Sartre
I keep needing this observation from Anti-Semite and Jew. It describes not just antisemitism but the sensibilities of the far right in general, in their attack on the capacity for good faith discussion as part of their method of tearing down the conditions which enable liberal democracy.
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play.
They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Lilith Saintcrow | On “Civility”
Normally, I just turned around and walked away when Gene said that shit. I showed him my back, hoping to make it clear I was not, in fact, secretly on his side. But that day I had read @SlacktivistFred about IndigNation.
So I dead-eyed Gene and said, “You don’t really believe that. I know you don’t.” I will never forget the look that crossed his face. Because it was familiar.
It was the same shit-eating grin my racist stepfather used to wear when spouting Rush Limbaugh dittohead shit at the dinner table. It was the same wink-wink-nudge-nudge all the fucking white supremacists and Satanic Panic assholes give.
Gene absolutely, positively did not believe that Obama was born in Kenya. But he would continue to say he believed it, no matter who asked, to the end of his life. Because he thought saying he believed it absolved him of responsibility.
Fascists’ radical disinterest in policy
I have a whole post all about this, but it’s worth addressing in this context as well.
It is important to understand that fascism is not a political ideology in the same way that communism is. Communists have a detailed policy program which they espouse and pursue. Fascists do not; their policy prescriptions are often outright incoherent.
Fascism is better understood as a political method. And a key part of that method is speaking in bad faith: falsely describing what they want and care about, as a way of disrupting the process of political discussion itself. The vigor with which fascists do this is difficult to understand unless one has encountered it.
I have talked about this before, when talking about Milo Yiannopoulos, the Alt Right, and free speech:
We should not defend that as free speech; we need to recognize it as an attack on free speech.
[⋯]This is a method and it has a purpose.
If we look at the history of far right movements, we can recognize the basic pattern. These movements are not simply opposed to liberalism-as-in-the-Democratic-Party; they are opposed to liberalism-as-in-liberal-democracy. They oppose universal human rights and equality. They aim to discredit liberalism by turning its systems against itself, making them impracticable, perverting the meaning of words like “free speech”.
In this we see a continuity between the fascists of the early 20th century and the fascists and para-fascists of today. Sartre’s Réflexions sur la question juive describes this pattern in a troublingly familiar way.
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play.
They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
This is not restricted to the specifics of antisemitism. It is a general rhetorical style. Here is Harry Frankfurt, the author of the wonderful short book On Bullshit summing up the method.
The distinction between lying and bullshitting is fairly clear. The liar asserts something which he himself believes to be false. He deliberately misrepresents what he takes to be the truth. The bullshitter, on the other hand, is not constrained by any consideration of what may or may not be true. In making his assertion, he is indifferent to whether what he is says is true or false. His goal is not to report facts. It is, rather, to shape the beliefs and attitudes of his listeners in a certain way.
I bet you can guess who Frankfurt was talking about in the essay where he said that.
To get a feel for how this works in governance, I vigorously recommend the (exceedingly fun) party game Secret Hitler, in which players pretend to be a parliament where fascists are trying to pass legislation and get their leader elected Chancellor. In the game, the fascists know who each other are but the liberals don't; this makes the gameplay include the fascists lying about their intentions and pretending to be liberals. The player who is their secret leader tries the hardest to appear to be a liberal.
The game is structured such that the fascists are always outnumbered. But they usually win.
Brian Beutler | How Liberalism Sabotages Itself
⋯ Hasan asked Estelle: if you hate democracy so much, why are you engaged in public debate, a cornerstone of the democratic process?
“It is the means to support an end,” Estelle responded. “The reason we have free speech now is because we want to be openly talking about our opinions so we can get the state that we want. But it doesn't mean free speech after we win.”
Thanks to Estelle for his honesty. His means-to-an-end-style of bad faith in discourse is endemic on the right — not just among ascendant fascists — and has been for a long time. It’s just that most of them will never break character, and take false umbrage if you question their sincerity. But here Estelle lays out the method plainly: Rightists appeal to whomever they can with whatever false commitments they intend to break, knowing that, once delivered to power, they will pull the rug.
Pookleblinky on defending the principle of charity
Very important in dealing with not just Nazis but entryism more generally plus internet sealions and shitstorms.
The principle of charity is especially important under conditions of enforced brevity, such as having 300 character limits.
Being able to read something and not interpret it in the least charitable possible way, is a skill. A skill that atrophies if it is never used.
This is why you do not want to argue with Nazis, and instead violently repel then from your spaces: they delight in bad faith. Spending too long in a Nazi bar will make you really good at talking to people who delight in absurdity and bad faith.
And this will make you really bad when speaking to literally anyone else about anything. Making you unable to charitably interpret things other people say, is one of the things it delights Nazis to do.
While you are in a Nazi bar, the principles of tolerance and charity are manipulated to keep you from kicking them out. And then, when you go home, you find yourself no longer able to communicate with people you actually agree with. This is a win:win for Nazis.
Vigorously kicking Nazis out of your space, is necessary if you want to still be able to communicate with normal people.
There is a joke here that half of leftist infighting is due to this deliberate destruction of the principle of charity, and the other half is stuff like COINTELPRO. Leftist communities are inherently warped and deformed by exposure to Nazis. This is one reason why nazis take such delight in speaking in bad faith. Their mere presence erodes the things that allow humans to communicate.
You have never seen a leftist community without this endless giggling bad faith attack on its ability to communicate.
Not only do nazis corrode the basic mechanisms of human communication, but they do so for fun. For shits and giggles. You can literally see them smirk when they do it.
One reason not to argue with fascist incel losers is that you get really good at arguing with fascist incel losers. Like any skill, less thought is now required. After arguing all day long with fascist incel losers, you’ve trained yourself to be unable to have conversations with normal people.
There is a nerd term for this, the Einstellung Effect. [More on that below.] After arguing with 9 worthless assholes, you're gonna behave the same way when arguing with the next random person you bump into.
Blocking these obnoxious assholes does many good things, and one of the most important ones is that it prevents you from getting really good at arguing with obnoxious assholes. You don’t want your default interaction with normal people, to be trained on and specialized in, these obnoxious assholes. After a long hard day arguing with nazis instead of blocking them, you are guaranteed to not be able to be normal to the next person you bump into. You’ve spent hours repetitively training yourself.
Same reason why cops scream “stop resisting” at grandmothers they’ve pushed out of wheelchairs. You get good at what you do. If that’s interacting with absolute fucking scum, yo’'re gonna be really good at treating your friends and family and total strangers like shit.