Was reading a university sub- and I saw the same two hypocrisy gotcha responses from chuds.
1 ) These protesters should go live in Gaza since they keep complaining. I don’t see the logic here? The protesters don’t like the place getting bombed so they should go to that place and experience the bombing themselves? If anything shouldn’t it be the opposite? That people who think current treatment of Gazans is justified should go experience Gaza for themselves to walk a mile in their shoes? Now that I think about it, maybe the logic behind the gotcha is that alternative left-wing types would not be accepted in a socially conservative muslim country? Even if that were true, still doesn’t mean kids from there should get bombed.
2 ) The protesters are against the walls and checkpoints encircling Gaza from, yet the protesters have barricaded their encampment with a plastic sheath so they can control who comes in and out. So are the chuds here saying they’re against all barricades including the Gaza one? Or are they saying they agree all barricades are bad? Or just hypocrisy in and of itself is bad? Denouncing the wall is fine, as long you stay consistent and also don’t use a plastic barricade yourself? How are these things even being equated in the first place? Oh you’re against the Berlin Wall yet your apartment complex has a fence behind the dumpsters. You’re a hypocrite which is the real crime here.
Anyway I know I’m preaching to the choir. How do you all deal with braindead smug gotchas? I guess it’s time to touch grass?
University sub are just filled with CS majors and nerds from that university. Best to stay clear away since you’re are going to interact with the worst of the worst.
If you want to do a funny, just get them to say horrid shit and then report them the dean or someone similar if you can tie their reddit account to their university identity, but that’s a sign you should just shitpost on hexbear instead.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew
The point isn’t to show any flaw in our logic, the point is to make us shut up and let the one group they hate destroy the other group they hate. Ideally for the chuds, Isn’trealis and Palestinians would simply wipe each other out. The point is to keep us playing defense so we look weak to outsiders as the chuds keep making ridiculous, baseless claims that make for good soundbites and quotes.
It’s all in The Alt-Right Playbook (and other places, but I learned it off YouTube from Innuendo Studios)
As for what to do about it…I’m not sure. The masses crave easily digestible answers to their concerns, and we simply don’t have those. Plus, to the outsiders, the chud position isn’t that materially different from the status quo. “You’re already doing the right thing” is a persuasion lay-up, and all of our answers require changes, some of them quite drastic. We need better ways to communicate our goals and our theory, or at the very least a find a way to keep peoples’ attention while we explain it to them using what comes across as politics/economics technobabble. Other users in this thread might be onto something with mimicking/mocking their behavior, though in my experience they tend to just tune out after a while.
Except for demanding they post hog. Always demand they post hog.
edit: expanded on the last point a bit.
I’m a cynical person but i still think you are wrong in your conclusion. Yes, masses crave easy and digestible answers, but there’s a genocide going on. There isn’t anything more easy and digestible than “genocide is wrong, fuck off zionists”. The easiest way to combat them is simply ti show everyone how dishonest and monstrous their politicians and zionist influencers are.
These aren’t gotchas. This is cope from the worst, most spoiled, most out of touch, most absolutely rancid individuals in a website that has no shortage of other things that fit that description. There is no explanation for this behavior that isn’t already covered by the general behavior of the most horrific racists and their usual mental gymnastics. No sense behind it, just pure circlejerk cope.
I’m slowly realizing that libs/chuds are mostly reinforcing their own beliefs when they talk. They’re trying to convince themselves. The accusations of hypocrisy are to discount any outside opinion as valid so they no longer consider it. They’re not coming from some rational, principled set of values. They already have a position that Palestinians either deserve to die or don’t matter, then everything else they say flows from that.
I don’t think there’s much you can do with these types of people. I’m also tired of them. Just tell them to go fuck themselves. The message is simple enough. “Genocide shouldn’t happen” is such a clean, simple message. If they’re still spinning themselves into knots arguing against “genocide shouldn’t happen” then tell them to go fuck themselves. There’s nothing left to say to them.
Chuds are dumb and also don’t care at all if what they’re saying is actually true, it’s bad faith gotchas all the way down. Rhetoric is a game to them, with zero consequences except getting to feel smug. They’ll happily adopt whatever position let’s them get an own in, even if it means ridiculous stuff like insisting everyone be “pro-barricade” or “anti-barricade” regardless of context. Don’t ever go in assuming you can reason with them, just post PPB and tell them to post hog.
My dad argues this way. You know what happens when I utterly destroy whatever stupid thing he just said? Absolutely nothing, no reaction, no effect, no acknowledgement. He just moves on to the next stupid point. It’s just throwing up chaff and hoping you lose interest in plunging through the bullshit. They know what they are saying is wrong and stupid and flawed. They might even know the counterarguments. They’ve almost certainly used it in an argument and had it dispatched before (my dad tends to reuse talking points I killed some weeks earlier). They don’t care.