I had a conversation with my conservative neighbor who legitimately made this argument. He was saying that it’s the left’s fault for telling all these young conservative men that they’re Nazis, which makes those poor impressionable young men go “well if you’re going to call me a fascist then I’m going to fascist even harder just to spite you.”
It does, though. It doesn’t have to make sense to you, but it’s natural for people to say “who welcomes me? Who attacks me?” And go with those who welcome them. Is it simplistic? Sure. But either you learn how to take on the educational and emotional burden of reaching out, or you have extra enemies.
Important caveat: telling a person their ideology is hateful isn’t “an attack,” and letting them continue to wallow in ignorance is more unkind than enlightening them.
That they feel attacked is another issue. We still have to deal with the consequences of this, and should be cognizant of it, but at the end of the day let us not lose the plot and start conflating their sensitivity with offensive language as if they weren’t two very different things.
but it’s natural for people to say “who welcomes me? Who attacks me?” And go with those who welcome them.
The people in my life who are wearing the red hats are essentially always the ones attacking, despite making up a tiny fraction of the people in my social sphere. The rest of us just spend every family gathering or social event hoping they won’t start spouting off this time, and offering zero of our own opinions because we know they absolutely will start spouting off if we do. They have a chilling effect on topics that anyone can discuss, compared to what we can discuss when they are not there.
So yeah, IME they are the oppressors from Trump all the way down.
My maga neighbor across the street has no idea if I’d welcome him or not, because his yard is full of hand lettered signs letting me know in no uncertain terms that anyone who votes like I do is a moron/traitor, etc. So I just pretend he doesn’t exist, and hope he and his (continuous stream of) visiting buddies don’t blow up the neighborhood or get careless with their guns one day.
The one and only sign he does have in spanish is the one letting everyone know he’s got a surveillance system though. That’s probably not racist though…
This is true, but it’s also incredibly dumb.
Like teens that choose to hang out with local drug gangs and throw their future away. You can see why it happens, but it’s so wasteful and stupid, and always ends in misery.
What we are ultimately talking about is the depth of stupidity that people are capable of.
Before the flathearthers, Tea Party, Q-anon and the MAGA movements, we simply did not account for just how fucking dumb the average person can be under bad circumstances.
This is the essence of Trump’s rise to power. His political advisors called this “an opportunity” and tripled down on it. They believed that a bad-faith movement could build a coalition of the mentally unstable, susceptible morons, cultish religion indoctrinated, under-educated and socially fringed. Easily swept up with Nazi-style messaging and politics.
The solution:
At an individual level, if you know someone you seek to save, work to expose them to real information by being a positive and understanding presence in their lives, and slowly showing them the way out of the prison of stupidity inside their own heads.
At a global level, we must exact hard costs on their movement as a whole and each participant as people. We must make it highly expensive and damaging to support fascism. They are already paying the price of being marginalized socially, but costs need to be much higher.
This cost is the reason Trump has not been able to inspire his moron minions to violence in the last couple years. They see that MAGA minions get imprisoned, their lives ruined, and possibly shot in the head, and they simply don’t turn up for Trump’s calls to violence anymore. The public cost of participation in fascism works as a deterrent, so we need to crank up the costs significantly higher.
If they think they are going to double down on fascism because you called them out, then you must triple down on exacting a price for their bullshit. At some point they’ll realize it’s not worth it. Just like all these MAGA men on dating apps now pretending to be apolitical because they can’t get any women to take them seriously. Suddenly, the pride in their shitty convictions is out the window when they realize they won’t be allowed to participate in society. Keep making them pay the price of choosing poorly. The harder you hit them, the faster you help them do some much needed introspection.
I had a conversation with my conservative neighbor who legitimately made this argument. He was saying that it’s the left’s fault for telling all these young conservative men that they’re Nazis, which makes those poor impressionable young men go “well if you’re going to call me a fascist then I’m going to fascist even harder just to spite you.”
It does, though. It doesn’t have to make sense to you, but it’s natural for people to say “who welcomes me? Who attacks me?” And go with those who welcome them. Is it simplistic? Sure. But either you learn how to take on the educational and emotional burden of reaching out, or you have extra enemies.
Important caveat: telling a person their ideology is hateful isn’t “an attack,” and letting them continue to wallow in ignorance is more unkind than enlightening them.
That they feel attacked is another issue. We still have to deal with the consequences of this, and should be cognizant of it, but at the end of the day let us not lose the plot and start conflating their sensitivity with offensive language as if they weren’t two very different things.
Indeed. The raw fact of how people tend to work doesn’t make it right. It’s just that hating on them for it is ineffectual.
The people in my life who are wearing the red hats are essentially always the ones attacking, despite making up a tiny fraction of the people in my social sphere. The rest of us just spend every family gathering or social event hoping they won’t start spouting off this time, and offering zero of our own opinions because we know they absolutely will start spouting off if we do. They have a chilling effect on topics that anyone can discuss, compared to what we can discuss when they are not there.
So yeah, IME they are the oppressors from Trump all the way down.
My maga neighbor across the street has no idea if I’d welcome him or not, because his yard is full of hand lettered signs letting me know in no uncertain terms that anyone who votes like I do is a moron/traitor, etc. So I just pretend he doesn’t exist, and hope he and his (continuous stream of) visiting buddies don’t blow up the neighborhood or get careless with their guns one day.
The one and only sign he does have in spanish is the one letting everyone know he’s got a surveillance system though. That’s probably not racist though…
Totally get that. I’m not at saying they’re not going to socially attack you. I’m just saying that ridicule in return is ineffectual.
But so is being overly soft.
This is true, but it’s also incredibly dumb. Like teens that choose to hang out with local drug gangs and throw their future away. You can see why it happens, but it’s so wasteful and stupid, and always ends in misery.
What we are ultimately talking about is the depth of stupidity that people are capable of.
Before the flathearthers, Tea Party, Q-anon and the MAGA movements, we simply did not account for just how fucking dumb the average person can be under bad circumstances.
This is the essence of Trump’s rise to power. His political advisors called this “an opportunity” and tripled down on it. They believed that a bad-faith movement could build a coalition of the mentally unstable, susceptible morons, cultish religion indoctrinated, under-educated and socially fringed. Easily swept up with Nazi-style messaging and politics.
The solution: At an individual level, if you know someone you seek to save, work to expose them to real information by being a positive and understanding presence in their lives, and slowly showing them the way out of the prison of stupidity inside their own heads.
At a global level, we must exact hard costs on their movement as a whole and each participant as people. We must make it highly expensive and damaging to support fascism. They are already paying the price of being marginalized socially, but costs need to be much higher.
This cost is the reason Trump has not been able to inspire his moron minions to violence in the last couple years. They see that MAGA minions get imprisoned, their lives ruined, and possibly shot in the head, and they simply don’t turn up for Trump’s calls to violence anymore. The public cost of participation in fascism works as a deterrent, so we need to crank up the costs significantly higher.
If they think they are going to double down on fascism because you called them out, then you must triple down on exacting a price for their bullshit. At some point they’ll realize it’s not worth it. Just like all these MAGA men on dating apps now pretending to be apolitical because they can’t get any women to take them seriously. Suddenly, the pride in their shitty convictions is out the window when they realize they won’t be allowed to participate in society. Keep making them pay the price of choosing poorly. The harder you hit them, the faster you help them do some much needed introspection.