Shutting down conservative rhetoric lesson 3: “You just call everyone Nazis”
In 2018, there was a study that estimated that there were between 11-13 million alt right in the US (Hawley, 2018).
Conservatives I’ve interacted with on reddit love to read this study and try and challenge the methodology (and especially the definitions of alt right), despite the fact that numerous other polls done in 2017 all found similar results.
Currently the far-right are feeling emboldened by the political atmosphere, are reorganizing in numbers, and using traditional conservatives as human shields to hide behind. Screeching “the left just calls anyone who disagrees with them Nazis” makes their work so much easier for them, it’s literally an organizing technique they use to recruit more folks to their cause. Hide in conservative spaces, and then when the left points out the Nazis hiding there, screech “hear that, those crazy leftists called us all Nazis.”
Stop allowing actual Nazis to organize in the spaces you are occupying. They don't give a shit about free speech, they don't give a shit about you, and they sure as shit want to eliminate a lot of people you know, if not care deeply about.