While there may be value in confronting his ideas, there’s no need for his presence. We are aware of what his ideas are from his prior statements and actions. The only effect of having him there is allowing him to muddy the waters.
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Why is it always the white supremacist nazi types who always get the free pass for that?
It’s never the child-molesters, cannibals, and other horrible types, who are awful, but just don’t rank with mass-murder and genocide.
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I guess racism and genocide are distinctly ‘less intrinsically evil’ than baby rape or cannibalism to some people.
Which really says something about their core values; because to me, once we go past a certain point of immorality, it’s all inextricably fucked up.
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There was a vanished message arguing that exposure to counter-arguments would help far-right cultists realize that they were in a cult and leave.
That’s not how it works. People in a cult could listen to the counter-arguments all day long and it would just roll off of them. People in a high influence cult have a mental filter that screens all of that out. It would only have an effect on people with major doubts already.
What seems to be required for someone to snap out of it is an immediate personal experience directly contradicting what the mental filter tells them what should be happening.
Paul Haggis didn’t realize that he was in a cult unless he had to handle Scientology’s anti-LGBT ideas vs his own daughters. Others thought that Scientology was fine until they were the ones tossed into the re-education program. Some people think that’s selfish, but I think that it’s because it needs a strong direct impact to crack the shell.
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I hope it’s that, and not because they have a closet full of classic Hugo Boss fetish gear.
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The commenter was acting as if all that needed to happen for a person to leave a cult was a rational debate between the de-programmer and the cult leader.
As I recall, that’s the process by which Derek Black (son and former disciple of Stormfront founder Don Black) came to leave that racist cult.
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Don’t flat earthers deserve to earn a living?
But, see, you’re not saying that. You’re saying he deserves a platform irrespective of merit.
So if he deserves to earn a living spreading discredited ideas, maybe everyone else should have the same shot first, and Bannon can take a number after the flat-earthers.
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Uh huh.
Look, if anyone wants to make good on this whole “everyone gets a big platform” notion, I’m available at any time to talk about dinosaurs and art.
Surely I’m a much better candidate for the Economist than someone who was fired from his last job because he didn’t toady well enough.
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hug?
If you think you can get the smell out of your clothing, go for it.
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How did you manage to nail this reply in less than 9 characters?
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Assuming you want to know the trick and aren’t just joking:
You insert the html markup character for space
>
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Stevo can get up on a soapbox at Hyde Park corner where crackpots have always gone to try to sell their nonsense. He’s full of **it, end of story.
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Scope insensitivity. Human moral instincts don’t scale. The brain doesn’t instinctively multiply when larger numbers are involved. In fact, experiments show that (for example) people are likely to donate less money to save 10 kids’ lives than 1, and the same amount of money to save 200,000 birds as 2,000. They also have an off switch: anyone labeled as being from an enemy or sufficiently distant tribe.
Anyone who knows enough, is conscientious enough, and cares enough to set aside their automatic reactions to even consider reasoned arguments about what we should do and want to do? You’ve already got almost all of them on your side. For the vast majority of the rest of humanity? You’d better find another way. Maybe make the position you want them to hold seem virtuous and high-status within whatever they see as their tribe, or something.
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If there is a food exposition would you consider a pile of excrement to be an appropriate exhibit?
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Blockquote
why not listen to him? Doesn’t he also deserve to earn a living? I’d listen to you if I could. Fair is fair
That’s like saying that all product ideas deserve to be manufactured and put on the shelf. So right next to baby formula we have indigestible magnets? Probably not a good idea.
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Yeah. That “fair is fair” logic is right up there with “free speech means you have to participate in a conversation with me, and by ‘participate’ I mean shut up and listen!”
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Even if they did fail in that way, their attendance at your debate will be in their linkedin profile forever, and people will assume that they were a legitimate player.
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