Read on Twitter
Once you decide to debate a fascist, they are no longer talking to you, they are borrowing your audience.
This indirectly came up when I was thinking about mimicking fascists to mock them.
I am now worried that first tweet is a quote that I read years back. You know, when you read something and later your mind is like, "We thought of this, actually." Anyway, I'm worried it's that.
I did run a couple of searches and didn't find anything, so I think this phrasing, at least, is my own.
Bleah, gonna add this, now that I’m getting responses that you are also borrowing their audience. Here’s the thing. Debating a fascist lends them legitimacy. They don’t have legitimacy to lend to you.
Debating them suggests that the matter is up for debate.
You can disagree with me. I’m not going to debate you about it.
Exactly. The point isn't "winning" the debate. It's that a debate is happening at all. The idea is now open. Reasonable people treat it as debatable. https://twitter.com/RukiTanuki/status/1346153819885998080
I'm going to keep adding here rather than responding to people individually. Another point I saw made: the first tweet assumes you are more popular than the fascist.
I don't agree with that. The point is less popularity than respectability. I may not know the name of a professor at an Ivy League school, and I may know the name of an internet edgelord.
But if the internet edgelord gets to debate the Ivy League professor, what the edgelord is borrowing is the platform and respectability. It's not about fame or popularity. It's about mainstreaming.
If I, an internet edgelord, can say that I debated Eminent Professor at Fancy University, then it is clear that my ideas and I are welcome in this rarefied space.
You can be famous and monetarily successful without having mainstream recognition. They want to move the Overton window. Borrowing your audience isn't about fame.
It's about legitimacy.
I had more thoughts I was considering adding to this thread, but I see I've hit the point where people deliberately conflate refusal to debate with censorship.
Might do a separate thread with those thoughts. Virality saps context.
