I doubt that most of you are unfamiliar with the common debate tactics of those who oppose our ideals. It quickly becomes obvious when watching people like Molyneux or Destiny that they are more interested in 'winning' the debate so as to pander to their fanbases, rather than using it as a tool for two learned people to come together and attempt to arrive at a closer approximation of truth. You also may feel like something is wrong with their arguments, without being able to exactly identify what is making you uncomfortable. It is my goal here to elucidate the ways in which they argue, so that you may more easily reveal their ilk for being the rats that they are.
Overt Oratorical Strategies
This is the most noticeable strategy these kinds of people employ. They will interrupt their opponent constantly, never allowing them the chance to complete a train of thought and fully establish the point they are trying to make. After the interruption, they will try to take control of the narrative and misrepresent the argument the other person was attempting to build. Usually, this misrepresentation brands their opponent with some socially undesirable label like 'conspiracy theorist', 'racist', or one of the many other words that have been constructed just for the purpose of social shaming. The effect of this is twofold - it shifts the ethos of the argument such that they are seen as some virtuous intellectual, while their opponent is seen as a bumbling fool who has no rational basis for his belief.
Another example of this kind of strategy is their treatment of weak arguments as if they counter strong arguments completely. For example, if their opponent were to provide them with evidence that Hispanics commit more violent crime than Whites, they would respond with the argument that more Hispanics are of a younger demographic and that younger people are more likely to commit violent crime. While probably true, it is absurd to think that this accounts for the entire discrepancy between violent crime, especially when the demographic proportionality is taken into consideration (number of Whites compared to number of Hispanics).
Covert Semantic Tactics
A covert semantic tactic is the manipulation of words and phrases to make it seem as though a person has advanced their argument, but has really said nothing of substance. An example of this is the common argument of the form 'x is a social construct'. This is a trivial fact, a truism that they misrepresent to further their argument, usually by asserting that 'because x is a social construct, x has no meaning', but they have skipped the step of substantiating the argument 'social constructs have no meaning' as a true statement. They will often attempt to get around this by way of transvaluation of values, I.E. arbitrary redefinition of words, which they support with the idea 'words only have the meaning we ascribe to them, therefore they are meaningless' yet they continue to alternate between using the word in its original sense and the sense of whatever they have redefined it to mean to support the narrative they have constructed.
Frustratingly, they also tend to use sophisticated tools of debate, like the logical fallacy, in a slipshod fashion. They will brand something a fallacy even if it doesn't actually fit the criteria of one. They also take branding something as a fallacy as meaning they have one the argument, ironically engaging in what is known as the 'fallacy fallacy'. After this, they will halt further discussion on the topic at hand because they feel that they have 'won the battle'.
Faulty Epistemological Appeals
This is a subtler thing to diagnose, you have probably seen it criticized with some version of the 'sweaty I need a source for that' meme. They require a higher standard of evidence for opposing arguments than they do for the beliefs they hold, otherwise their opponent's argument is invalid. The notion of requiring a double blind peer reviewed study for even the most simple claims is absurd, but they require it because they are not capable of constructing arguments on their own, and because they somehow manage to reject the notion of the brain's extremely powerful pattern recognition capabilities. I wonder, if a man were stalking them with a knife, would they require such a study before coming to the conclusion that the man intends to do them harm?
I hope that this has shed some light on the issue and aids the community in their future endeavors.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
