It seems the key point here is the intentional one: “attempt to reach some kind of mutual understanding.” I would agree with this strategy most of the time, except in cases when that is not the other group’s intention. When their intention is not in good faith, not to reach mutual understanding, but instead to use the dialogue as an opportunity to score points or win adherents or gain press attention then a different strategy would be required. I think this is the root of the frequent critique of advice like yours, “you want me to negotiate with Nazis?!” Underneath that is the implicit argument that they cannot or will not seek mutual understanding.
So then our choices are either to try to score points or win adherents or gain press attention, or to engage in such a way that they change their intentions. I’d argue this should remain an either/or proposition if we’re going to do either effectively and with integrity.
If our goal is to change the heart of the other person, the best source of that kind of conversation I’ve seen, in a different context, is the LA LGBT Leadership Lab’s persuasion model:
“The journal Science has published a landmark study… political scientists David Broockman and Josh Kalla have found that our team’s persuasion model… [creates] the same decrease in homophobia that took fourteen years of incremental change… over the course of a single short conversation with a LAB canvasser.”
https://leadership-lab.org/journal-science-reports-lab-breakthrough-in-prejudice-reduction/
