Why you should never debate fascists, racists and other reactionaries

I'm not certain that we have good collective awareness on here as to why dialogue with bigots is harmful and futile. I can't say that I've done much formal research on the subject since the harm is viscerally real to me, but I hope that these articles will be helpful in laying some shared foundations and that others will contribute more.

https://aurelmondon.medium.com/why-you-should-never-debate-fascists-racists-and-other-reactionaries-6478572c16a

Our time should be spent organising and supporting those at the sharp end, not engaging in a civil manner with those who are a very real threat to their safety. As the history of no platforming show us, this was never about curtailing ‘free speech’, but about standing against allowing ideas which are a threat to some to be uncritically spread.

Debating does not only make their ideas more palatable, it also lends what are generally rather unpopular characters a veneer of popularity, respectability and strength they do not deserve.

We should never accept the premise that the safe and equal existence of anyone can be a cause for debate as far-right politics encourage us to believe. Once we accept that this can be debated, we open the door to far-right politics and become complicit in its spread and mainstreaming.

We can thank The New Yorker for sparking a decent amount of public discourse about the topic:

• https://lithub.com/fascism-is-not-an-idea-to-be-debated-its-a-set-of-actions-to-fight/
• https://longreads.com/2018/09/18/no-i-will-not-debate-you/

The public discussion prompted by the (dis)invitation confirmed to me that only those safe from fascism and its practices are likely to think that there might be a benefit in exchanging ideas with fascists. What for such a privileged group is a matter of a potentially productive difference in opinion is, for many of us, a matter of basic survival. The essential quality of fascism (and its attendant racism) is that it kills people and destroys their lives—and it does so because it openly aims so.

At the end of such an ideological trajectory is always genocide, as it was the case in Bosnia. The effects and consequences of fascism, however, are not equally distributed along that trajectory. Its ideas are enacted first and foremost upon the bodies and lives of the people whose presence within “our” national domain is prohibitive. In Bannon/Trump’s case, that domain is nativist and white. Presently, their ideas are inflicted upon people of color and immigrants, who do not experience them as ideas but as violence.

There are also some pretty good threads on Reddit:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/antifastonetoss/comments/b65xxq/why_you_shouldnt_debate_fascists/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnarchism/comments/5ujuzz/why_not_debate_fascists/

Commenting on-topic here since this thread was created as a side-comment in another thread where I was mentioned.

RE "debating", it depends on what's the definition of debate, the article linked mentions a publicly broadcast debate, but I think its interpretation here is "any conversation"...? Anyway, my opinion is that we should have conversations with the right, except with the truly nazi.

Let me put that into perspective, personally. I'm a Brazilian living in Finland, where 93% of the populace is actually-blonde white. Whenever I ask people to guess where I come from, the most common answer is "Iraq". The current government coalition is right wing, with a significant portion made up of the most-right party, the "True Finns". They don't really have any other actual political agenda other than anti-immigration. Their primary demand for joining the current coalition was to insert anti-immigration somehow into the government agenda. And they did.

While the "True Finns" aren't actual nazis (they're forbidden by law), they're the only party that the actual street nazis can vote for, and of course there is inevitable overlap between the legal right and the illegal nazis. There are other wannabe-official-parties-but-not-yet out there with even more extreme right politics, e.g. supporting the removal of citizenship for non-natives (that's me!) etc. So it's my existential concern that these political thoughts does not grow here.

Anyway, there are people in my life here (say 2 or 3 among the hundreds I met over the years) who support the True Finns party in one shape or another. And I could take the aggressive move of never debating with them, but I truly believe this would be fruitless. In fact I recently read an article by a psychologist recently that suggested precisely that we don't shut them away, but instead keep the channel open for discussion, with literacy and reflective thought: How to help a loved one with problematic beliefs.

With one particular acquaintance, I kept the conversation going, and showing how such right-wing ideas would directly impact me. The conclusion they got was that I am "different foreigner", unlike the "dangerous foreigners", and they can open exceptions to treating people like me. While that is still very wrong, I count it as a baby step towards enlightenment, because at least they are now in the camp of "not all foreigners are bad" instead of the worse "all foreigners are bad". I think if you keep the conversation open, you can convince them of more. It's surprising how people are open to changing their mind when they have cognitive ease (something I learned from the book Thinking: Fast and Slow) that only happens when they're comfortable, and in a safe environment. But people become a lot more closed to changing their mind in antagonistic situations, such as shutting them off from conversations or being angrily presented with cold facts. I am more interested in changing trends, i.e. changing people's mind, instead of condemning them.

The exception, when I just present cold evidence to right-wing people, is in public or internet conversations where I am not actually seeking conversation with those people, I'm more concerned in reaching the moderate by-passers (which are the majority of readers) and changing their mind.

Relevant parts of the conversation @andrestaltz mentions which I'll leave unlinked for reducing unpleasantness:

Since #MLK day posts have been circulating recently, I'll share this one that serendipitously came across my feed. He critiques #moderatism better than I ever could:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice...

https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf

(via https://hachyderm.io/@angiebaby@mas.to/111755174967579668)