How do you become a rhetorical tactician? It's a learning process. One thing's for sure, though. If an argument cannot be had in good faith, is there even an argument to be had?
You'll find yourself, when talking to a rightist, feeling as if you're running in circles. You're arguing about nothing, or about something that is never explicitly named.
This is because much of the rhetorical strategy of the right as of the last 5 or so decades is to avoid saying their primary political goals explicitly, and then leading you to accept their idea for a reason auxiliary to their own reasons.
For example, you may find yourself arguing the topic of immigration. You will hear them talk about the native homeless, the collective bargaining rights in our country, and so on. You might think to yourself "wait, you never cared about any of that stuff before!", and you would be right. What to do now? Don't entertain the argument. Don't let someone who couldn't give a fuck less about collective bargaining use it as a way to get close to you.
If they want to talk about Islam, and tell you of the horrors that women and LGBT+ in Muslim majority countries face, don't entertain the argument.
If they want to talk about how the Democrats have had militaristic foreign policy too, stop the argument right there.
Unless you actually think that your opponent is a fervent supporter of collective bargaining, LGBT rights, or pacifism, do not let them use these tactics. You will find yourself their dupe if you allow them to lure you in with what many call this tactic of "concern trolling".
If there's anything the rightist loves more than feigning concern for your causes, it's feigning ignorance about the less flattering parts of their own. The entire conservative proposal for societal order in the post-modern era has been something of a strawman. Not a strawman in the traditional sense, but a fake version of their ideology which is easier to defend. If you find yourself bewildered by their movement, with so much inconsistency -- don't worry, you're onto something.
One tool in the toolbox of the right is the dog whistle. What is that you might ask? Well, it's loaded language that is only noticed by those of the speaker's in-group. It goes by most seeming innocuous while communicating a more explicit message to the real targets of that rhetoric. Dog whistles are effective because they communicate a message perfectly to those who they need to, but allow the speaker to feign ignorance to critique of that rhetoric. Neonazis and fascists of the modern day would turn off a lot of people, and pretty much expose themselves, if they described their enemies as simply "jews". They need something more palatable to the average listener, who unknowing the intentions of these orators, give them charity and believe they are speaking in good faith. So what do they say? "International banker, cultural marxist, etc" That way, the other nazis they are talking to will know that they have a friend in that speaker, all the while the speaker can pretend he had no idea that the term was a dogwhistle, and that they didn't mean those terms in the same way the fascists did.
Many of them will also make posts that seem simply to pose critique of existing arguments made by the left, wanting not to incriminate themselves as a nazi, but will leave out notes for others. They will put a black sun or triskelion in their profile, or put a 14, 88, 1488 or 1290 in their username. You may not know that you're reading a nazi post when that poster comments, but the other nazis do. That's a strategy much like a dogwhistle.
Lee Atwater, presidential adviser to Reagan and Bush 41 & fmr chair of the RNC, put this pretty well when he thought he was in good company, and didn't know he was being recorded.
"Y'all don't quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, "N*r, n*r, n*r". By 1968 you can't say "n*r"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this", is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N*r, n*r". So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the backbone. "
Another strategy that is similar to the dog-whistle is what we now call the "fig-leaf". When using a fig leaf, you don't have to use coded language to disguise the languge that may hurt you, you just need to add a qualifying statement that gives you a plausible deniability to the critiques you may get. For instance, if you want to say that Mexicans are rapists, but qualify that statement with a comment that some may be good people, you can deny that you are racist by saying "well certainly a racist wouldn't admit that some are good people." And that is plausible deniability for a supporter to say the same thing. Call for a total ban on all Muslims entering the United States? Just qualify the statement with "until we know what the hell is going on". Nobody has to actually believe the plausible deniability, you just need it so that the nuance which is supposed to be implied can be appealed to when you face critique. You know what you said, your audience knows what you mean, and the rest of us are then supposed to pretend like we don't know what you really mean.
One reason I am using rhetoric here like I do is that the internet rightist is very often not a good debate partner. I have debated many an alt-righter, and I'll tell you, if you don't understand their nature, they will spend the whole debate doing one of two things
1. Try to humiliate you with gotcha questions and pathetic pwnage attempts
2. Disingenuously lure you in with a mild and incomplete opinion of theirs to try to subvert your understanding of the world and make themselves seem like they're actually just centrist inquisitors.
When debating the alt-right, or any neoreactionary type, don't forget about the rules. A few starters would be
#1 Don't take anything they say at face value,
#2 don't try to be charitable to them,
#3 don't assume they're acting in good faith,
#4 Don't use their terms or argue by their standards, for example, many neonazis will call themselves race-realists, identitarians, etc. Don't let them obfuscate your perception of them. An identitarian, or a race-realist, entho-nationalist, or an alt-righter are for all intents and purposes nazis. Don't indulge them, call them what they are: nazis, bigots and fascists.
Take some advice from existentialist Jean-Paul Satre next time you encounter one:
“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.”
What the internet nazis want more than anything is to simply sow the seeds of doubt in the areas where you seem to meet them in the middle -- they want you to keep looking for the answers yourself and hopefully end up on one of their recruitment sites, which I will not name as I do not want to promote them.
Remember this next time you see one of these types, because now you know better.
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