Ask Lemmygrad

It's not really productive to talk with reactionaries who are clearly just racist dipshits and arguing in bad faith. I try to always remember the Trotsky quote

The tactical, or if you will, “technical,” task was quite simple — grab every fascist or every isolated group of fascists by their collars, acquaint them with the pavement a few times, strip them of their fascist insignia and documents, and without carrying things any further, leave them with their fright and a few good black and blue marks.

But if you have to talk with them I've found the best way isn't to talk with them on equal terms, but rather, aggressively ask what they truly want. So they don't want Muslims or immigrants? Ask them what they're prepared to do about it. What's the solution then? You want to make Islam illegal? Send police to Muslim households to kick in the door? Ripping the hijabs off children?

Make reactionaries confront reality instead of retreating to abstract grievances. Much of their rhetorical power comes from their knowledge of where the socially acceptable line is and how to avoid going too far. Except they're always thinking about what they want, they know they can't outright say they want to exterminate immigrants or trans people or whatever. So they hide behind rhetoric until they've gained power.

I say this because the only rhetorical tactic I've ever observed that works to change a reactionary's mind or at least makes them shup up for a while is insult, embarrassment, and making them say heinous things they themselves may not even realize they believe in. Because of my earlier point, reactionaries know where the line of social acceptability is. Individually though maybe they haven't decided to cross that line yet, so I say drag them over. Like if I ever heard them say the thing about Muslim kids wearing a hijab the only answer to that is asking if they want police to rip a hijab off a child's head. Make a reactionary actually explain what they want.

Why do we always have to put ourselves and our cultures last by not serving pork in school canteens because of muslims

First of all, is eating pork really that much of a central pillar of your culture? Somehow i doubt it. I grew up in a culture with a lot of traditional pork dishes, much more so than the average Western European country, but i'm not going to throw a hissy fit just because i can't have it every day.

Secondly, what's wrong with offering options? We do it for vegetarians all the time and we don't (and shouldn't) pay attention to the crazies screaming that offering a vegetarian option is cultural genocide of meat eaters. And yes, it is very much possible to offer non-pork options in every canteen even if you are a culture that consumes a lot of pork: just look at China!

China is huge on pork consumption, more so than most Western countries are, and yet they still find ways to accommodate their very sizable Muslim population when it comes to food options. I am willing to bet you will be hard pressed to find a single Chinese canteen without either halal or vegetarian options.

or allowing underage girls to wear a hijab in school, to let their families oppress them?

The question already gives it away: "why do we allow them to wear a hijab?". Because forbidding it is literally more restricting and repressive than allowing it. When you have to speak of "allowing" that shows that you are preventing someone from doing something they want to do. You are literally the one doing the oppressing once you start banning it. You're not liberating, you're just satisfying your own islamophobia.

Also, your own culture pressures people to dress a certain way in public. When you forbid people from going out in public naked, are you also "oppressing" them? There are some cultures where they have lower standards of modesty than we in the West do. Imagine you lived in one of those cultures and they forbid you from wearing pants or a shirt, and they tell you they are liberating you from the "oppression" of your clothes. Would you be ok with that?

Why do we let people immigrants live off our government benefits when they haven't paid a single euro in taxes before they came here?

This question proceeds from the false premise that immigrants just live off benefits and don't work. This is overwhelmingly not true. Most immigrants do in fact work. And in a very large number of the minority of cases where it is true, such as for newly arrived refugees in some European countries, it is literally because they are forbidden by law in those countries from working! It is common in many countries to need a work visa to be allowed to work there.

Secondly, many people benefit from social programs more than they put into them. What about children who have never paid taxes? What about disabled people? That is the whole point of having a social insurance system: to make sure people don't fall through the cracks and end up homeless and starving. Not just because that is the humanitarian thing to do but also because desperate and destitute people are more likely to resort to crime! By taking care of people you make the entire society better.

And if you don't like people being unemployed - and whether or not they are immigrants doesn't even matter, i'm just speaking generally now - here's an idea: why don't we have a national jobs program that guarantees a job to everyone who wants one?

Is this person in some sort of nudist ham cult?

You should ask them "What culture requires eating pork and undressing underage girls?

American here, I don’t engage with people like that online - but IRL I take a few strategies depending on my relationship to the person. I grew up in the south and later did public advocacy for substance abuse harm reduction, so I’ve been in a similar position tons of times and these work best for me.

• validate the valid and redirect it. Repeat their statement back to them so they feel heard and say “Sounds like you’re worried about (performative care) I am too, but I think that…” and push back/redirect. If it’s minors wearing hijabs, bring up children’s issues that are more important like hunger and poverty. If it’s govt benefits, redirect to corporate tax evasion and artificial scarcity. Respond to their attempts to bring it back to prejudice with “hmmm i think XYZ is a bigger issue, how do we solve that?” Keep redirecting to root/important issues. I use this with family and coworkers to keep peace without acquiescing and hopefully nudge them in a better direction.
• “do you want to learn or fight?” Basically just ask them if they want to have an open dialogue or be mad. Usually people just want to be mad and they’ll respond with “well i just think that-“ cut them off “why are we talking about this?” Both of you can avoid the conversation if you want to, but sometimes it leads to a better faith conversation.
• Make them feel weird/impolite for bringing it up. “Ummm anyway… (continue with previous conversation)” “come on, I was having a good day, don’t ruin it” sometimes I’ll literally just say “oof” or “cringe” out loud. Focus on how they’re being socially inappropriate, because they are! -

With all of these: I do NOT engage with their illogical arguments, debate is pointless, they don’t care about logic and it only makes them feel like their argument is worth discussing. Redirect or shut it down. (Edit: formatting)

In my experience there is no response that will land. People that say these kind of things just need someone to look down on, typically a racialized group they have been told to feel slighted by.

"Why do we always have to put ourselves and our cultures last by not serving pork in school canteens because of muslims or allowing underage girls to wear a hijab in school, to let their families oppress them?

Idk, why don't I put Caroline reaper in the cafeteria stew we serve, Janice? Why can't I physically yank that guy's hat over there?

Why do we let people immigrants live off our government benefits when they haven't paid a single euro in taxes before they came here?"

Let them having a stroke or heart attack out of the imagination of that. Not my fault they believe that.

There's two approaches, you can try to slowly break down to them why those things are fallacies, or you can skip to the point and say that they're being manipulated by the rich to hate people who do no material harm to them, when we should be unified against the ruling class who create the scarcity they're reacting to in the first place.

Since the former is hard and the latter is easy, I'll just contribute some ideas for the former here:

1. You're not putting your culture last by skipping pork in the cafeteria. I don't know what country you're in, but generally speaking, meat consumption in modern society is incredibly high compared to any point in history. There is no culture on earth older than 100 years that valued eating pork every day for lunch except for very wealthy people. The amount of labor, land, and animal exploitation necessary to make an average person's diet consist of so much meat consumption just wasn't really a possibility until the 20th century in specific parts of the global north. On an individual health level, you could honestly benefit from taking the opportunity to change your diet too.
2. Letting girls wear religious vestments doesn't allow their families to abuse them any more or less. For starters, Westerners generally have an erroneous view that no Muslim woman wants to wear any kind of Hijab. That's simply false; they aren't just religious attire, they're also fashionable items of clothing that are just as much of a means of self expression as a dress or piece of jewellery. But even in the case of girls who don't consent to wearing their hijabs and are forced to do it by their families, why should one expect that the family (hell even the girl herself) would suddenly be fine with the state stepping in to force a different kind of dress code? You're going to cause more friction this way.
3. There also is a phenomenon where Westerners understand immigration, and benefits for immigrants backwards. Especially in countries with falling birth rates, immigration helps bring in more workers who can strengthen an economy^[Note that this is a liberal argument; it fundamentally relies on the assumption that the "economy" is something that a) exists neutrally for all its participants i.e. it can improve for all people simultaneously, regardless of their relation to the means of production b) stands to actually employ labor and use an expansion of labor to benefit all members of society. But the flaws in the argument actually work in favor of a full, socialist answer: these assumptions which aren't true in the present capitalist society, which seeks to disposses, racialize, and exploit immigrants as a reserve army of labor can be made true by taking the power to keep immigrant workers down out the hands of capitalists; the issues can also be remedied with social democratic programs that give benefits to immigrants because it gives them a better position to bargain from, instead of having absolutely nothing and thus bringing wages down for everyone. The TLDR of this is that the native citizens who are workers should support giving immigrants benefits, because immigrants who don't get any benefits will serve as the reserve army of labor and make it harder for all workers to get higher wages.], making it more productive, and in many cases bringing in talented people that will be productive and make life better for subsequent generations. Too often liberals paint immigration as something that should be virtuously accepted, like it's a self-sacrifice to take in more workers. If anything, this is backwards; the self-interested thing for capitalists to do is to take in more immigrants and exploit them more, while for workers it benefits us all if immigrants are entitled to living wages, security, and the same rights as everyone else. Ideally, these conditions would be available in all the world, but that's not the reality of imperialism.
4. Follow-up from the last one (and this is a useful thing to understand when talking with reactionaries and liberals regardless of the topic), but also taxes don't work that way. The government spending money on benefits for immigrants means more money is being created, which goes into the industries providing the benefits e.g. healthcare, agriculture, etc. This economic activity is just generally good and necessary for a capitalist economy. Without giving people benefits, capitalist economies spiral into deflation because capitalists find ways to produce more stuff while paying workers less to produce it, which means workers can't buy as much stuff, but capitalists are in deeper debt (having invested more to produce stuff with less labor input) and end up crashing the market. If you're talking with someone conservative who reads a little (rare but possible), the standard counterargument to this Keynesian/MMT thesis is that government driven economic growth in capitalism also isn't a sustainable model because, when it was implemented in many countries following the Great Depression, it eventually led to stagflation in the 1960s which only recovered in the neoliberal era. I think the simple counter-counterargument here is that neoliberalism only delayed a problem that capitalism inevitably will be consumed by, no matter what brand, and that it's extremely contradictory for workers to support neoliberalism as a means of extending capitalism's lifespan. These contradictions can only be resolved with socialism.

I started writing a couple different approaches to this, but they didn't seem quite right. I'm going to try again and see if 3rd time is the charm.

An important thing to remember is that reactionary "questions" often carry with them assumptions or claims that aren't necessarily true. It's framed like a question, but structured like a statement.

And you aren't owed them a serious response, in part for that reason.

Let's go through these to demonstrate what I mean:

Why do we always have to put ourselves and our cultures last by not serving pork in school canteens because of muslims

The implicit claim: "We [already doing a lot of bullshit with the assumed 'we'] always [assumes this is something that is constantly happening and never goes another way] have to [implies the 'we' is disempowered and has no say] put ourselves and our cultures [doesn't even get into what those cultures are but judging by what follows, the implication is 'white'] last [so claiming that not only are people accommodating the priorities of another group, but that this puts their own priorities dead last] by not serving pork in school canteens because of muslims [claiming not only that pork is not served in school canteens, which the question provides no evidence for, but also that it's "because of Muslims" and it assumes that pork is some kind of pivotal culture thing that is being pushed aside]."

Phew, that's a lot of horseshit in one small sentence. And it's not a real question. It's a form of rhetoric that is meant to evoke a response. The implication is that something is being taken from you and the expected response is, "I have to take it back."

Oh but it goes on:

or allowing underage girls to wear a hijab in school, to let their families oppress them

Look at how fast the rhetoric has shifted. Before it was implying that the "we" is a disempowered group who "has to" do stuff. Now it implies that the "we" is actually the one in power, who is making the decisions, "allowing" the dress codes of girls to be determined by the girls' families instead of by the "we". So already we can see that hint of white supremacy doing its thing of pretending to not have power, even as it exercises it, and vilifying the non-white cultures.

Why do we let people immigrants live off our government benefits when they haven’t paid a single euro in taxes before they came here

The implicit claim: "We [here we go again] let people immigrants [once again implying the 'questioner' is actually among the group that is in charge, after all] live off our government benefits [another unproven claim that in this case is likely absolute horseshit of exaggeration and distortion] when they haven’t paid a single euro in taxes before they came here [this one straight up doesn't make sense - how and why would you pay taxes before you come to a place? last I checked, taxes are based on a government taking a portion of what you make to go to funding. if you make nothing, a portion of 0 is 0].

A further point is that they are using the word immigrants, but I have to wonder if they are even actually referring to people who are all immigrants by choice or if some of them are refugees. And refugee is an even more vulnerable position to be in than somebody who really wanted to be, and planned to be, an immigrant.

So I mean, if you have to, you can look at them like the "Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about" meme.

Why do we always have to put ourselves and our cultures last by not serving pork in school canteens because of muslims?

i don't know what kind of weird country are you, but i'd say in response:

-why do we let israel make a genocide just because jewish people were victims of another genocide in the past?

-why we should force everyone to pray in the schools like local religious demand?

why we always allow underage girls to wear a hijab in school?

would you prefer miniskirts on them, you perv?

Why do we let people immigrants live off our government benefits

what benefits?

and also

they haven’t paid a single euro in taxes

most of you support not paying taxes for people who profits the most, even when you're not one of them...

On Dialectics, or How to Defeat Enemies: https://redsails.org/on-dialectics/

Find the kernel of truth in the reaction to synthesise the response. Please let me know if you would like me to expand on this.

Persuasion? That one is more tricky: https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

Do these people have a problem with Holiness, Pentscostle, Four Square, and some Catholic ladies wearing head covering?

beautifullifebypaula.com/cute-christian-head-coverings

Why even engage? Put them on a list and move on.

The idea that people have their worldview changed by rhetoric and debate is a myth becoming less and less credible by the day.

So underage girls covering their bodies from lustful men is bad to European diaspora? No wonder why the British diaspora and European empires are enslaving Indigenous children in Residential fake school slave camps since 1850s and secretly continuing the child slavery after 1997. That could also explain why the European diaspora communities choose to elect disciple of the anti-christ to be their leaders and censor the widespread leaks of violence and rape in the fake schools. It can also explain why gratification of sexual desire in Western media suddenly increase among younger generation of European diaspora; the younger generation lack the abducted Indigenous child slaves to satisfy their lust, so they need to express it in other forms. Do the racist Western conservatives really believe that pornography, sexual assault, and rape "free" the rape victim from oppression?

It is ironic that the European diaspora complained that the Muslim immigrants only paid tax after they gain the government benefits of their new country when the European immigrants engage in actual free riding. The European immigrants never paid tax to countries that their colonized people founded in North America, Australia, and Pacific Ocean islands. In fact, the European immigrants get free humanitarian aids fro Taino tribe which allow Christopher Colombus to spread his discovery of America to European (although the native Americans discover it first and there are suspicion that some Europeans are secretly trading with Native Americans in North America before Christopher Colombus), free benefits from the gift giving economy in North America, sharing of free land with every nations which include European immigrants in North America, and democracy from the Six Civilized tribes.

The white supremacists did complain that Native Americans should not gain the fruit of the Native American's labor because they did not realize that they are plagarizing from Native Americans all this time, so I am not surprised that they think that the work by Arabian immigrants are the work by white people. In the first place, the White supremacists did not confess that they need to import large numbers of immigrants to make up for the depleted child slaves in fake schools, free stolen inheritance from the fake cultural assimilation of Indigenous people, and free ransom money from abducted children in the fake cultural assimilation projects that funds all the free government service that European immigrants took for granted.

“Why do we always have to put ourselves and our cultures last by not serving pork in school canteens because of muslims

Last i checked "our" culture did not consist of eating pork. Do you, per chance, also have a problem with vegetarians?

allowing underage girls to wear a hijab in school

Why should this be a problem? Are you for mandatory school uniforms and dress codes? It does not affect anyone by themselves, so why do you care?

to let their families oppress them?

Your evidence for this is what exactly?

Why do we let people immigrants live off our government benefits when they haven’t paid a single euro in taxes before they came here?

Universal human rights. Do you have a problem with human rights?

I think it would be pretty interesting to hear their reasons. Not because you'll get to hear something profound, but because get something to work with instead of vague one liners.