Never explain. Explaining is losing
When dealing with right wingers, challenge and attack
“This is what happens when you allow women to emasculate men! God hates you!”
“You don’t mind taking the White man’s dollar when he wants to kill babies!”— Forced birthers screaming at pro-choice crowd outside Supreme Court
Show of hands:
Who wants to try explaining SCOTUS super precedents and bodily autonomy to these people?
Who thinks it would work on people who brought their own PA system over to drown out your words?
Right wing communication is about establishing dominance, not sharing information.
In staged Fox News debates, school board meetings and just about everywhere else, liberals explain; Republicans, bully, interrupt and score points. The same thing happens whenever right wingers troll comments sections of news articles.
Right wing troll: makes absurd and repellent accusation
Liberal: Contradicts falsehood and provides detailed exposition of facts
Right wing troll: (Without skipping a beat) makes another absurd and repellent accusation (or repeats previous) and calls liberal a name.
(repeat)
Because the liberal in this exchange got their facts straight and “did not stoop to their level” we assume that they won the point. But they didn’t. The right wing troll wanted to “own the libs” — assert dominance over people he sees as unmanly inferiors, and he succeeded. The liberal played defense and lost.
“Abortion is essential … Fair and equitable treatment
… Oppression has no place in America.”— Sound bytes from pro-choice speeches outside SCOTUS
You may think the alternative is shouting at right wingers and calling them Fox News Zombies, but that not only looks bad, it doesn’t work. I’ve never met a progressive who could out-scream a right wing fanatic, or a right wing fanatic who thought they were brainwashed.
What does work? Two words:
“Please explain”
With the “please explain,” technique, You
Spot their most horrible beliefs
Use open-ended questions (can’t be answered with a yes, no or other one-word response) to demand a detailed justification of those beliefs.
Example: The screamers at the SCOTUS rally, and six of the black-robed ideologues inside, like the idea of forcing 12 year old girls who are pregnant after being raped to endure the additional trauma and danger of bearing their rapist’s offspring.
Ask them what makes they find so appealing about that
When they attack back, call names and otherwise deflect, don’t ever answer any of their new talking points or defend against new attacks.
Instead, acknowledge the deflection attempt and circle back to the original question:
“Before you tried to change the subject, you were about to tell us what appeals to you about forcing raped 12 year old girls to bear their rapist’s offspring.
Please explain. Go ahead. You have the floor”
Right wing fanatics aren’t used to having liberals speak to this way and it unnerves them. They want to go back to their safe place where they can condemn, accuse and never have to defend the ugliness of their beliefs. When you do this, you’re demanding more words from them, not fewer. When they discover you won’t follow their deflections, they get anxious.
Good.
We need to make the right wing fanatics among us as uncomfortable as possible, as often as possible. They have already demonstrated what they plan to do to us.