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For better or worse, I was one of those kids who grew up on Internet™. Most of my friends, too, were the early arrivals — the generation that caught the tail end of the Usenet revolution and saw the rise of polished web-centric social systems.
One of the things that I learned in those spaces was that the biggest frustration for someone advocating an extreme viewpoint isn't disagreement — it's silence. If I'm trying to convince the world TIME SPICE is the secret to ETERNAL MOTHS or something, I want arguments.
I want people to try debate me, every single day — not because it's going to change my mind, but because that activity is what draws eyeballs, and what I really want is to cast a wide net, to find people who think like me. The "arguments" have the shape of debate but they're not.
I'm trolling in the classic usenet sense: dragging the tantalizing chum of a weird idea through spaces where the "regulars" are certain to yell and shout and point and laugh and mock… but statistically speaking, all that noise will get me noticed by folks who are sympathetic.
Every day I'm yelling, my arguments are not directed at the people who disagree. They're directed at the cloud of listeners drawn to the show, to hook the slice of the population that nods thoughtfully and things, "This TIME SPICE MOTH LIFE guy, maybe he's onto something."
Which brings us to the idea of deplatforming neo-nazis and white supremacists. History Twitter (most visible in @KevinMKruse's regular thrashing of D'Souza) has understood the problem, and tactically decided how to engage, because they understand the dynamic.
The ideal solution is not "formal debate with the rightest person declared the winner," it's the elimination of disingenuous propagandists from shared social spaces. But the second-best approach is focusing on the *audience* these people are speaking to.
When a holocaust denier says "6M is silly, maybe 100K", History Twitter doesn't argue with them; they frame it, ensuring randos understand how the argument is not just factually wrong, but a consistent wedge used in a larger project to "redeem" Nazi genocide.
But ideally? Just nuke their accounts. The "my truths are so dangerous, I must be silenced!" schtick will be used whether they're hammering away at their unread blog, or penning a WaPo editorial. Debunking them is triage, reducing their reach is the solution. And it shows.
The final thought, here, is what I was most concerned about all along. If you do engage with one of these folks, if you do "weigh in," please, please understand the game they're playing. They "win" even if you argue circles around them — because they're talking past you.
And if you don't understand what they're doing, if you don't understand the structure of the shell game they're playing, if you focus on the action instead of the marks in the audience? You're not fighting them, you're just part of their routine.
