Nazis are a lost cause

Well there is the intolerance paradox. So you have to be mindful of that.

The notion of a marketplace of ideas selecting the best ideas and rejecting the worse ones is interesting. It suggests that marketplaces always select for quality, especially the more unregulated they are, which is not something I’ve noticed to be true about how any actual marketplaces operate.

The idea that Nazi “ideas” need to be defeated in open debate, which will cause them to lose power, is also interesting. It presupposes that debates are always won by the most correct idea, which I’ve noticed is often the opposite of how debate works.

It also suggest that the Nazis’ plan is to participate in bloodless debate over their ideas, and accept the outcome if their ideas are rejected, which is not a plan I think Nazis have ever pursued, or the sort of arena in which they have ever admitted—much less accepted—defeat.

It also suggests that what Nazis have are “ideas,” when we know that what they actually have are intentions, and those intentions always create real-life violence toward marginalized communities along racial, ethnic, religious, and other lines of bigotry—and they do so the more effectively Nazis are able to gather and organize and promote their “ideas” into the mainstream.

Source: https://www.the-reframe.com/questions-for-substack/

Also, I find the very definition of your “zero point” as a self-contained bad faith argument. It is quite close to notions of “snowflakes needing safe spaces” or sth, but real life anti-nazi tactics are, and should be, more militant. To this bad-faith zero point my position is either a -10, or on another axis entirely lmao.

“opposing viewpoints” is too broad a term for the question to be meaningful.

It could mean everything from “Discovery is the best Star Trek series” to “Women aren’t real people”, and the details of the viewpoint in question are EXTREMELY relevant to your ability to empathize with it.

Depends on a few things, including the viewpoint in question.

And my patience at a particular time because I’m not 18 and just discovering the world anymore and a lot of shit is the same old shit, even if it’s had a ribbon tied around it.

Some things that I’m more or less out of patience with are bigotry, right wing conservative conformists and supremacists, and monotheism. But I’m open to discussing most other things.

I’d be more inclined to ‘meet in the middle’ politically if ‘politics’ were about say how taxes should be spent, and not about who should have more or less human rights than who.

Depends on the viewpoint.

My brother is a conspiracy theorist, it’s absolutely impossible to talk to him about anything. No matter what evidence you produce, he’ll just ignore it.

The closest I got was when he mentioned the moon landings were faked and filmed on a sound stage. He pointed to the flag flapping “in the wind”.

I asked him why, if NASA had gone to all the trouble and expense of faking the moon landings, would they have installed a giant fan to make the flag flap…

I also won’t have anything to do with anyone who supports the likes of Nigel Farage or Tommy Robinson.

I will not listen to or hear out any conservative views. That ship has long sailed.

I won’t go out of my way to defend what I believe, but that doesn’t mean I have to hear your opposing views because I don’t care of what you think.

I am perfectly happy to discuss opposing viewpoints and potentially even be persuaded. Unless the opposing viewpoint can only be achieved with a complete lack of empathy and by not seeing other groups of people as people. Nothing either of us would say or do would change the other person’s opinion then. I can’t argue someone into believing that other people deserve basic human rights and dignity. They won’t convince me otherwise either.

10 and 1 simultaneously. I’ll sit down. I’ll talk politics with damn near nazis. But I’ll also understand they’re disgusting, their viewpoints are formed through pure idiocy. It can be simultaneously very informing and infuriating to get an understanding of how they come about their viewpoints. Same applies to much less extreme examples as well

I’ll say it’s a 6-9 depending on my mood.

Sure this may sound ridiculous but it’s basic knowledge that studying your opponents viewpoints is the best way to counter them and get new insight yourself.

I don’t think this is necessarily empathy. I’ve read Hitler, Ilyin and Dugin, understood their arguments and point of view. If anything it made me less empathetic to them, seeing their vile hatred spilled on paper like that; but I agree that it is useful in practice to understand people who hate your guts.

To me, empathy means not only understanding the individual’s viewpoint, but moreso understanding how they got to it. This is how I can still slightly emphasize with any awful individuals, from nazis to billionaires: I understand that their viewpoint was formed by their position in the capitalist hellscape we fine ourselves in, and by incessant capitalist propaganda. If I was born in their stead and lived through their experiences, I would likely share similar ideas. This makes me more hopeful in the possibility of reform even for the worst of the worst; if a person was convinced of something, they can be convinced that it is wrong too; noone is born a nazi, and so noone is beyond hope in my opinion.

As for my family, they can be incessantly racist and homophobic, not to mention all the various small things like climate change conspiracies etc. I politely disagree with them and try to nudge them towards more inclusivity and empathy for others; we’ve never had a screaming argument despite holding very different opinions about things so dear to my heart. But yeah at times, especially when I’m in a bad mood, I also just shut down political conversations with them.

10 - I can feel empathy for every human being. That doesn’t mean that I’ll accept their views, and if they are someone who would hurt others, I will certainly stop them - even with force. That’s empathy too…

Do you know what empathy is? How you practice it? How you train it?

If I’m physically safe, I think between 8 and 10 depending on my energy level. If I’m threatened or hurt in a fight, still up to 8 at least. We can love our enemies and still fight them with all the force necessary (but no more).

It depends on what those opposing viewpoints are. If they involve actively targeting and harming vulnerable people, I have no space at all for those viewpoints or the people that hold them.

For the other stuff, maybe a 7.

Really depends if the viewpoints involve the oppression of other beings than near zero if not maybe 6.5.

By that criteria, 10. Like, if a Nazi wanted to seriously talk with me, I’d be fine with that. Glad, even. The thing is, they don’t usually do a whole lot of thinking or analysing, or they would have stopped being a Nazi pretty quickly.

It’s usually more about psychoanalysis - trying to figure out how their irrationality works. I spend a shit ton of time trying to get inside the head of the people who maintain the world’s problems. So, still 10.