If you ever doubt the power of the motte-and-bailey technique, take a look at the convo around cultural appropriation & try to work out how we went from "definitely don't do blackface" to cyberbullying celebrities who wear chopsticks in their hair https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey …
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Instead of motte-and-bailey, isn't that a particular position taken to an extreme, so more like people burning the motte & never leaving the bailey? Anyway, agreed that this is so annoying. basically Kipling's "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet"
I think motte-and-bailey was the means of getting us here, but yeah — accusations of racism have been so effective at burning people that at this point there's rarely much need to retreat to the motte.