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Comment by NateEag | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand how that relates to what I said.

Would you mind explaining further?

What do you think is a more effective way to deradicalize white nationalists as measured on a societal level: engaging them on the merits of their arguments and having a good-faith debate, or deplatforming them?

I missed your response days ago, but happened to see it just now scrolling through my comment history.

It seems obvious to me that deplatforming them will further radicalize them. It fits perfectly into their narrative as I understand it.

Engaging them as (deeply flawed, very wrong) humans and having a good-faith debate seems to have worked shockingly well for Daryl. I suspect it could for others, too (though Daryl is obviously a rare breed).

building personal relationships with individuals in order to deradicalize them one by one is not a viable strategy at the macro level. It's efficacy is irrelevant to me.

How is it not viable? If every person who went to a BLM protest also made friends with one police officer, don't you think that might be extremely effective?

Haha, obviously not?

Begging the question is not going to convince people you're right.

I'm not really begging the question, because I'm not trying to convince anyone that a general policy of individual empathetic outreach isn't effective at a macro scale. For one thing, it's self-evident, and I'm not really interested in "debating" anyone who would challenge that. For another thing, it's a tangent from the main point of the thread.

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