An artist’s depiction of a an empty podium framed by a red curtain. Graphic courtesy of Jieru Ye ‘23.
By Woodlief McCabe ’23
Staff Writer
Content warning: this article mentions slavery, white supremacy and transphobia.
Online political discourse has somehow taught us that we need to listen to every argument and that being convincing is the same as being right. Our desire for intellectual superiority blinds us to the fact that we are extending the reach of far-right, fascist and neo-Nazi perspectives. Debate culture allows bigotry to be treated as logical and worthy of discussion.
Vaush is one of many YouTubers known for debating members of the alt-right and is popular with young people early in the process of engaging with leftist ideology. On his social media, Vaush has engaged with white nationalist, eugenicist “cult leader” Stefan Molyneux, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and anti-feminist alt-right associated Carl Benjamin, aka “Sargon of Akkad.” These names are popular within the “alt-right pipeline” of media that directs people to online spaces that promote white supremacy and conspiracy theories. Providing these individuals with a platform helps spread their problematic ideas to people who would otherwise have never found them.
In January 2018, British public broadcasting service Channel 4 hosted a debate on the gender pay gap and campus protests with Jordan Peterson. Peterson is a psychology professor, YouTube personality and author who has been associated with the “intellectual dark web.” Peterson criticizes political correctness, believes that gender studies departments should be defunded, that the “masculine spirit is under assault” and that academic fields have been corrupted by “post-modernism” and “neo-Marxism.” The month following his Channel 4 appearance, Peterson gained over 107,000 followers on Twitter, and 107,000 more the next month.
Even if the far-right voice “loses the debate,” sharing the content still gives them an audience — It invites counterarguments and brings traffic to their channels and pages. The practice of debating or conversing with white supremacists gives them attention, confidence and credibility. It allows people to build a community around personalities and have their beliefs reinforced whenever they see their favorite white supremacist on a podcast or a Twitch stream, even when they’re being criticized. Alt-right content continues to proliferate outside of debate. In an attempt to lambast these views, leftist debaters give bigots more screen time and name recognition.
The reality is, some opinions don’t deserve attention. Not all ideas are worth arguing.
Recently, an image of a high school student reading from a slide titled, “Is Slavery Always Bad?” went viral on Twitter. The slide had four pros and four cons. The last con, that slavery “goes against human rights,” is placed on equal footing with the financial benefit to the enslaver. The exercise being taught in this classroom is to view all sides equally. However, if we try to look at both sides of every argument, we end up making justifications for brutality and racism. The answer to the question, “is slavery always bad?” is unequivocally yes, no matter how well-articulated the counterargument appears. We lose the true context of the subject by encouraging arguments from the other side.
One of the largest problems with internet political discourse is the false association of debate skill with the effectiveness of an argument. When conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro “DESTROYS liberal student who likes big gov & free stuff” or “triggers leftist with basic biology facts” — two real titles of his YouTube videos — he isn’t making better, more logically sound arguments. Shapiro is an experienced debater who has made his career out of disagreeing with liberal and leftist politics while claiming “facts don't care about your feelings.” The videos where he appears to come out on top against college students are just examples of his ability to repeat points he has been making for years. Shapiro and other right-wing viewers latch on to students’ stutters and poor word choices to invalidate opposing arguments. Political discussion is boiled down into a game. Each side makes whatever argument that they can to earn smug points against the other. Each side will always leave believing that they won, and this is exactly the problem. The argument is detached from meaning. When Shapiro hosted astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson on his YouTube show, Shapiro tried to argue that science was against the existence of transgender people. Tyson responded, “But where are you going with this? … What are you trying to accomplish?”
As individuals, we can remove extremist voices from public discourse. De-platforming is a form of protest that seeks to remove the opportunities for offensive and hateful ideas to be spread. We often see this on campuses as protests against controversial guest speakers. At University of California Berkeley, students made headlines for mass protests against conservative pundit Ann Coulter who came to speak about immigration in 2019. De-platforming is a valuable tool to remove ideas of white supremacy and hatred from the spaces we inhabit, physically and online. Even if we think of the perfect retort, disengaging with voices of bigotry is far more effective at silencing them than playing the game they want you to. Blocking a white nationalist on Twitter does immensely more good for political discourse than hosting them on your podcast.