Die toxische "debate me, bro"-Mentalität der neuen Faschos

Saturday, 20.9.2025, 10:16 > daMax

Noch so ein Ding aus Amerika und dann is' aber auch wieder gut für heute. Es geht um einen Nachruf von Ezra Klein auf den getöteten Rechtsaußen Charlie Kirk. The “Debate Me Bro” Grift: How Trolls Weaponized The Marketplace Of Ideas

Klein’s fundamental error reveals something much more dangerous: he’s mistaking performance for discourse, spectacle for persuasion. Kirk wasn’t showing up to campuses to “talk with anyone who would talk to him.” He was showing up armed with a string of logical fallacies, nonsense talking points, and gotcha questions specifically designed to enrage inexperienced college students so he could generate viral social media clips of himself “owning the libs.”

Klein is eulogizing not a practitioner of good-faith political discourse, but one of the most successful architects of “debate me bro” culture—a particularly toxic form of intellectual harassment that has become endemic to our political discourse. And by praising Kirk as practicing “politics the right way,” Klein is inadvertently endorsing a grift that actively undermines the kind of thoughtful engagement our democracy desperately needs.

(via kottke)

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