this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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A Boring Dystopia
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You admit that they were running interference for a nazi, but also want to give them the benefit of the doubt? Historians have a word for people who didn't agree fully with, but still defended nazis. Want to know what they were called?
Nazis.
If you're aligning yourself with them, running interference for them, I'm going to treat you as if it is intentional because the effect is the exact same. If it was an accident, there were plenty of opportunities to change opinions and apologize. That hasn't happened, so all evidence we have points to the person defending Nazis being disingenuous here.
You have to make assumptions on people's motivations either way. I'm just more willing to base my assumptions on how genuine someone is being whether or not they are running interference for Nazis.
No, you're not basing your assumptions on how genuine someone is being, you're basing your assumptions on your assumptions of how genuine they're being.
Dismissing someone's arguments by establishing they're acting in bad faith is a valid rhetorical tactic but it doesn't work if you can't establish that. And labeling their argument as something it isn't doesn't help with that.
Addressing someone's presumed ignorance is helpful because you're also providing information for onlookers, pointing out the harmful effects of what someone's saying (like potentially muddying the waters when it comes to recognizing dog whistles) is constructive, attacking anyone who may be acting in bad faith but could just as easily just be ignorant is just a waste of your energy.
I'm not particularly interested in defending the person you replied to, I don't think they made a good case either. I just want people to be a bit more discerning with the terms they use. (And I have a compulsive need to correct people which I'm aware is really annoying.)
You misunderstand my point. Let me explain again.
I don't care if they're being genuine or not and don't feel a need to prove it one way or the other. I will treat anyone who is defending Nazis as if they are genuinely Nazis themselves because at the end of the day, that's what they're pushing for, intentionally or not.
The damage this can cause does not change if it was intentional or not, so our reaction to it should not change either.
Their initial comment was complete nonsense, and sarcastic derision is one of the few things that actually upsets people like that who ignore the content of the conversation while also pretending to have the moral high ground. Their point is often to get people arguing amongst themselves instead of realizing they just shifted the conversation from "Here is a Nazi in Indiana" to "You can't prove that Chinese speakers aren't Nazis." (Like we're doing now.)
What would you have called them out for that fits better than moving goalposts or a strawman argument?
If you're dead set on assigning a name to it I'd say they're making an irrelevant conclusion, the basic facts are correct but they do not apply to the situation at hand.