Here’s a pattern you’ve probably seen:
- Racists/nazi shows up and says racist/nazi things
- Get called out for it and/or banned
- They claim they are unfairly banned “for disagreeing.” They completely leave out the part about them being a racist nazi.
You know, that move. I’ve seen it more times than I can count and I bet you have too. They call disagreement with nazism “opinions you don’t like”, leaving out the nazism part. Any way of framing disagreements with them while subtracting out the actual content of what they say.
It’s so common that I think it deserves a word. I know there are generic descriptions: e.g. “being a troll”, but I think something specific to this particular behavior deserves its own word. That way it can just be identified and dismissed for what it is and not argued with.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear term, like say, gaslighting. We all know what that means. It’s a form of a strawman I guess. Hate speech =/= something I disagree with. This is a sly rhetorical trick they’ve come up with to normalize their opinions. They build up your response to their hate speech as “a difference of opinion” so they can blow it down as you being “intolerant to differing opinions”. Human rights aren’t up for debate.