Comment by ty6853 17 days ago
By interacting with the positive aspects of the person and ignoring or disengaging from the political opinions I don't like. If they want to kill jews or whatever, they have the right to that opinion, doesn't bother me so long as I'm not obliged to partake. I might engage the view but if neither of us are benefitting from the conversation there is no point in continuing down that particular path.
This extends to actions vs beliefs too.
F.ex. one of my most altruistic and charitable friends is a Trump supporter
She's run a Christmas time charity for 10 years, solely out of the goodness of her heart, to ensure that families in our community who are struggling get what they need for a happier holiday in tough times.
It's a non-trivial 6 months of work, between making prizes for donation-driving lotteries, attending events and promoting, and then finding the most cost-effective deals for the families.
So I choose to say "She's a better person than most I know, in some ways, and disagrees with me in others. Worth friendship."
Hmm, sounds about right. I still feel like being around people when they express such radical beliefs reflects poorly on me and hurts me in some unexplainable way.
When challenging such beliefs I find some are hyperbole or a side effect of group-think. Rarely are they genuine, but when they are it's the most worrying. And that's usually when I stop engaging that line of thought.
That sounds so bleak.
What’s the endgame to this approach? Seems to me, folks with genocidal thoughts and feelings would find more positive reinforcement amongst themselves and less negative reinforcement everywhere else. Not great for the “genocide is bad” theory.
The negative reinforcement is supposed to be when they actually attempt to unlawfully kill others, a 9mm bullet goes through their head. Until then, they have the right to their opinion.
It's hard to imagine isolating them from counter points is going to mitigate their position.
I think there are ways a friend can be toxic without threatening death. This friend may encourage you to isolate from your jewish friends, or explicitly make your jewish friends feel unwelcome by saying slurs while in group settings. This friend is explicitly making you in the position where you have to isolate your own friend groups from each other to "keep the peace", i.e. you are forced to do the labor, instead of them, to handle the harm they are causing.
Like we all know a guy who we can't keep around because he keeps saying unhinged stuff, or creeps on any women, or whatever it is he does that ruins it for everyone else.
So I think it's more nuanced than just refusing to cut off heinous viewpoints. It's also how this person injects this view in your existing friend ecosystem.
This only works in so far as their actions are illegal.
But the premise here is these people have these beliefs and are working to make them legal. The idea isn’t that these people want to kill Jews, it’s that they want to make killing Jews the right thing to do.
Then, it becomes your problem. Particularly so if you are Jewish, but even if you are not.
This of course extrapolates to less extreme examples.
There are opinions which should cause one to seriously consider ending their friendship. I would hope “wanting to kill Jews” is on pretty much everyone’s list.