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It's not a strawman. The posts I answered virtually said that the reason extremists still hold their extreme position is due to "the left" being too combative and being unable to create arguments to debate with the extremists. Note I'm not saying "the right" to refer to them.

I'm not talking about "the right" here. The right is too varied (as is the left). I'm talking about extremists.

I pointed out that some extremists are not even willing to listen to people on the right itself. Pence and Fox News are definitely not calling people "idiot trumpsters" and are still being attacked by them.

It's not even a matter of the left trying to engage in discussion. People have screamed at me and called me "sheeple" for wearing a mask in the supermarket. How do you engage? I just left. Am I the cause of the problem for not speaking a word before or after the engagement?

The left can't improve the situation by trying to debate with people that's unwilling to debate in the first place, period.




“The left can't improve the situation by trying to debate with people that's unwilling to debate in the first place, period.“

This is true.

However the left can improve the situation by being willing to debate people who are willing to debate, and yet casual dismissals or irrelevances about whiteness and racism stop that dead.

Look at this comment as an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25698039

By not doing so, they do create the climate for extremism, frankly at both ends.

Extremism is a problem, but it’s a false dichotomy to think of extremism as somehow independent of what everyone else does.


The people who claim to be willing to debate aren't necessarily willing to debate though. Someone like a Richard Spencer is really looking to gish gallop and not debate




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