Notes on Platforms and Debate

Mykola Bilokonsky
Sep 4, 2018 · 4 min read
“sdfghp[;\]” by Ravi Roshan on Unsplash

Seeing a bunch of folks lamenting the way the New Yorker initially invited a nazi to keynote their big event, but then disinvited him after public outcry. The thrust of the argument is “we shouldn’t ostracize people with ideas we don’t like, we should debate them.”

I’d like to take a minute today to step through why this is such a bad argument. I used to believe in this line of reasoning too, by the way — so I’m just going to explain why I changed my mind, and hope that you understand where I’m coming from. Because this isn’t just about the New Yorker — this is generally about how we deal with nazis/nationalists/white supremacists in our social sphere.

I have a variety of interrelated points here, and I’m just going to list them, and maybe we can build a synthesis in the responses? Anyway, here goes.


1) Any time you debate someone you’re acknowledging that their position is worthy of debate. This is non-trivial — would you spend time and resources debating a flat-earther? A child molester? Someone whose position was “I can and will murder your family in front of you”? Someone insisting that Santa Claus and professional wrestling are real?

Maybe your answer to all of these is yes — but in that case, I’d like to ask you to stop and think about what a position would look like for you to not even be willing to debate it. I promise you’ll find something.

2) Evaluating an idea on its merits must provide the option to dismiss it, on its merits. So often, these people are presented with a platform in the interest of “diversity of ideas” — the idea is that as good intellectuals we should want to challenge our perspectives with the perspectives of other people, especially the ones we disagree with. Good ideas, after all, will always win, right?

But like… I can’t speak for you, but personally I’ve already engaged with these ideas. I evaluated them on their merits and found them wanting. I think they’re bad ideas, I think they’re presented using disingenuous arguments, and I think it’s the height of condescension for some editor somewhere to decide that I need to live in a hellish groundhog’s day world where every day I get presented with the same banal idiocy I worked through yesterday.

3) The people you’re inviting are not acting in good faith. How do I know that? Show me the white nationalist press breathlessly asking its readers to, once again, please consider why Black Lives Matter, every day ad nauseam. You can’t. Why not? Because they don’t have any interest in a debate, they don’t have any interest in actually evaluating ideas by merit, and they sure as hell don’t have any interest in actually considering dissenting opinions.

So why do they keep trying to have debates? Because…

4) By inviting these people you are facilitating their recruitment efforts. That’s it. It’s 100% pure marketing. By offering them a platform for debate, all you’re actually doing is offering them the slice of your audience that their machinations will work on.

Nobody is going to learn anything new, nobody is going to grow as a person, nobody is going to change their mind based on well-reasoned good arguments — the only possible outcome of inviting someone like Steve Bannon to speak is that some portion of the audience will be persuaded by his well-honed sophistry.

5) These people take opportunities away from under-represented people with actually interesting, good ideas. Finally, if you happen to be the sort of person who has a huge platform to offer and you want to invite someone to present interesting, non-standard views that are open to debate in the ‘marketplace of ideas’ (eyeball) then you know who’s maybe a better person to invite than the fascist manipulating you into doing free marketing and outreach for them?

Literally anyone. Seriously. Invite a sex worker to talk about SESTA/FOSTA. Invite a disabled veteran to talk about the VA. Invite a neurodivergent person to extend the discourse around differing neurotypes. Invite an antifa activist to tell you this stuff, so that people like me don’t have to constantly re-explain these things. Invite a person of color literally any person of color!

Any one of these potential alternative speakers would introduce your thoughtful, critical audience to a whole world of perspectives and ideas that they’d never considered.


All of this is to say that “DEBATE ME” is the bleating, pointless whine that it sounds like. We don’t owe them a debate — and we sure as fuck don’t owe them years of the same debate. They are there to take up time, to prevent other worthwhile ideas from being discussed, and to recruit folks to their agenda. That’s it.

Please don’t give a platform to bigots.

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