@rvawonk Beyond Twitter or a given platform's responsibility and role in combating extremist ideas, what can rank-and-file people like us do to effectively counter it other than rage tweeting against it?

I'm assuming rage tweeting is not the answer?

@trentbaur @rvawonk You can also help with in-person situations by staying aware and pushing back right away on bigoted comments and "jokes."

I like the low-confrontation friendly wince-and-laugh "ooo, I think that came out wrong; did you want to rephrase that?" and the Socratic "I don't get it; why is that funny?"

Both help shift the Overton window in the right direction in public (workspaces, friend groups, etc), and you can make them more confrontational as needed

@OrganizedTRex @trentbaur @rvawonk

When I was a young child, my uncle made a racist joke that I, being a child, truly DID NOT GET. So I asked the adults WHY the "joke" was funny. There was some real uncomfortable silence, then some real uncomfortable "explaining"

I don't remember my uncle telling racist jokes after that, but maybe he just avoided telling them in front of me.

Several of my uncles were KKK, one overt, several covert.

@ZhiZhu @OrganizedTRex @rvawonk I don't want to chase these people back into the shadows, I want them to understand that their views are bankrupt and fundamentally flawed.

But shame is never going to accomplish that.

@fivetonsflax @rvawonk @OrganizedTRex @ZhiZhu It's not the mental state of bigoted people. It's trying to head off the overthrow of democracy by the increasing numbers of bigoted people. We're not going to shun our way out of this.

Do you not understand what is going on? Hand waving it as "sympathizing with racists" is myopic and short sighted.

@trentbaur @ZhiZhu @rvawonk @OrganizedTRex I didn’t say anything about sympathizing.

You’re 180° wrong about the dynamics of this stuff. Pushing the hard core bigots back into the shadows is exactly how we win. And for people in the mushy middle, what’s important isn’t what they believe, but which of their multiple identities is most salient at any given time.

We must make it safer to stand up and say, I am a proud worker! and less safe to stand up and say, I am a proud white man!

@trentbaur @fivetonsflax That's why I brought up Derek Black. He said that the shunning and resulting isolation are what made him open to learning from his Jewish classmates.

It's not "shun and done" (LOL). We make sure bigoted behavior is widely recognized as abhorrent (this is the "moving the Overton Window back toward sanity" part) because our first priority is making society safe and welcoming for the targets of bigotry.

*Then* we educate friends/family,
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