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Aella
@Aella_Girl
One cheap debate trick is reframing opposing opinions as having some sort of 'moral failure' and therefore foregoing all rights. For example, lots of attempts to shut down 'open debate' do so by framing the opposing opinions not as wrong, but as as "interruptive"
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
For example, this piece of work that showed up on my FB feed. They're justifying shutting down dissenting speech not because of wrongness, but because they "exhaust" people and implying everyone has to stop what they're doing to turn around to "deal with" these opinions.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
This is the same as shutting down speech because it comes from someone outside of the class of people "morally approved" to express opinions about things - for example, refusing to allow "oppressor" classes to speak.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
To be clear, I'm not saying that the "oppressor" classes are necessarily right, but only that we shouldn't prevent people from speaking because of moral judgments. If your position is strong and you understand it well, then you shouldn't be threatened by by dissenters.
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Aella
@Aella_Girl
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
I also feel like the queer community suffers deeply from this problem. In most of my interactions with them they require very high 'moral signalling' before they agree to engage with any discussion or questions. They seem to feel highly threatened by dissent.
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Mark Twomey
@marctwomey11
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
This isn't a well evidenced position. The point isn't whether the debaters win or lose. The point is whether the audience are convinced by their ideas. No matter how compelling an argument is, a number of that audience won't agree. 1
Mark Twomey
@marctwomey11
Replying to
@Aella_Girl
Because of this, debating fascists doesn't win the argument as effectively as shutting it down. Their freedom to espouse fascistic ideas creates dissenters. That is why the moral position exists- the evidence of history shows where those ideas end.