Saying that we should debate these people implies their position is debatable. It’s not. Wanting to commit genocide—and let’s be clear that’s what they want—is not a normal point of view that should be entertained. That’s the Overton Window moving dangerously rightward to the point where the dehumanization of and violence against minorities are acceptable views to have.

This broader normalization is in many ways more dangerous. Organized white nationalists are a very small part of the population, but the idea of immigrants and racial minorities as unpersons lies behind many of the problems with our current public policy, i.e. police violence against black youth and family separations at the border.

I’d be willing to accept the idea it’s good to take a softer approach with friends and family who hold racist views, i.e. people you might be able to actually reach, but white supremacists shouldn’t be reasoned with. They should be crushed and disrupted. They need to be inhibited in their ability to spread their ideas, recruit and organize in public. And it works.

Aside from the example I mentioned of Richard Spencer being deplatformed, there’s the more recent example of the Base, which I wrote about. They’re basically a loose network of people like the guy who carried out the Christchurch Massacre who want to do the same thing on a large scale. Within months of going online, they were infiltrated and several members were exposed. After being doxxed, one named Joshua Bates publicly announced he was leaving the movement. They were kicked from Twitter. They had to shut down their chat server. Their total lack of vetting and security was a huge blow to the project.

Imagine the alternative. Even if Davis’ approach were effective, trying to talk these people out of a position they were willing to kill and die for would take years, during which time their organization would grow and increase in likelihood that it could carry out organized attacks