Social Stink Debate Strategy

Description

Wokal Distance:

"One sees again and again the following tactic in play: Rather than winning the debate through rationality, reason, arguments, logic, and so fourth, the Social Justice activists accuse their opponents of being racist, sexist, homophobic, bigots, as a way to cover their opponents with social stink. This is the weaponizing of social stigma and accusations of bigotry as a way to win a debate by destroying the reputation, social standing, and moral authority of ones opponent and turn them into a social pariah. The Social Justice activist does not try to convince their opponents or the audience to change their minds; they simply spray their opponents with the social stink of racism, sexism, and bigotry and then call it a day. If the Social Justice activist is ever faced with the prospect of having to defend their position, they can just spray their opponents with social stink thereby making it so that no one wants to be associated with them.

...

The response:

The way to deal with this tactic is not to simply deny the accusation; you have to “name the dynamic.” What that means is that you have to make people aware of the tactic that is being used by explaining to them what the tactic is and how it works. Denying the accusation will not work because it just puts you on the defensive; you need to point out that the accusation and accompanying social stigma are being tactically deployed by Social Justice activists as a way to insulate their views from criticism. What you do is say something like “you are trying to protect your views from criticism by smearing your opponents and socially ostracizing them for criticizing you. You want to win by destroying the reputations of people who criticize you in order to avoid having to respond to the substance of their criticism.”

When people realize the accusations are being strategically deployed as part of a bad-faith rhetorical strategy it short circuits the social mechanisms through which social stigmas take root and through which reputations are harmed. By helping people to see the cynical nature of the accusations and the strategy in play, you take the power out of those accusations and force the Social Justice activist to have to try to actually defend the substance of their views."

(https://wokaldistance.substack.com/p/what-to-do-when-jon-stewart-accuses)