That is fortunate, and I’m glad that worked out, but see, your friend is open minded. They smelt out the bullshit. Now imagine if they weren’t like that. If they were more easily swayed? They could have easily hopped on the bandwagon and then you’d have an uphill battle at best.
Now imagine if instead of Shabibo, they saw a video from Norm or someone similar? My stance is, the more this guy is allowed to have a voice, the more his content gets promoted, the more exposure he gets. His content isn’t made to persuade critical thinkers like your friend. It’s made to mass produce consent from people that don’t. He’s a quick talking “gotcha” man. There can only be a net negative to having more exposure for content like his. The more shit they fling at the wall the higher the chance is some of it sticks.
Totally agreed. And I still think the best reason not to debate someone like Shapiro is that his whole style is fundamentally dishonest and unfair.
On the one hand, Shapiro is definitely more widely known than Finkelstein, because his grift is very general. Shapiro’s a well-funded, all-purpose, professional right wing hack. For people who have heard of him and maybe seen some of his content but have never heard of Norman Finkelstein or Ali Abunimah or Nur Masalha and so on, some kind of engagement with the latter is a very good thing.
On the other, a debate with Shapiro is a trap, because his style of debating means that so much of who ‘wins’ (who comes across most persuasively) will be determined by who has the rhetorical skills (and a moderator with the right skills) to answer Shapiro’s bluster much more than just who is telling the truth. And at the same time, as you’ve emphasized, Shapiro’s core audience is not a very productive choice of audience when it comes to persuasion. So there’s a question of how much of the audience Shapiro’s name could ‘bring in’ would even be open to really learning something new.
Personally, I don’t think a Shapiro-Finkelstein debate would be a disaster for the cause, though I’m not sure it would be of any value, either. That’s why, imo, when it comes to dealing with Shapiro, it’s much better to have standalone counter-messaging, whether that’s a direct debunking or mostly just elaborating an alternative point of view: in that format Shapiro can’t just talk over people and make a scene to drown out the substance of the opposing arguments.
That is fortunate, and I’m glad that worked out, but see, your friend is open minded. They smelt out the bullshit. Now imagine if they weren’t like that. If they were more easily swayed? They could have easily hopped on the bandwagon and then you’d have an uphill battle at best.
Now imagine if instead of Shabibo, they saw a video from Norm or someone similar? My stance is, the more this guy is allowed to have a voice, the more his content gets promoted, the more exposure he gets. His content isn’t made to persuade critical thinkers like your friend. It’s made to mass produce consent from people that don’t. He’s a quick talking “gotcha” man. There can only be a net negative to having more exposure for content like his. The more shit they fling at the wall the higher the chance is some of it sticks.
Totally agreed. And I still think the best reason not to debate someone like Shapiro is that his whole style is fundamentally dishonest and unfair.
On the one hand, Shapiro is definitely more widely known than Finkelstein, because his grift is very general. Shapiro’s a well-funded, all-purpose, professional right wing hack. For people who have heard of him and maybe seen some of his content but have never heard of Norman Finkelstein or Ali Abunimah or Nur Masalha and so on, some kind of engagement with the latter is a very good thing.
On the other, a debate with Shapiro is a trap, because his style of debating means that so much of who ‘wins’ (who comes across most persuasively) will be determined by who has the rhetorical skills (and a moderator with the right skills) to answer Shapiro’s bluster much more than just who is telling the truth. And at the same time, as you’ve emphasized, Shapiro’s core audience is not a very productive choice of audience when it comes to persuasion. So there’s a question of how much of the audience Shapiro’s name could ‘bring in’ would even be open to really learning something new.
Personally, I don’t think a Shapiro-Finkelstein debate would be a disaster for the cause, though I’m not sure it would be of any value, either. That’s why, imo, when it comes to dealing with Shapiro, it’s much better to have standalone counter-messaging, whether that’s a direct debunking or mostly just elaborating an alternative point of view: in that format Shapiro can’t just talk over people and make a scene to drown out the substance of the opposing arguments.