this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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Politics
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They’re not people.
They are people.
Calling them monsters and dehumanizing them separates "them" from "us" and prevents us feom trying to understand how a real person, with intellect, feelings, a family, a social life etc. can get to the point where they do such things. If we don't collectively at least try and understand it, we have zero chance of preventing it from happening again.
That being said, I'm not at all making excuses for their actions, which I find seriously violent, disgusting and worrying.
Thought experiment for you then. How do you resolve the issue that arises when a person or group of persons live just down the street from you who claim that the core belief of their very being is that people "like you" shouldn't exist, or should, at the very least, go away, preferably across a large body of water.
Would you truly believe that all the people in this group, or even the majority of them, would be willing to listen to your arguments or protests simply because you recognize the conditions under which their beliefs came to be and you would like to rather, in the present, address those conditions?
I agree that there are problematic systemic conditions that give rise to far right ideologies like white supremacy and it's close extension, fascism. We definitely need to address them. But these conditions are not just the result of modern sociological paradigms, they have specific historical origins and are passed down through culture and tradition, and that is not something you can defeat through just argument and social ostracism, you sometimes just need to force the monsters out.
We can try to do all the other preventative measures first and we should, but some peoples' ideaologies are so deeply engrained into their identities, there is no convincing.
For some, there's no talking to them, they don't engage in dialogue genuinely, they twist Democratic forums, insisting on being heard while advocating for policies that ultimately aim to marginalize and silence others, constantly playing the victim while insisting the strength of their ideas on the sole basis of their opinion being fact.
A simple saying sums up my feelings on the far right and their fascist dreams. It was popularized during Trump's Muslim ban:
Not really an answer to your question, but your reply reminded me of the Paradox of Tolerance.