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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/13958637
You can't debate someone that isn't arguing in good faith, and these people never ever are. Yeet and move on, save your energy for the people that have just been mislead by the altright and may actually change their opinions.
All you can do is force them to face their convictions. What happens after that is up to them. Just do what Tim Walz did to JD Vance when he asked about the election results, and bluntly ask the root question.
“Do you think migrants are less important than citizens? What about men vs. women? Or gay people vs. straight people? Or trans people vs. cisgender people?”
“Do you think that the government should force people to follow your religion? If the government picked a different religion than yours, would you just agree to follow it?”
To everyone pearl clutching in response to this correct meme with one of the following phrases:
"That's how you create an echo chamber"
"paradox of intolerance doesn't say how to fight fascism"
"This is about silencing opposing thought"
I would like to take this moment to remind you that the paradox of intolerance isn't about exiling those who disagree on economic policy; it's about recognizing and directly opposing those who are trying to harm or disadvantage others and doing so in a meaningful way that will actually change the outcome. You can't debate Hitler out of doing a genocide, but you could have jailed him before he gained power.
Being too spineless to call out and fight intolerance enables fascism. The longer you live wrapped up in your civility politics, the overton window shifts further right, and it strengthens the fascist support. It happened in pre-WW2 Germany, and it's being repeated in dozens of countries worldwide. If you feel the urge to block me, go ahead...
...but know that this is your fault
Edit: spelling
The paradox of intolerance is not a paradox. Tolerance is a social contract, folks who demand us tolerate intolerance are violating the social contract and should be ignored.
THANK YOU. In a Post about banning Germany's far-right Party AFD, some people wrote such delusional nonsense! It's unbelievable how far some People go to defend POS like the AFD.
Why does everybody online insist on misusing "centrist" and "moderate" when they're talking about spineless, bitch-ass accomplices? An actual centrist in America in 2024 would be very progressive relative to most of the country. It's a good place to be.
The comic specifically calls out apologists. The kind that say "both sides equally bad" when both sides are most assuredly not equally bad. Or that try to suggest there can be anything meaningful gained from discussion with hateful intolerant people. They paint themselves as centrist. It's not really misusing it.
You should engage them in debate though. The people who need to do so are always such cowards that they'd rather ban and run.
It's easy as fuck to outmaneuver one of those dipshits. And it's funny as fuck when they stomp off mad because you made them look like an idiot.
But it's not a debate. They have no interest in listening to you, any facts you present, nor presenting any disputing facts.
Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it. ― George Bernard Shaw
I'd argue it's better to make fun of the fascists!
But it’s not a debate. They have no interest in listening to you, any facts you present, nor presenting any disputing facts.
the debate is not for them. it is for potential impartial observer who just encountered the problem for the first time and is now forming an opinion.
unfortunately it is really hard, because since the onset of the machine learning generators the pile of crap is literally endless.
But it's not a debate. They have no interest in listening to you,
Adam doesn't debate Bob to convince Bob of Adam's viewpoint. Adam debates Bob to convince their shared audience: Charlie, David, Edward, Frank, George, Harry...
When Bob is ejected from this forum, Charlie, (et al), never hear that debate and are never convinced of Adam's views. They aren't inoculated against Bob's logic. When they come across Bob uncontested in another forum, they may be persuaded; they fall into his echo chamber. When they bring their half-formed ideas back to your forum, they are banned as apologists rather than debated.
Ejecting Bob makes your forum better. Adam debating Bob makes the world better.
Fascism demands a response. When it stands without objection, it grows. We are obligated to respond, less to convince the fascist to change their ways, and more to extend a branch to those passers-by who might get swept away.
Sometimes that responder is me. Sometimes it should be you.
The response can also be a closed fist or the end of a bayonet.
Not a first goal, but still a time tested answer.
Sometimes that is the best response.
It's the only worthwhile response. If you try to debate them, they will just toy with you and give garbage arguments, then go silent when they run out of useless arguments.
The response in this context is a preemptive: "not welcome here". We've all heard what the fascists have to say, and it's worthless. Zero tolerance for fascists.
The paradox of intolerance demonstrates how fascism comes to power, not how to stop it.
Found the apologist.
The fastest way to an echo chamber is to ignore everyone who disagrees with you.
You should be intelligent enough and convicted in your understanding of any point you argue strongly, that you will be able to identify an irrational or false argument.
Otherwise when someone you disagree with has a good point that improves your view point, you will miss it.
Take the show always sunny in philadelphia. The characters are all examples of absolutely terrible people. We use their idiocy, bigotry, racism and general prejudice to further confirm our beliefs and views on any topic.
It is healthy to listen to bad takes.
The fastest way to an echo chamber is to ignore everyone who disagrees with you.
This isn't about the entire set of people who disagree.
It is a waste of time to engage some kinds of people. They are not acting in good faith.
There's a Sartre quote about it
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.
I believe it helps to be able to identify bad faith actors. If you have never heard their arguments before then you run the risk of not realising its a bad faith argument. This could mean you end up taking them seriously.
Let me help you out:
There are NO sound arguments for racism, fascism etc.
None.
There is no point in listening to racists and fascists.
Ever.
Who said there was? Dont try to strawman this. You are missing the point. And your condescension is unwarranted.
No, there is no sound argument for racism, and when you hear an argument for it, you identify its nonsense and move on. But that doesn't mean there are no sound arguments for other things you disagree with.
Frankly, anyone can point at something that is morally wrong and say it's wrong. That doesn't make YOU right. Thats just essentially virtue signalling.
I disagree with fascists and racists too. But im sure there is something else out there we disagree on, such as whether or not you should block people who disagree with you.
My point is that you can't arrive at what is right without knowing what is wrong and you can't know what is wrong if you block everyone who disagrees with you.
You also cant rule out a person having a good take just because they also have some bad takes.
Found another one of them.
Just in case it's not clear, there are indeed people with ideas so toxic and so dangerous they need to be removed. Otherwise they will ruin it for everyone. When you tolerate the intolerant, tolerance is eventually seized and destroyed by the intolerant.
This isn't a case of disagreeing, this is by far the most common misrepresentation that centrist apologists use to try and vilify the banning and ostracizing of bigots and harmful ideology. There is no comparison to disagreeing about flavors of ice cream, to not wanting someone who hates trans people in your community where trans people hang out. Any attempt to do so is a bad faith comparison, because they are not equivalent.
How do you know what a toxic idea is if you never hear one. It is helpful to know what is wrong when trying to determine what is right.
I never said let people with bad takes in. I said hear them and disagree with them. Having such terrible takes in the air is a great way to strengthen your position when you are able to point out the absurdity of the bad argument.
If we close ourselves off to all the arguments we dont like then we run the risk of becoming so entrenched in our own opinion being the only right one that we never let anyone tell us we are wrong.
Finding the right path is a group effort, and it takes good and bad views to get there.
Just look at your agument, its so matter of fact. It feels like you have determined the correct position so all other views are wrong. The opening sentence "found another one" is enough to see this. You arent right automatically because you have had enough people agree with you. Especially whn you reject any opposing or even slightly different view point.
"Faschisten hören niemals auf, Faschisten zu sein
Man diskutiert mit ihnen nicht, hat die Geschichte gezeigt"
"Fascists won't ever stop being fascists. You don't argue with them, history has shown that"
Wenn du friedlich gegen die Gewalt nicht ankommen kannst, ist das letzte Mittel das uns allen bleibt Militanz
Hypothetically there could be bigots you could have a rational debate with, but they tend to not remain bigots for long.
I knew one. Nazi-tatted dude. White separatist (he was careful in specifying separatist, not supremacist). He believed racial conflict was inevitable (not a full on race war just ongoing low scale conflict) and he'd decided he's white, he's gonna be on the white side of the conflict. He was moderately respectful of other races as long as they didn't come into what he considered white territory.
He sounds like if a sundown town was a human being.
You do realize this is an argument for an echo chamber right? Banning Centrists and Opposition means you only have Supporters.
Edit: After much consideration you're right most of this thread is getting blocked.
An echo chamber where the barriers are "don't advocate for bigotry" and "don't be a bigot"? Damn. Mighty big echo chamber ya got here. You can fit all sorts of amicable disagreements in here. Hell, you can even fit nearly uncivil ones too! Boy howdy there sure is a lot of space to disagree when the limits are this far out.
I 100% believe the lemmy developers' firm belief in this policy is why the platform was able to take off eventually. In the early days we would frequently have people join and then stomp their feet about free speech and the slur filter and then fuck off to whatever variant of voat was en vogue (...that was wolfballs for a little while). It was a small community, discussions were heavily (but not exclusively) tech and communism, but I don't think it would have been an appealing landing spot if that kind of toxicity had been allowed to grow.
Absolutely no question there's more hostility in the conversations here after redditors came here, but more users will do that. The exodus has made it a lot easier for me to abandon some of the smaller subreddits I was still active on.
Honestly if you start to suck like the bigots, it's no surprise you would start to claim that anyone who points that out is a "centrist" bigot too to be yeeted away.
Sometimes I feel like people who want to fight bitotry have become cartoons doint a black and white evil vs good. Nope sorry. The world is not so clear cut. It's a mess. And the word "centrist" can now also be used for censorship. Congratulations. You suck just as much as the bigots now. Hope it "helped" to adopt their tactics! 🤣
Nah mate, you can't tolerate the intolerant. That's how you end up with a nazi pub.