Our once niche position (that publicly debating the alt-right is a stupid waste of time) has become more widely accepted than I ever dreamed. And to be honest, I don't know that this sub had anything to do with that. I think the most I can say for sure is that it became one more little corner of the internet where people could come to find validation, and then move on. People bemoan echo chambers, and I certainly see the harm. But I also see the value in a space centered around one idea, where someone who might google, "Why debating the alt-right is bad" might land, and get just enough validation to feel sane.

But something like this isn't meant to go on forever. The mission of this sub is to make a single statement as loudly as possible. Subs like this often outlive their usefulness, but keep shambling on like Zombies. I never wanted that for this sub, but unfortunately it already seems like that's happened.

The only moderation I do these days is to sweep up brigades by our rivals. Really, in 2019 there have been two kinds of /dontdebatealtright posts: troll posts, and mod posts. And although posts continue to get moderate response in votes and comments, that's not a functioning ecosystem. That's not a living sub.

At this point, this sub may as well be called /DiscoSucks; any person who can walk and chew gum at the same time already agrees with the title. It's a completely different landscape than when the sub was created. Milo and Ricky Spence can't organize a talk in an empty barn, Breadtube exists, and the very sub this one was created in response to is in quarantine.

(That's right, you're quarantined, losers.)

So thanks all, for your participation. Bye now <3

Edit: Cool. So, they're brigading, and I have to get to sleep. Restricting the sub for now. And to you brigading, hi there. Yeah, our sub is small, and pretty quiet. But at least it ain't quarantined.

This was originally a reply to a long, weepy bad-faith plea for understanding. This was a post which begged the reader not to rush to judgement, from someone with a post history consisting almost entirely of demonizing various ethnic groups. Stomach-turning irony. What little else they posted was confined to conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate and the moon landing.

This person had also admitted that they had a pet project of rebranding the alt-right as liberals, and I was considering leaving up the post as an example of sheer bald-faced strategery. But in the end I decided that the post didn't need to have a home in our humble sub. It was nothing more than a soft-focus version of everything we can already see by just going to their spaces. A pathetic and teary-eyed attempt to co-opt our world famous itch for mutual understanding.

Anyways, here follows my response to this fool's sob story:

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The world knows who you are. This sub isn't called "don't research the alt-right". Your existence is not under threat and we are not your jurors.

I have spent the last year in private conversations with several people who self-identify and white nationalists or alt-right. I listened. I became emotionally invested. I was patient. I offered understanding. I sympathized. And I did so completely without thanks. My fellow leftists admonished me for wasting my time, and the alt-righters I bent over backwards to try and understand were never satisfied.

You have bad data, bad arguments, bad figureheads, and bad sources. Your critical thinking is woefully undeveloped, which is why your outlook rests on conspiracy theories like Pizzagate, the Moon Landing Hoax, and antisemitism.

But here's the good news: the scenario you paint in which you all become victims of political persecution under the Trump administration first of all will never happen in a million fucking years. But even if it somehow does arise, you can avoid it just by renouncing ethno-nationalism.

Queer folk, black and brown people, if you get your way, there's absolutely nothing they can do to save themselves from your political agenda. If you succeed, they will be relocated whether they like it or not, and more likely will be systematically murdered. The fucking balls you have to come here and, clutching at your pearls, caution us against rushing to make someone our enemy. What kind of reaction can you possibly expect to such a plea when 90% of your post history is demonizing Jews, accusing them of conspiracy? Exactly how much compassion did the alt-right extend to black and brown people before deciding that they didn't want to share a country with them?

Every Nazi I've ever talked to has felt misunderstood. But none of them have ever made even the most feeble effort to understand others. They expect everyone to come to them, delve into the depths of who they are.

You are not unfairly accused. You have every possible advantage in society, you have the New York Times, NPR, and MSNBC profiling you, social media networks mumbling commitments to free speech, and then you go and dash it all away with Charlottesville. You bite the hands that are trying to feed you, flout website terms of service, and then cry censorship. And ever since then you've been absolutely desperate to put death back into Pandora's box.

You wanna show me you have real depth? You wanna show me you're worth delving into? Want to convince me you deserve a second chance? Make an honest goddamn effort to understand others first. Talk to some Jews. Talk to some Muslims. Talk to black and brown people, to socialists. Do so honestly and openly and vulnerably. Do it away from an audience, away from the pressure to sound correct.

Until you're willing to do that, how deserving you are of the understanding of others is irrelevant because you are already understood for exactly what you are; a kid who's a little narcissistic and just not that bright and willing to commit acts of violence for a chance at an idiotic color utopia.

"concern trolling" is a thing but abusing that accusation can be a good weapon to portray someone as being an unworthy interlocutor...

Now , with the USA elections circus that is ramping up and the fact that i am not a Burger ... i think it could be a smart move to just invest my attention and actions in more meaningful things than have that type of online conversation. Basically i will apply Amber's diagnostic and recommendation to people posting at /r/chapotraphouse.

This is adapted from a comment I wrote in another post.

Over and over again, we see the argument that not debating the right "cedes ground" or leaves their ideas unopposed. The argument being that a theoretical battleground already exists, and failure to mark your territory there is giving free turf to the opposition. Nobody is more enthusiastic about convincing you of that than the alt-right, and as I'll demonstrate, your belief in that lie is crucial to their success.

First, let's talk about how we know it's a lie, and the answer there is twofold:

First, refusal to debate the alt-right has coincided with leftist movements gaining ground. Meanwhile, Richard Spencer won't go outside and Milo's auctioning off his collection of gaudy bullshit for milk money.

Second, debate is not the only persuasive tactic. There are plenty of other persuasive tactics that better align with our values and play to our strengths.

So why does refusal to debate work? Because debates are not opportunities to redraw territories: the debate itself is what creates the space. If nobody agrees to go debate a fascist, that fascist doesn't automatically get a free platform. And even if they did, they wouldn't have nearly the leverage to gain followers since they have nobody to perform dominance over. Instead, the fascist gets nothing.

Right-wing youtubers make a fair amount of "look into the camera and talk" type videos, but those are not the ones that are growing their followers. The videos that draw in the uninitiated all involve well-meaning but rhetorically green leftists getting "owned". YouTube recommendations are a deluge of DESTROYED liberals and TRIGGERED feminists, of bad-faith invitations to "change my mind". On the other hand, this format of video has worked fantastically well for the growth of LeftTube, but more on that later.

Without doe-eyed cannon fodder, there is no alt-right youtube presence. If no leftists had decided to talk to Crowder or Shapiro, neither of these men would have the following they do today. And I'm not blaming the DESTROYED. None of us knew better at the time. But every single time you consider engaging with the far-right, you have to imagine the worst possible way your efforts could be misused and misrepresented, because that's exactly what's going to happen to them.

So that's reactionary youtube's rise to power. But what about LeftTube? Did LeftTube rise up out of the muck seemingly overnight because they had a string of successful debates with the right? Absolutely not. LeftTube started to succeed because Leftists leveraged their strengths. Strengths like compassion, theatricality, vulnerability, incisiveness, and a willingness to sit through tedious breakdowns of bad arguments. Not only is this approach better suited to the nuance and subtlety of the real world, the methods themselves validate leftist values.

Meanwhile, debating them, perhaps thinking we can beat them at their own game, automatically validates their outlook. We can't prove it's wrong to be an asshole by winning the asshole contest.

One of the best con jobs the right ever pulled off is making people think debate is the only way that information spreads and people are persuaded. And they did it because in pretty much every other arena, from persuasive essays to speeches to allegory, art, music, and acts of passive resistance, we outdo them every time. They made us think that every way we can beat them easily doesn't really matter.

It turns out, Leftist ideas do very well when you don't decide to invite some asshole to interrupt you repeatedly while you're trying to present them.

I would never have evolved beyond libertarianism if I hadn't watched a Spencer debate.

-Anon

When this sub was created three thousand years ago, one of the first videos posted was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaPgDQkmqqM

Almost everyone who posts here has seen it, probably multiple times. If you haven't heard of it. you have not done the prerequisite homework to try and convince me and everyone here that we're wrong. These videos, and other similar works carefully demonstrate the following:

• Debating the Alt-Right achieves little more than to get you humiliated in public by people acting in bad faith.
• A political ideology that rejects dominance doesn't do well in a framework where dominance determines victory.
• Someone who is expecting a co-operative exercise where you trade ideas until you find the truth is going to end up looking like a weakling next to someone who only needs to look really smug and self-assured to gain more followers.
• Debating the Alt-right builds their followers, and endangers their targets

If you think that's bullshit, watch the videos for yourself. After all, you're an enlightened mind who doesn't shy away from opposing viewpoints, right? We're the ones who are afraid of other ideas (even though debate is just one of a million ways to be exposed to other opinions)

People on the right get really upset when we don't want to debate them. And they get even more upset when we present our reasons why. And they get really really upset when those reasons actually serve our interests.

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If this is your first day in the sub, the reason you don't debate the far-right is pretty simple. And it's not just legitimizing, or normalizing, or the gish gallop and the fallacy brigade, no. The most important reason is far far simpler than all that.

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Debate, for the right, is a contest of who can sound right. And for the left, it's a contest of who can be right. Being right is way harder. If you want to win a debate, it's better not to bother. But what does that mean exactly?

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For the fascist, debate is an opportunity to perform certainty and to look strong. And to do this, you don't need to properly support what you're saying. You can trot out a study if you want, but it doesn't have to relate to what you're saying, or be a good study, or exist. You can say half-truths, untruths, complete absurdity and nonsense, and none of it will matter because debate isn't about the truth, it's about dominating.

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And yes, you'll see Democrats doing this too, and yes they're technically left of... something. But the average leftist you talk to believes that the purpose of a debate is to simultaneously challenge and cooperate to mutually find the truth. And it is often assumed that the truth will be some middle ground between the view points each party brings to the table.

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"So just call them out on their bullshit!"

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Good idea! Because playing defense for five hours definitely looks like winning to a neutral observer. If you can't read my sarcasm, then ignore the above advice wherever you see it. It's a trap. We on the left are like bloodhounds for bad arguments and we will chase them for miles no matter how far off the trail of the actual argument it takes us. And just when we think we've tracked the bad argument down, another pops up. And soon we're chasing our tails.

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Calling out bad arguments is just another way that the right turns public debate from a search for the truth into a circus strongman act. We have much better things to do with our lives than spend 2 hours fact-checking claims that take seconds to contrive.

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"Well now you're just retreating to a safe space! If you don't debate the far-right, they'll just keep claiming ground!"

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No, actually, debate does this. Debate is what allows them into spaces and provides a petri dish for their ideas to spread. But stating your ideas in context, with all necessary nuance, and room for uncertainty, has been doing a surprisingly good job of reclaiming online spaces where the alt-right has no room to work.

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Has refusal to debate trolls in her comments endangered Natalie Wynn's turf? Is Breadtube collapsing due to a refusal to debate? No!

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On some level, the right might actually believe that we're harming ourselves with our refusal to debate. But that's only because debate is the only thing that has consistently worked for them. Most of them, however, obviously don't believe it's in our interest to debate them, and are just salty that we won't do it.

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Debate is a game, and games have rules. Most of the rules of debates, as they occur in everyday life, are unspoken. But just like any other game, it breaks when someone doesn't follow those rules. No reasonable person would play chess against someone who's "winning move" was to dash the pieces to the floor and declare themselves the winner. Unlike chess, in debate you can ignore the rules and still appear to win. And that's exactly what the right have been getting away with for years. So don't do it!

Firstly, let me say congrats on finding our little sub! When it was started, /r/Antifa was still a troll nest, and this sub here hadn't yet been quarantined. It is amazing how time flies. I feel I should thank you. After all, this sub wouldn't exist without you.

I loved reading all the comments. I loved how in some of them, we're all intellectual weaklings terrified to leave our bubble, and in others an all-powerful monolith, preserving our entrenched influence. The enemies of fascism have, historically, been portrayed as simultaneously weak and formidable by it's proponents, so I feel I'm in good company. So yes, we're a tiny dead sub with 500+ members who are the intellectual gatekeepers of the world. Nice to meet you.

I'm sorry that so many of you feel so misunderstood by our content. To date, I've never met a single far-right thinker who feels that the left actually understands their ideas, but then again, I've never met anyone on the left who feels understood by the right either. But I think we understand you better than you think; we're just not willing to to respond in kind. I've heard so many alt-right tell me, "we don't want genocide, we just want separation. Stupid leftists smh."

The leftist knows this, they just also happen to know that there's a long and richly fucked up history of "separation" that rapidly becomes genocide. You think the leftist doesn't understand you, but they're actually refusing to cede ground in a presupposed frame, a frame that says that peaceful separation of the races is anyone's true goal, or that it's even possible. The left is, generally speaking, very prone to ceding ground, ever so ready to use their opponents frame in an instinctive attempt to reach across, bridge the gap, achieve mutual understanding. But on this issue they almost never budge, and so no wonder you feel misunderstood. When you're accustom to your presupposed frame always being accepted, rejection of a frame feels like failure to understand.

I understand that you're upset, also, that we lump Ben Shapiro in with the alt-right. I must warn you however that we're not going to stop. As snowflakes, we understand the pain of being lumped in where you don't feel you belong. You want to be addressed in a manner befitting the person you know is inside of you-- you need the right bronouns.

However, I must protest the accusation that we've not read your favorite studies about race. There are entire youtube channels dedicated solely to poring over every onerous detail, debunking misleadingly presented studies, statistics, and conclusions. Don't just assume we're too scared of the validity of "race realism" to look into it. I've read the studies you pass amongst each other and a lot of them were written by people who do not agree with the conclusions race "realists" draw from them. Nay nay, I say, it is you who do not read studies, but rather headlines. A youtuber tells you a study says X about race and IQ, and that's just good enough for you.

But I ramble. If you have opinions about any of what I've said, my PMs are open. But I will not debate you. Contrary to what you've been saying, and indeed what many leftists would say, leftist ideas actually do very well in debates. It's just that debates--good ones, anyway--rarely happen. The right is good at turning a debate into a circus, and the left is, generally speaking, bad at realizing that that's happened.

I won't debate you, but I will talk to you, and it won't really seem that different. Just do whatever. But if you put your shit here it'll get yoinked and the thrill from that will last like, 3 minutes max.

Next time a concern trolly worm comes here to ask a disingenuous question, please just report it and move on.

Remember: the troll's greatest leverage is the fact that we, on the left, all pretty much have the same fantasy. We all have hopes of a fiery takedown that puts the right-wing bigot in their place forever. But it doesn't work that way.

Public debate is not the place where the liberal takedown wins the day. It is the arena where an unhinged reality TV star who pays to keep his grades private beats Barack Obama's Secretary of State.

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Don't.

Do.

It.