Debating a MAGA adherent can often feel like stepping into a funhouse mirror—a world where logic bends, facts dissolve, and emotional certainty overrides empirical reality.
Not sure if you're already aware, but the book "How Minds Change" by David McRaney touches a lot on this topic and various persuasion techniques that work (very rarely) to bring someone out of their cult/tribal thinking.
You're right that this is all about identity, social acceptance, and tribalism. Facts will never work. The best approach is just to listen and address at the "how" and "why" they arrived at their conclusions and acknowledge their emotional state without agreeing with it.
That requires more patience and tolerance than 99% of us possess.
I 100% agree, its going to take A LOT of patience. I was in a TikTok live stream with a panel of MAGA who wanted to understand why the left says they're in a cult. I went on and explained this wont be simple explanation and they were originally cool with it. I started off reading definitions to build foundational knowledge, even stating that if people know a definition I would skip it. I got to 3 definitions out of 5, and a woman crashes out as if me giving objective definitions hurt the core of her being. They dropped me from the live and said "were not children." I was flabbergasted.
Yeah, I'm no expert but I think expressing any evidence or definitions is likely to immediately make them defensive. You just have to start asking questions and listening. Essentially letting them express all their beliefs and just asking probing questions. There's a community on Youtube that do street interviews under the umbrella term "Street Epistemology" that showcases some of these techniques in action. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2EgJjQRsYE
Not sure if you're already aware, but the book "How Minds Change" by David McRaney touches a lot on this topic and various persuasion techniques that work (very rarely) to bring someone out of their cult/tribal thinking.
You're right that this is all about identity, social acceptance, and tribalism. Facts will never work. The best approach is just to listen and address at the "how" and "why" they arrived at their conclusions and acknowledge their emotional state without agreeing with it.
That requires more patience and tolerance than 99% of us possess.
Ill have to check out this book. Thank you.
I 100% agree, its going to take A LOT of patience. I was in a TikTok live stream with a panel of MAGA who wanted to understand why the left says they're in a cult. I went on and explained this wont be simple explanation and they were originally cool with it. I started off reading definitions to build foundational knowledge, even stating that if people know a definition I would skip it. I got to 3 definitions out of 5, and a woman crashes out as if me giving objective definitions hurt the core of her being. They dropped me from the live and said "were not children." I was flabbergasted.
Yeah, I'm no expert but I think expressing any evidence or definitions is likely to immediately make them defensive. You just have to start asking questions and listening. Essentially letting them express all their beliefs and just asking probing questions. There's a community on Youtube that do street interviews under the umbrella term "Street Epistemology" that showcases some of these techniques in action. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2EgJjQRsYE