I’ve had some discussions with Trump supporters recently. Here are some suggestions for anyone who wants to have an actual debate about political issues. Note that this may seem harsh to Trump supporters. But it seems harsh to me when Trump supporters use a social event to try and push their beliefs without knowing any of the things I list in this post. If you are a Trump supporter who doesn’t do these things then please try to educate your fellow travellers, they are more likely to listen to you than to me.
Facts
For a discussion to be useful there has to be a basis in facts. When one party rejects facts there isn’t much point. Anyone who only takes their news from an ideological echo chamber is going to end up rejecting facts. The best thing to do is use fact checking sites of which Snopes [1] is the best known. If you are involved in political discussions you should regularly correct people who agree with you when you see them sharing news that is false or even merely unsupported by facts. If you aren’t correcting mistaken people on your own side then you do your own cause a disservice by allowing your people to discredit their own arguments. If you aren’t regularly seeking verification of news you read then you are going to be misled. I correct people on my side regularly, at least once a week. How often do you correct your side?
The next thing is that some background knowledge of politics is necessary. Politics is not something that you can just discover by yourself from first principles. If you aren’t aware of things like Dog Whistle Politics [2] then you aren’t prepared to have a political debate. Note that I’m not suggesting that you should just learn about Dog Whistle Politics and think you are ready to have a debate, it’s one of many things that you need to know.
Dog whistle politics is nothing new or hidden, if you don’t know about such basics you can’t really participate in a discussion of politics. If you don’t know such basics and think you can discuss politics then you are demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger effect [3].
The Southern Strategy [4] is well known by everyone who knows anything about US politics. You can think it’s a good thing if you wish and you can debate the extent to which it still operates, but you can’t deny it happened. If you are unaware of such things then you can’t debate US politics.
The Civil rights act of 1964 [5] is one of the most historic pieces of legislation ever passed in the US. If you don’t know about it then you just don’t know much about US politics. You may think that it is a bad thing, but you can’t deny that it happened, or that it happened because of the Democratic party. This was the time in US politics when the Republicans became the party of the South and the Democrats became the centrist (possibly left) party that they are today. It is ridiculous to claim that Republicans are against racism because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. Ridiculous claims might work in an ideological echo chamber but they won’t convince anyone else.
Words Have Meanings
To communicate we need to have similar ideas of what words mean. If you use words in vastly different ways to other people then you can’t communicate with them. Some people in the extreme right claim that because the Nazi party in Germany was the
“Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei” (“NSDAP”) which translates to English as “National Socialist German Workers Party” that means that they were “socialists”. Then they claim that “socialists” are “leftist” so therefore people on the left are Nazis. That claim requires using words like “left” and “socialism” in vastly different ways to most people.
Snopes has a great article about this issue [6], I recommend that everyone read it, even those who already know that Nazis weren’t (and aren’t) on the left side of politics.
The Wikipedia page of the Unite the Right rally [7] (referenced in the Snopes article) has a photo of people carrying Nazi flags and Confederate flags. Those people are definitely convinced that Nazis were not left wing! They are also definitely convinced that people on the right side of politics (which in the US means the Republican party) support the Confederacy and oppose equal rights for Afro-American people. If you want to argue that the Republican party is the one opposed to racism then you need to come up with an explanation for how so many people who declare themselves on the right of politics got it wrong.
Here’s a local US news article about the neo-Nazi who had “commie killer” written on his helmet while beating a black man almost to death [8]. Another data point showing that Nazis don’t like people on the left.
In other news East Germany (the German Democratic Republic) was not a
democracy. North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is not a democracy either. The use of “socialism” by the original Nazis shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than the recent claims by the governments of East Germany and North Korea.
Left vs right is a poor summary of political positions, the Political Compass [9] is better. While Hitler and Stalin have different positions on economics I think that citizens of those countries didn’t have very different experiences, one extremely authoritarian government is much like another. I recommend that you do the quiz on the Political Compass site and see if the people it places in similar graph positions to you are ones who you admire.
Sources of Information
If you are only using news sources that only have material you agree with then you are in an ideological echo chamber. When I recommend that someone look for other news sources what I don’t expect in response is an email analysing a single article as justification for rejecting that entire news site. I recommend sites like the New York Times as having good articles, but they don’t only have articles I agree with and they sometimes publish things I think are silly.
A news source that makes ridiculous claims such as that Nazis are “leftist” is ridiculous and should be disregarded. A news source that merely has some articles you disagree with might be worth using.
Also if you want to convince people outside your group of anything related to politics then it’s worth reading sites that might convince them. I often read The National Review [10], not because I agree with their articles (that is a rare occurrence) but because they write for rational conservatives and I hope that some of the extreme right wing people will find their ideas appealing and come back to a place where we can have useful discussions.
When evaluating news articles and news sources one thing to consider is Occam’s Razor [11]. If an article has a complex and implausible theory when a simpler theory can explain it then you should be sceptical of that article. There are conspiracies but they aren’t as common as some people believe and they are generally of limited complexity due to the difficulty people have in keeping secrets. An example of this is some of the various conspiracy theories about storage of politicians’ email. The simplest explanation (for politicians of all parties) is that they tell someone like me to “just make the email work” and if their IT staff doesn’t push back and refuse to do it without all issues being considered then it’s the IT staff at fault. Stupidity explains many things better than conspiracies. Regardless of the party affiliation, any time a politician is accused of poor computer security I’ll ask whether someone like me did their job properly.
Covering for Nazis
Decent people have to oppose Nazis. The Nazi belief system is based on the mass murder of people based on race and the murder of people who disagree with them. In Germany in the 1930s there were some people who could claim not to know about the bad things that Nazis were doing and they could claim to only support Nazis for other reasons. Neo-Nazis are not about creating car companies like VolksWagen all they are about is hatred. The crimes of the original Nazis are well known and well documented, it’s not plausible that anyone could be unaware of them.
Mitch McConnell has clearly stated “There are no good neo-Nazis” [12] in clear opposition to Trump. While I disagree with Mitch on many issues, this is one thing we can agree on. This is what decent people do, they work together with people they usually disagree with to oppose evil. Anyone who will support Nazis out of tribal loyalty has demonstrated the type of person they are.
Here is an article about the alt-right meeting to celebrate Trump’s victory where Richard Spencer said “hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory” while many audience members give the Nazi salute [13]. You can skip to 42 seconds in if you just want to see that part. Trump supporters try to claim it’s the “Roman salute”, but that’s not plausible given that there’s no evidence of Romans using such a salute and it was first popularised in Fascist Italy [14]. The Wikipedia page for the Nazi Salute [15] notes that saying “hail Hitler” or “hail victory” was standard practice while giving the salute. I think that it’s ridiculous to claim that a group of people offering the Hitler salute while someone says “hail Trump” and “hail victory” are anything but Nazis. I also think it’s ridiculous to claim to not know of any correlation between the alt-right and Nazis and then immediately know about the “Roman Salute” defence.
The Americans used to have a salute that was essentially the same as the Nazi Salute, the Bellamy Salute was officially replaced by the hand over heart salute in 1942 [16]. They don’t want anything close to a Nazi salute, and no-one did until very recently when neo-Nazis stopped wearing Klan outfits in the US.
Every time someone makes claims about a supposed “Roman salute” explanation for Richard Spencer’s fans I wonder if they are a closet Nazi.
Anti-Semitism
One final note, I don’t debate people who are open about neo-Nazi beliefs. When someone starts talking about a “Jewish Conspiracy” or use other Nazi phrases then the conversation is over. Nazis should be shunned. One recent conversation with a Trump supported ended quickly after he started talking about a “Jewish conspiracy”. He tried to get me back into the debate by claiming “there are non-Jews in the conspiracy too” but I was already done with him.
Decent Trump Supporters
If you want me to believe that you are one of the decent Trump supporters a good way to start is to disclaim the horrible ideas that other Trump supporters endorse. If you can say “I believe that black people and Jews are my equal and I will not stand next to or be friends with anyone who carries a Nazi flag” then we can have a friendly discussion about politics. I’m happy to declare “I have never supported a Bolshevik revolution or the USSR and will never support such things” if there is any confusion about my ideas in that regard. While I don’t think any reasonable person would think that I supported the USSR I’m happy to make my position clear.
I’ve had people refuse to disclaim racism when asked. If you can’t clearly say that you consider people of other races to be your equal then everyone will think that you are racist.