No, I Will Not Debate You-Civility will never defeat fascism, no matter what The Economist thinks.

You're missing the point. Arendt, Sartre, Adorno, Orwell, even Trotsky, and others who experienced the rise of fascism in their own countries or fought it first-hand all essentially say the same thing: fascism is about the very opposite of reason. It swaps out the very bases of democratic debate and deliberation, equality and the obligation to justify one's beliefs and actions without making reference to anything outside of human experience, for lies formulated to disguise genocidal intent and an appeal to an occult, eternal, rigid, and exclusionary social order, usually on the grounds of some racial and/or national identity.

As an example, here's Sartre:

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.

Fascists have no interest in good faith debate or deliberation. They have chosen an escape from freedom that entails the destruction of the very conditions that make such things possible.

/r/Fuckthealtright Thread Parent Link - longreads.com