I’m glad you’ve had some success getting people to back down, but I’m not sure if you are suggesting that this approach extends well from a face-to-face interpersonal setting to a debate broadcast to a national audience setting. They are different things that require different tactics.
When you are confronted with a person in your day to day life who is saying bigoted things, all you can do is approach them as an equal because you are their equal. You can do that with compassion or with anger. But when CNN is deciding whether to discuss the humanity of Jews in a panel show, or a university is deciding whether to have a literal hatemonger come to their campus to speak, they are in a total different situation.
I’d also ask whether you have any similar experiences where showing compassion and respect has helped you to convince a person who is angry at nazis that they should change their ways to more compassionate ones. Do you take the approach of listening to their anger, absorbing it, and acknowledging it’s validity as a first step?
Because there are lot of people out there who point out the importance of compassion for white supremacists while side-stepping the importance of compassion for people who are hurt by white supremacists. Your point about why we should “debate” racists totally ignores the emotional burden of doing so for people who are being asked “debate” death threats.
Engaging people with compassion when they are being vile or belligerent or angry requires emotional fortitude. The fact is that people who have spent their whole lives dealing with racism, misogyny, homophobia and other kinds of bigotry directed at them have by necessity developed the emotional fortitude to absorb some of that hate. People who have led largely privileged lives haven’t developed much fortitude at all, and are generally very emotionally fragile when challenged.
So we get out the kids gloves to talk to nazis and we expect the people they are targeting to be the grown-ups in the room. We pile the burdens up on the marginalized and try to make sure nothing disturbs the hateful. This plays out over and over in the media.
I get annoyed when this is characterized as a “debate”. The word “debate” implies that both sides have a point. The point of a rational discussion is to figure out what is right not to prove you are right. I’ve got nothing to prove to white supremacists, and I don’t think CNN has anything to prove about them to the viewers at home.
