[…]we get this hopelessly naïve version of centrism, of the idea that if we’re nicer to the other side there will be no other side, just one big happy family. This inanity is also applied to the questions of belief and fact and principle, with some muddled cocktail of moral relativism and therapists’ “everyone’s feelings are valid” applied to everything. But the truth is not some compromise halfway between the truth and the lie, the fact and the delusion, the scientists and the propagandists. And the ethical is not halfway between white supremacists and human rights activists, rapists and feminists, synagogue massacrists and Jews, xenophobes and immigrants, delusional transphobes and trans people. Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis?
1000% this.
I just had a long back-and-forth about exactly this in the thread about Trump being popular because he’s racist.
I think if there’s anything to add to this, it’s that a lot of the arguments being made simply boil down to, “but millions of people can’t really be bad, so there must be something you’re missing”.
Which is exactly why the Intercept’s piece was trying to lay out in detail the evidence that it was just in fact racism, but was dismissed due to their feelings that this leaves no room for reconciliation.