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What's the best way of dealing with Maga hatred, white power, genocide denial and other things you see a Lemmy user espousing? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 day ago by Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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If I ignore/block them, it allows them to continue unchallenged. I hate getting into it with them, since they are a baseline idiot.

I guess that's it. I saw a person with a 6 month account spouting garbage, was gonna block but thought perhaps that wasn't morally responsible. Wondering what the options were.

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[–] rational_lib@lemmy.world 4 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

Up to you? I used to hang out on a WN part of reddit back when that was allowed and debate people but that's not a thing anymore. The problem is you have utterly no idea if you're getting through to anyone. I do feel like people had to back off their angry racial ideas and adopt a softer "racial zoo" argument that made it seem like all they wanted was to preserve racial diversity rather than eliminate any particular race. I mean at times I wonder if they were looking in the mirror going "is that really why I have this swastika tattoo?" but I have no idea.

I do think the far right cannot survive much scrutiny of its ideas because they are very irrational, but to be honest the left has done a terrible job pointing this out. I know many people even on the moderate right feel like there's a grain of truth to racism that they'll admit in private with other white people, but then once you confront racism and question common assumptions about race* all that falls apart. Many attack racism as a moral failing and that doesn't work because it makes it sound like the truth is being suppressed for moral reasons.

*The most pernicious being the idea that a person can have a single race on a fundamental level that isn't up for debate

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 5 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

WN/neo-nazi communities are classic candidates for bad faith ""debating"". I recall a video interviewing former WNs, one was a WN forum moderator who openly said they didn't believe half the things they were saying, like Great Replacement theory. Fascists (incl. Nazis) could not care less about democracy and liberalist ideology, they treat the liberalist expectation of free speech as a weakness to exploit - they'll gladly hide behind cops and claim to be censored until they have the power to control cops and own social platforms.

Jean-Paul Sartre hit the nail on the head in their 1946 essay criticizing the antisemites:

"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."

[–] rational_lib@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago

I agree but the goal should be not to win a debate, but use their debate platform to slip some woke mind virus into their drink. I always liked to ask very simple questions that they thought they knew the answer to already and make them defend their inevitably irrational answers. For example I used to ask what race is Mariah Carey, because it's a question everyone seems to have a different strong opinion on that can't withstand much questioning. The goal being to make them realize on their own that race is a social construct. Whether that ever worked with anyone I don't know.