How would you approach persuading a far extreme conservative toward center? What would you set as a realistic goal for a productive discourse? Would it be better attempt to do so in person rather than online?
Befriend them. Show them instead of telling them.
Accept them. Understand them and what they say and why. Have fun and tell a joke they’ll like. Let go of trying to change them and let it happen naturally over time.
This is my go-to resource for living with conservatives.
https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-deal-with-a-narcissist
I’m not joking.
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100% in person. You’ve got a much harder battle online. As someone else said, exposure is a big piece. Also just challenging some of their beliefs in a Socratic way
Though you really need the ability to stay calm and collected. I once tried to talk with a childhood friend who became a hardcore christian and nationalist in the meantime, and I just couldn’t believe the things I heard.
When I asked him why would the bible be a definitive source of whatever, he said “You can only have one truth, and if you live by the bible you know it to be true, so it is the truth”. There were so many things wrong with that line of thought, my brain received a ddos attack and had to reboot.
Same thing for homosexuals. He, in a very very creepy way I must say, told an entire story of how normal men who are sexual deviants eventually get tired of women because they need to do increasingly more sickening things, and then move on to men. That’s how men become gay.
How the hell do you reply to someone who just completely made up a story and believes in it? When I eventually asked how is the Netherlands not burning to the ground when they are tolerant, he actually said “Not yet”. So, if any Dutch person is reading this, better brace for gay armageddon or something. I just can’t figure out what to say to someone who literally spends 10 mins saying nothing. I eventually stopped interacting with him because I just don’t have the energy (this was just an example, I had dozens of interactions like that with him)Or when a colleague said that the Ukranian civilians were happy when the Russians came to save them. My head temperature increased 10 degrees and I just turned around and left. You really need special skills to talk to people like that, which I sadly lack
Yesterday drag was accosted by someone who insisted, despite being able to read drag’s username, that drag’s name was drag and therefore drag can’t be drag’s pronoun. No amount of logic made a difference. So drag told them to leave drag alone.
Force them to interact with queers and minorities. Treating them the same as they treat us.
The real “danger” of college isn’t liberal professors. It’s spending time with people who have different backgrounds, life experiences, and world views. Religious schools, along with fraternities and sororities, do their best to encourage conformity. Avoid them.
Dad: I had a really neat experience at work today!
Me: Yeah?
Dad: S (Indian) came into work with food from home and he brought me some!
Me: Did you like it?
Dad: Yeah it was good, he was really great. Why can’t they all be like that?
Me: Who’s they?
Dad: All those people from other countries!
Me: Do you meet a lot of people from other countries?
Dad: Well, no, but you hear a lot about them
Me: From where?
Dad: You now, places, other people, tv.
Me: They’re not really any different than we are, there are open and friendly people and closed and private people. Some want to make friends and be nice, some just want to get along and work.
Dad: That’s not what I hear.
Me: Maybe what you hear is wrong. You know, stories told my people who stand to profit from keeps us angry at each other?
Dad: Bah, you can’t make money from that.
Me: …
Haha it’s true though, most people are just, you know… People. I haven’t been everywhere, but I’ve been to a few countries other than my own and all the differences are negligible except maybe not understanding the language. You see just as many differences in culture traveling to other states within the US; but a lot of these ignorant people haven’t even done that.
It’s also kinda true that food brings different cultures together like no other. How can you hate people who make hella good food?!
Just traveling between the different megaregions in the US often feels like traveling internationally, but without the hassle of passports and borders. They speak the same language and literally inhabit the same country, but everything just feels different. I can’t quite place it.
Uh no, sorry. America is the same. I’ve lived in the midwest, I’ve lived on the coasts, I’ve gone to 45 of the states. I’ve traveled to multiple continents now too. America is America, long live the stripmall, the large trucks, and the fast food. There are minor differences area to area, but if you have not traveled actually internationally yourself, you are missing out on actual massive culture differences. Even just the UK or France, which are fairly similar will show you how vastly different places can be.
There are so many other ways to live that I don’t even know how to describe to you if you haven’t gone yourself. Honestly I don’t know how. Go see how other people live, it will quite literally open your eyes. America definitely has a culture from sea to shining sea, and it’s very different from the rest of the world.
I understand what you’re trying to say, that different regions are different, and I’ll give you that there are minor differences, but once you go out and actually experience truly different cultures you’ll realize how similar we all are here.
There was a black blues singer years ago that lived in Klan country.
He made friends with klansman and got them slowly over the years to denounce and hand in their robes. One of the people he convinced was actually a grand wizard IIRC.
There are a lot of people out there that will listen to a radio show where someone is saying that minorities in a given town are eating everyone’s pets and they’ll take that as gospel.
If you lead them by the hand introduce them to a family that’s willing to help change their mind have them watch the food be cooked and break bread their initial response is going to be this is a good family, But it’s not going to make them immediately go maybe most families are good. The programming’s very hard to overcome. Generally, prejudice does not survive repeated positive contacts with the targets.
The brother of a long-term friend of mine got fired from a Union State job by being racist. Almost the entire staff was minority. His view was that the entire race was lazy because his staff of Union minority workers for a state job or putting in the minimum effort required. Meanwhile the state is paying the minimum amount they can offering workers near immunity for their actions Even before you account for the union.
It’s likely with his experience he will never be deprogrammed. Of course his entire life has been a series of very bad decisions, most of which he blames on everyone else.
And exposure is not always enough. There are plenty of 100% racist inner city police officers that are exposed to minorities all the time. It’s like you almost have to drag a racist kicking and screaming to challenge their own propaganda worldview.
I agree 100%.
Honestly it can start small, just be somewhere where harmless friendly interactions can happen. Walking around, at the store, just doing mundane things.
Then more social at bars, or schools, or even churches if that’s their vibe.
Molly/ Ecstasy
Here is a story of a white supremacist switching views after taking it.
Here is an article on how mdma can change PTSD by opening up the brain by rewriting. This is obviously for depression and PTSD, but recognize why it works for these other things. It opens up the brain to becoming reactive to different stimuli after having kept the same pathways for so long.
I think of course, community is the best long term answer. Education is hard for adults but having lived narratives around you showing you a better way is FAR more effective than just some facts thrown at them.
These people need to be taken out of their echo chamber and if possible, given a new vision
I don’t think you can. I very gently tried to dissuade a church friend from weaponized disinformation websites by explaining what that was, and he unfriended me and stopped coming to our church and told the pastor we were too liberal. Well we always were so it was just a matter of time before that sunk in, so I don’t imagine anything would have stopped that, but I felt bad. I just didn’t want him getting sucked in to Tucker Carlson because he is a sweet guy and deserves better, but he also seems to have gotten religion because of a psychotic episode so I’m not sure any of this is a good idea for him.
I find that they have a lot of mistaken assumptions that are just lies repeated by Fox News. Sometimes they don’t even watch Fox, they’re just surrounded by people that do.
I like to focus on the economic issues, since there is hard math for the economy and I find it’s not productive to argue with someone who is terrified that a trans person might be in the same bathroom as their child. I find these people literally start foaming at the mouth over that stuff and I just don’t have the right math or words to cut through the rabies.
For example. I’ve heard Republican voters say that Republicans are better for the economy and reducing the national debt. Ask them which Republican presidents have left office with a reduced deficit?
Ask them if they know how much it added to the national debt when Reagan, Bush, and Trump passed tax cuts primarily for the rich and corporations.
Let them know that you’re also concerned about the economy and the deficits, and show them a chart of federal spending and ask them whether they want to cut Social Security, Medicare, or defense spending to pay for more tax cuts for the rich and corporations.
Then ask them why DON’T the Republicans cut ANY of those things to pay for their tax cuts? Why do those deficits just get passed on to the next Democrat and blamed on them? How are Republicans going to reduce the deficit when it’s not politically feasible with their base to cut ANY of those three things?
When it comes to immigration, ask them why they think immigrants are trying to get here in the first place. Show them Smedley Butler and talk about the war on drugs and ask them if they think the US is partially to blame for the violence in other countries that people are trying to escape from.
Also, show them the Maddox comic where he depicts immigrants “stealing our jobs”. Ask them who is hiring these illegal immigrants and why? Ask them who the managers and owners of those companies vote for and why those people might have an incentive to preserve the “illegal” status of those employees.
“Fuck off with your woke bullshit.”
I’ve tried this. They don’t listen; it just goes in one ear and out the other, and that’s assuming you’re on good terms with the person you’re talking to. Otherwise, they just get very angry that you’re attacking their worldview.
The long and short is that these people have been lied to virtually non-stop for the past 40 years, and the first step is depriving them of their disinformation stream. From there, it’s a slow process that could take years, and that process is reset if they go back to listening to lies on Fox News or on Facebook/Twitter.
On the opposite side how do you deprogram a tankies?
I’m not sure that’s really the opposite side, in reality.
The slimiest form of whattaboutism. Tankies don’t control a major political party, the highest court, giant media networks or any of the smaller institutions that support those. You may as well be shouldering yourself into a conversation about misinformation and education and drooling “but what about flat earthers”.
Come back with a real problem.
Make them cluck like a chicken
You can’t use logic, facts, or reason to get someone to change their mind when they didn’t use them to form their opinion in the first place so … baseball bat?
You also can’t use logic, facts, or reason to get someone to change their mind if you believe they are incapable of changing their mind.
If you categorize “asking questions” as a form of bad faith engagement, then you are now incapable of even trying to change someone’s mind.
Long story short, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
“Fake news”
That’s the reaction I usually get when the cognitive dissonance starts to get too much.
You’re talking about a fascist, not an “extreme conservative.” And you cannot persuade them “toward center” because there is no such thing as a political “center.” Never has been.
Throwing a spanner in their brain washing is actually a lot easier than people think… but only if you understand their socio-economic conditions. There’s a lot of contradictions bubbling under the surface of right-wing ideology - the trick is to exploit those.
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2016/07/18/yanss-080-deep-canvassing/
The whole You Are Not So Smart podcast is about how people think and how you can get people to really examine their beliefs and bringing them closer to rationality.
There are ways to do it, but it’s also easy to push the wrong direction, and you can’t think about it as making someone think a certain way, but helping them examine why they believe what they do.
Every person who mentions that podcast gets a free block.
Here’s yours baked fresh!
Well first I’d have to get them up to to the top of a really tall building…
You know, sometimes these people just need a little push
Just to get them going in the right direction, and velocity.
