Bullshit.)

Just leaving this here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Radicalization and Polarization are essentially the greatest threats to the modern American political identity.

After that comes an increasingly ludicrous and untrustworthy news media.

Not a fan of all this church in my state either.

[SalmonGod]

I'm getting tired of people repeating the same arguments on this topic, but never responding to mine.

I assert, once again, that the resurgence in white nationalism isn't because they've been successful in portraying themselves as martyrs.  The idea that a person with no bigoted inclinations would watch a nazi be victimized and think "His ideology must be right, because he's being persecuted for it.  I am inspired now to hate colored skin and different sexualities." is incomprehensibly absurd.

The resurgence is because the taboo surrounding those ideas has faded and loosened over time, to the point that it's been superceded by free speech dogmatism.  Bigotry is deeply rooted in American culture, and never went away.  It was only forced, through much blood, sweat, and tears, into hiding.  After WW2 and then the civil rights movement, severe bigotry became universally understood to be unacceptable in public, and potentially ruinous to reveal even in private company.

This is 101 shit.  Social movements cannot build up if the people aligned with them don't know who their allies are and can't find them.  This is one of the effects of a strict cultural taboo.  Declaring free speech more important than this taboo means white nationalists are going to find themselves capable of movement building again.  Period.  That is what is happening.

The centrists in this conversation are just as guilty of obsession with ideological purity as the people they accuse of this.  You care more about ideological purity in regards to the ideal of free speech than you do about keeping people who literally just want to kill anybody who isn't like them from having the capability to build a movement capable of enacting their will.  You are treating an ideal absolute, while saying that everything wrong with politics is other people treating their ideals as absolutes.

Unless you can explain to me the socio/psychological mechanism behind how someone with no inclination towards bigotry can watch someone get punched for openly declaring black people to be inferior subhumans and think "Hmm... I think he's right.  But only because he got punched for saying it."

[wierd]

The issue with cultural taboos, is that they often are incomplete, for the sake of simplicity, when the reality of the world is far from simple.

Take for instance, taboos on multicultural unions.  Was totally a thing just a single generation ago.  Has anyone stopped to wonder why this was so?

In a less connected world, it led to people being produced who did not properly belong to a social structure, because they were different from both parents, sufficiently that they lived without a cultural support infrastructure, and would be instant pariahs.  That was the basic nugget of reality behind it.  In a more connected, more open society, such support networks are easier to establish, and multiracial people are better able to live without being instant pariahs. As such, the cultural taboo has been dissolving.


We can look at the race-politics issue (of which the rise of white nationalism is intrinsically linked) in a similar light.

Things like "We treat black people with favoritism because they were historically disadvantaged, and we need to give them an advantage to counter that to better integrate them into a more cohesive society." (the REAL purpose for affirmative action), can outlive their usefulness once the taboo stops serving a purpose. (EG, black people today have access to a wealth of support systems, a wealth of career and educational options, often in greater abundance than those available to other ethnicities, yet ***STILL*** statistically less able to thive. At some point, you have to question, "Why is it that with every possible advantage extended to them, they are statistically failing to achieve?" 

The failure to ask that question, and hardline adherence to the "MUST NOT QUESTION!!" taboo, results in angry people, who then wonder, "maybe they really are racially inferior?"  which then enables white nationalism.

Instead of looking at it that way, I ask the question, and wonder "Is there a CULTURAL issue?  In addition to the inescapable racial profile, there is also the associated cultural element-- is there a toxic cultural aspect that sabotages them, systemically?"  So far, this latter question seems to bear the most fruit for me, and satisfies a number of requirements to me, including "Do people of other races adopting this cultures norms, also likewise have a higher incidence of failure to achieve?", and the answer seems to be a resounding "YES."

However, that I am even willing to ask this latter question at all, gets me branded with the great big swastika.

Asking legitimate questions, and thinking critically about social taboos, and getting branded in this way with ostracism, CREATES WHITE NATIONALISTS, through this mechanism.

[Reelya]

I'm getting tired of people repeating the same arguments on this topic, but never responding to mine.

It's sort of hard to respond to those arguments you listed, because none of them are actually arguments that we are making. nobody is holding up the "ideal of free speech" as more important than social issues ... the arguments is that the two wings of politics, the broad expanse of both liberal and conservatives, either "extreme" or moderate on both sides, just aren't talking the same language. Therefore there's gridlock on major social issues.

If you want to convince people of things then you need to understand how they talk, what the motivations are on both sides (and DONT characterize this as a call to "get inside the Nazis heads" because that's a plain strawman and an example of the asinine exaggeration we're talking about). You need to understand how their arguments are couched, what the basis of their judgements are, then you can express your arguments in ways that don't backfire. Saying "they have no basis" or "all their judgements are bullshit" without trying to understand them is just being willfully ignorant. "Free Speech" has nothing to do with this.

I mean, we're not saying "talk to the Nazis" at all. Our point is "talk to the other half of the country." if you want to characterize that as "dialogue with Nazis" then perhaps is isn't us with the problem here.

Really, the only argument I see here is some people saying "there should be more dialogue between liberals and conservatives" and other people saying "no that opens the door for dirty Nazis!" which is a mind-boggling leap, really.

[SalmonGod]

The issue with cultural taboos, is that they often are incomplete, for the sake of simplicity, when the reality of the world is far from simple.

Take for instance, taboos on multicultural unions.  Was totally a thing just a single generation ago.  Has anyone stopped to wonder why this was so?

In a less connected world, it led to people being produced who did not properly belong to a social structure, because they were different from both parents, sufficiently that they lived without a cultural support infrastructure, and would be instant pariahs.  That was the basic nugget of reality behind it.  In a more connected, more open society, such support networks are easier to establish, and multiracial people are better able to live without being instant pariahs. As such, the cultural taboo has been dissolving.

Sure.  But I don't understand how this relates to the subject.

Things like "We treat black people with favoritism because they were historically disadvantaged, and we need to give them an advantage to counter that to better integrate them into a more cohesive society." (the REAL purpose for affirmative action), can outlive their usefulness once the taboo stops serving a purpose. (EG, black people today have access to a wealth of support systems, a wealth of career and educational options, often in greater abundance than those available to other ethnicities, yet ***STILL*** statistically less able to thive. At some point, you have to question, "Why is it that with every possible advantage extended to them, they are statistically failing to achieve?" 

The failure to ask that question, and hardline adherence to the "MUST NOT QUESTION!!" taboo, results in angry people, who then wonder, "maybe they really are racially inferior?"  which then enables white nationalism.

Instead of looking at it that way, I ask the question, and wonder "Is there a CULTURAL issue?  In addition to the inescapable racial profile, there is also the associated cultural element-- is there a toxic cultural aspect that sabotages them, systemically?"  So far, this latter question seems to bear the most fruit for me, and satisfies a number of requirements to me, including "Do people of other races adopting this cultures norms, also likewise have a higher incidence of failure to achieve?", and the answer seems to be a resounding "YES."

However, that I am even willing to ask this latter question at all, gets me branded with the great big swastika.

Asking legitimate questions, and thinking critically about social taboos, and getting branded in this way with ostracism, CREATES WHITE NATIONALISTS, through this mechanism.

I don't see this.  My wife just took some sociology & social work classes just a handful of years ago, where these topics were covered in-depth with none of the hardline shit you're describing, and nobody protesting.  What you're describing is an entire active academic field, but you're saying it's forbidden topic.

What I can believe is that in casual conversation between laymen who have really poor understanding of things and are thinking in entirely selfish terms that one side or the other can act in an offensive or overly sensitive manner, and this can result in polarization.  This is problematic.  But the gap between that and "hang the n****, gas the jews, and castrate the gays", or even being ok with people who talk like that, should be fuckhuge.  And this has nothing to do with the issue of how to respond to those people.

nobody is holding up the "ideal of free speech" as more important than social issues ... the arguments is that the two wings of politics, the broad expanse of both liberal and conservatives, either "extreme" or moderate on both sides, just aren't talking the same language. Therefore there's gridlock on major social issues.

Eeehhhh.... I've definitely seen repeated many times as this subject comes up the idea white nationalism is growing because the left martyrs them (by being violent towards them and/or attempting to silence them), and that the proper/only way to beat them to is to compete with them in the "marketplace of ideas".  With a bunch of hyperbolic language about leftists attacking people for WRONGTHINK and such.

Granted, a lot of that was Neonivek, but he's not been alone.  And it's coming up again now.  Reading through the previous page again, it's looking like the same statements getting re-hashed, albeit much more reasonably.  But then weird comes in with his bit about tribalism.

This whole topic has just turned into a trigger for me.  I get annoyed with seeing it stated over and over again that the left (and yes I know "the left" is an inadequate term but give me another one) is responsible for everything they stand against, just because a minority is too shrill about it.  Like we can't move past the bike-lock marauder somehow representing all of leftism, even when literally everyone left-leaning around condemns that event.  Meanwhile, the entire right loses their shit about as unanimously as imaginable over people taking a knee.  Still, everyone keeps talking about this like the shrillness and dogmatism on both sides are equal.  I could go blind from the eye-rolling.

[Reelya]

I don't see this.  My wife just took some sociology & social work classes just a handful of years ago, where these topics were covered in-depth with none of the hardline shit you're describing, and nobody protesting.  What you're describing is an entire active academic field, but you're saying it's forbidden topic.

That depends where you study, and it's gotten a lot worse in the last 3-4 years (social media is a game-changer). It's not just laymen, academics are talking about this. If you want an academic source for that, here's a starting point. This is co-authored by the president of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and a professor at NYU. Both with a liberal background btw. So I assume they'd know what they are talking about when they say something is widespread in academia:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014–15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.”

So, at UC, you can't say or write "I believe the most qualified person should get the job" because that's a racist microaggression, as the statement is construed to challenge Affirmative Action policy. This is what people are talking about. It's nothing to do with "free speech for Nazis".

These things are in fact a huge concern. Liberal colleges are just outright banning the discussion of "sacred" ideas, which are the most important ones in liberalism. These students are being taught that you win arguments by getting angry, social-media-campaigning and appealing to authority against the other person who said the "taboo" thing, shut them down as soon as they open their mouth, rather than knowing both sides of a debate and being able to justify your own. God help liberalism if this is the training ground for the next generation of leaders.

[wierd]

SG:

Basically, person A says "Black identity is not just associated with their skin color, but also with their cultural norms. Their cultural norms appear to have deleterious effects on their ability to thrive in modern society, to the point where actually successful black people are even called "Oreos", a derogatory slur for people who are "black on the outside, but white inside."  It is this identity crisis that seems fundamentally responsible for their inability to thrive, not racism against them as an ethnic group.  It is not that they are black, it is that they are "BLACK"."

Person B says "Being "BLACK" is part of being black, and you are racist for asserting that black need to stop being "BLACK"!!"

Person C, who is a white nationalist, or is wondering "Are black people really inferior?" in earnest-- see this exchange, and take these elements away:

1) Person B says "being "BLACK" is intrinsic to being black-- If we assume this is true, and--
2) Person A says that being "BLACK" is responsible for the problems that are extent in the society,
then naturally:

3) black people (both aspects together) are inferior to white people, as evidenced by their lack of achievement.


I posit that it is the hardline position of person B that causes person C to either become more entrenched in their racist shit, or to become more racist, when previously they were just confused.

[scriver]

I assert, once again, that the resurgence in white nationalism isn't because they've been successful in portraying themselves as martyrs.  The idea that a person with no bigoted inclinations would watch a nazi be victimized and think "His ideology must be right, because he's being persecuted for it.  I am inspired now to hate colored skin and different sexualities." is incomprehensibly absurd.

Then you're being deliberately obtuse, because you know very well that change in opinion is an incremental process and not something you traverse from the center to the farest right in a single bound.

[SalmonGod]

SG:

Basically, person A says "Black identity is not just associated with their skin color, but also with their cultural norms. Their cultural norms appear to have deleterious effects on their ability to thrive in modern society, to the point where actually successful black people are even called "Oreos", a derogatory slur for people who are "black on the outside, but white inside."  It is this identity crisis that seems fundamentally responsible for their inability to thrive, not racism against them as an ethnic group.  It is not that they are black, it is that they are "BLACK"."

Person B says "Being "BLACK" is part of being black, and you are racist for asserting that black need to stop being "BLACK"!!"

Person C, who is a white nationalist, or is wondering "Are black people really inferior?" in earnest-- see this exchange, and take these elements away:

1) Person B says "being "BLACK" is intrinsic to being black-- If we assume this is true, and--
2) Person A says that being "BLACK" is responsible for the problems that are extent in the society,
then naturally:

3) black people (both aspects together) are inferior to white people, as evidenced by their lack of achievement.


I posit that it is the hardline position of person B that causes person C to either become more entrenched in their racist shit, or to become more racist, when previously they were just confused.

A lot of what you're saying here is true, in regards to specific social issues faced by black people and their harmonious integration with the rest of society.  If this were just about racism against black people, I'd be willing to engage this further as a serious part of the perceptions driving the movements in question.  But it's not just about racism against black people.  I'm sure there are similar exchanges that could be described in regards to latinos, LGBT, jews, etc.  But at some point you have to acknowledge that those narratives are all very different and the only thing uniting them is the bigots who buy into all of them at once.

I assert, once again, that the resurgence in white nationalism isn't because they've been successful in portraying themselves as martyrs.  The idea that a person with no bigoted inclinations would watch a nazi be victimized and think "His ideology must be right, because he's being persecuted for it.  I am inspired now to hate colored skin and different sexualities." is incomprehensibly absurd.

Then you're being deliberately obtuse, because you know very well that change in opinion is an incremental process and not something you traverse from the center to the farest right in a single bound.

That's... actually part of what I'm saying...  You just quoted me stating that I don't think change happens that way.  My issue is with how often it's been stated in this thread that white nationalists feed off martyrdom, as if it does work that way.  I see martyrdom as motivating people to act on their beliefs, but not to play a significant role in changing beliefs.

[Arx]

There's some truth to the martyring thing, though. I tend to find the alt-right mildly seductive because I find it insanely frustrating that on many social issues I perceive that proponents of change will immediately dismiss anyone who disagrees as a cisgendered heterosexual white male, and therefore they should not be involved in the discussion. I'm sure this is not an overwhelming trend, just a vocal minority, but nonetheless it puts my back up and makes me want to say "look, there's nothing wrong with being a cis-het white man" and then we're on a short road to, say, #WhitePride and we can all already see where that one's going.

I don't think it necessarily goes to "gas the jews" from there at any great speed, but it's seductive. I have to try quite hard to keep an open mind when my opinion is shut down like that (again, I perceive it to be so. There is of course an implicit bias here), and I can easily see how someone could decide "you don't want my opinion? Well, fuck you too, I don't want yours. I don't want you, either".

/2 cents

Also joining the train of "I don't know if I want to post this", but at least if someone jumps on me because of my comment on perceived "oppression" I can respond with a trite "Q.E.D.".

[Reelya]

There's some truth in that, and it's notable that "former sjw's" (and there are growing numbers of these of which their accounts you can read online and in articles) tend to veer all the way away in the same way that people coming out of fundie religions tend to veer way away from what their parents believed.

e.g. Cassie Jaye who directed The Red Pill was a celebrated feminist film-maker, but then she decided to make an open-minded film about a group she didn't agree with (MRAs) but was willing to listen to what their points are. Cue hate-speech and "othering" by feminists etc, and now Cassie Jaye says she "no longer considers herself a Feminist". Not because of what she learned from MRAs, but because of the sheer toxicity of the Feminism movement to anyone who opens any dialogue with "not feminists". Basically the hate-speech started when she made it clear she intended to create an objective documentary, not a motivated political attack film, e.g. well before the film even existed.

And this is to people who otherwise tick all the "identity" boxes you like. One step outside of Core Doctrine and they tear you down. Potential allies are noticing this sort of behavior, and if it can happen to Cassie Jaye then why should a more marginal ally, such as a male-born person grovel at the feet of these people, if they can just rip anyone to shreds for basically nothing? What are they offering in exchange for loyalty? This is actively pushing people away. And if you push people away then we shouldn't be surprised when some of those people who feel "othered" talk to other groups, and find common grievances with those groups.

EDIT: let me give you an example. The doctrine is that "all ways of being a woman are equally valid". So women are empowered no matter what they do. We accept that as fundamental truth. However ... the movement's attitude for men is that all ways of being a man are wrong, basically, and they need to be torn down. You can say "but they support gays - that's diversity". But ... even if it's the gay community, they highlight "gays are more sexist than straight guys", or "nice guys" is just a trick. Fuck "nice guys". Dads too, fuck them, patriarchal domineering idiots. Let's destroy that too. Basically, if you take the combined movement as a whole and it's relationship to virtually anything that could be correlated with being male in any way, all you get is this thing about completely deconstructing everything about one gender while deifying everything about the other gender. Exactly why should an uncommitted male think that this sounds like something they need to support? Sure, this is "gender politics" not party politics, but when the movement as a whole has wedded itself so intricately to this specific position, then disagreeing on this drives people away on all connected matters.

This is why, even though I hate the gamergate abuse-trolls, similar to what Arx said, I find myself also hating the people who hate them. I really don't want to side with the gamergate people, but basically I'm told now that I'm part of the problem merely for having a penis and liking video games, even if I never abused anyone. So I'm not an individual now who chose to play video games, I'm merely a pawn in the hegemony that keeps women out of video games, merely because I exist and have the wrong genitals. Maybe you can see how disaffirming people's identity and choices and the hardships they have endured in their life (like getting beaten up for being geeks) like that drives people into communities hostile to the people who are doing it. And man, i remember the old days where guys played video games and women sneered at anything to do with that, and made you feel awkward and inferior for having geeky hobbies. Now ... you want to be telling me that we kept them out? Like it was the cool kid's club? Before facebook games and later phone games made them acceptable, most women felt that games were beneath them and that geeky guys were an inferior life form. This is just how it was.

[Frumple]

There's some truth to the martyring thing, though. I tend to find the alt-right mildly seductive because I find it insanely frustrating that on many social issues I perceive that proponents of change will immediately dismiss anyone who disagrees as a cisgendered heterosexual white male, and therefore they should not be involved in the discussion. I'm sure this is not an overwhelming trend, just a vocal minority, but nonetheless it puts my back up and makes me want to say "look, there's nothing wrong with being a cis-het white man" and then we're on a short road to, say, #WhitePride and we can all already see where that one's going.

I don't think it necessarily goes to "gas the jews" from there at any great speed, but it's seductive. I have to try quite hard to keep an open mind when my opinion is shut down like that (again, I perceive it to be so. There is of course an implicit bias here), and I can easily see how someone could decide "you don't want my opinion? Well, fuck you too, I don't want yours. I don't want you, either".

/2 cents

Also joining the train of "I don't know if I want to post this", but at least if someone jumps on me because of my comment on perceived "oppression" I can respond with a trite "Q.E.D.".

Like. I don't really see much of that on a personal level to begin with -- largely because you can totally not be part of either of the sides mentioned (to the extent they're even remotely equal in scope when they're very, very much not) and not have perceived poor action from one push you in the direction of the other -- but... generally most folks who go fuck you too to perceived slight don't actually seem to have much trouble going fuck you just as hard to folks that are lining themselves up besides nazi flags, genocidal chanting, and literal murder (whether or not they're personally getting up to such shit). Only so much with maintaining the capacity to be fucking disgusted by shit like conservative disenfranchisement efforts, regardless of how else they align regarding other issues.

Something abhorrent doesn't really seem to have much of a seductive component regardless of what other frustrations are involved. Cause they're abhorrent, and if there's not some fuck trying to downplay or obfuscate that most people don't exactly have trouble noticing it.

So far as things go, I'd probably agree with SG on this to fair extent. What's going on more than most things is that memory has faded enough, alongside the persistent efforts of some rat goddamn bastards in our political and media systems, that people are becoming somewhat less attentive of exactly how abhorrent what those efforts have been trying to normalize are.

The martyr angle is largely bullshit. Few decades ago and it wouldn't have mattered how pissed off you were against what's generally more invented caricature than anything, chunk of the shit the alt-right peddles would have had you more likely to reach for a gun, knife, or coin roll rather than entertain to any extent. Hell, most of the time you wouldn't even have noticed that caricature to begin with, or dismissed it with barely any consideration.

Plenty of the alt-right sentiment would still have been there, but often enough even your average racist piece of shit would have pretty immediately attempted to variously literally kneecap expression of it along the lines today's particular batch of shits are inclined towards.

Unfortunately, folks started going, "Well, maybe we should let these guys speak" instead of "Get your fucking fascist shit out of our town." Now we're stuck with having to try to explain to people why they probably got problems when they're aligning themselves on a political or ideological front with groups that have genocide and/or ethnic cleansing as a political goal and downplaying things like literal fucking murder as a means.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

My main addition is that the rhetoric of a position is highly unimportant - people address rhetorical quibbling after they form their core beliefs, not before, even though the public treats rhetoric as universally the most important or even only important thing.

It is for this reason that people do not change their beliefs much based on debate, especially compared to physical experiences. For the most part, the only changes that are brought on by debate are when one party is so utterly dominated by the other that they begin to doubt they know anything real about the world (even then this doesn't always work, one of my more successful personal debates was cornering a moon truther, and she didn't change her beliefs a bit even though she ended the conversation tied in a rhetorical knot), if one party was already in doubt and happens to hit an epiphany mid-debate, or if one party lacks an articulated belief on the subject at all and is basically going to form one on whatever they're told.

Conversely, we have the famous Mark Twain quote that "travel is fatal to prejudice". This is because substantive debate about, say, all the "inferior races" won't do a thing to someone who believes that (you're clearly just a lying bolshevik traitor and so are the scientists). But a simple mundane experience, something that ought to be utterly non-life changing like having lunch with a person from the "inferior races", can put a permanent bleeding fracture in an otherwise unassailable mountain of worldview that will never stop hitting them with cognitive dissonance unless they get really good at denialism (most people aren't) or change their core beliefs.

That is what affects humans. Experience, structure, consistency. A hundred years of theology saying the Bible doesn't want us to stone gay people didn't do shit to people's beliefs on that front, and a thousand more years wouldn't have done much more. The modern surge of acceptance is almost entirely at the feet of gay people living out of the closet, a single point of mundane living able to overturn an ideological framework thousands of years old and beloved by billions of humans. Environmentalism in the modern sense grew from reactions to Silent Spring and the Blue Marble photograph. A very large portion of spacers and humanists are sourced in having watched Star Trek and decided "yeah, that" (and that's no coincidence, either).

If you want to really convince people, want to change the zeitgeist in small ways that add up to a whole....this is it. And the actions of every political faction fair or foul ought to be seen through that lens as well.