Thread by @j_fishback

What you are about to watch is the **final round** of the most prestigious national high school debate tournament. Team A proceeds to tell Team B that they **will not** be debating the assigned topic (benefits/costs of the IMF) because trans people are being genocided by MAGA Republicans and that is way more important than debating the IMF.

Team A starts off by playing an audio clip from a 1980s AIDs protest and says that “28 states want to kill” trans people like her. They tell the judges that this round "does nothing to the IMF itself" and as such they have decided that "this round is going to be a debate about debate" and the judges' "choice instead is whether to affirm our performance." They proudly declare that they will "occupy the debate space until trans debaters can participate safely."

Team B then immediately concedes the round because they don’t want to dispute that trans genocide is real and be labelled transphobic. The rest of the round is a struggle session where Team A states that misgendering is “violent” and that if you do it, you should automatically lose.

This is the *final round* of the *most prestigious high school debate tournament* of the school year, and they made a mockery of it with their selfish, unintelligible performative rant.

The worse part? The judges praised Team A for their bravery and courage and crowned them the national champions. This is sick. It’s anti-merit, anti-debate, and anti-American. No wonder droves of kids are quitting high school debate.

The National Speech and Debate Association cannot be reformed. It’s time for viable high school debate alternatives to stand up and welcome young Americans who actually want to debate. I believe my non-profit @IncubateDebate will be one of those alternatives.

One of the students from Team A now *judges* and high school debates. Here's their paradigm...

"It's important to recognize that debate is not about winning an argument. It's about making sure everyone feels okay and making sure everyone feels safe. So when that's hindered upon, I think that's when debate becomes essentially useless in the first place. So it was really, really eye-opening to see those passion RFDs [Reason for Decision] given by the judges. To see that debate really doesn't matter about the IMF, like who cares? Like what matters is like those people who need to be safe within the round itself."

Judge 1 after the round: "I want to also thank you for allowing this to happen ... for bringing up arguments that you could definitely receive backlash on, especially for being brave and taking this step all throughout the tournament."

I started a no-cost high school debate league where students **actually debate**. We believe in Free Speech, Merit, and Open Debate. It's called @IncubateDebate

I would be honored to have your support. Link: givebutter.com/incubate

In debate lingo, what Team A did is called a "kritik," a strategy where students reject the assigned debate topic and instead talk about far-left causes that they deem more important (like "trans genocide")

Where did they learn this from? The National Speech & Debate Association. They have a **free curriculum** that teaches kids to reject the assigned topic and go on a Marxist rant instead.

This is SICK.

(cc: @speechanddebate)

Proof: