been meaning to post this for a while, figure i might as well get to it now

A while back, there was a neo-nazi rally in my local municipality. A few days before, some people in my CS department (i’m a grad student) decided to organize sign-making for the counter-protest. They sent out an email to the department off-topic list, “come to room G307 on saturday, we’ll have sign-making materials and donuts, then we’ll caravan over to the rally.” Pretty innocuous, right?

Well, the thing about the nazi rally was that it was branded as a “free speech rally”. Of course, if you googled the organizers, you’d discover a bunch of people with names like John Europe and Based Violence and pinochetlover88 – that is, obvious neo-nazis.

So naturally a bunch of stemlords immediately jumped into the email thread and started defending free speech

I ignored it for a few days, but eventually came to a lull in my work and decided to give it a skim. Just a little one. And i wouldn’t engage, anyway. It’s never worth it with these people

The first email I read:

The focus in this thread has been entirely on wanting to shut down these events entirely because an unknown fraction of their participants hold some number of views that a lot of people consider immoral, which may or may not be expressed at the rally. I expect that I could find some abhorrent views held by the leaders of the counter-protest. Is that grounds to have a counter-counter protest?

“Argument gets counter-argument. Does not get bullet. Never ever ever.”

naturally i engaged:

I believe the same effect can usually just be accomplished by joining the original protest. And please, go ahead, join the rally that’s being transparently run by neo-nazis. Exercise your free speech! And be aware that other people will be there, using their free speech to criticize the views you are so carefully tiptoeing around actually advocating for.

I hit “send” and went back to my work, only preening a little at the zesty burn i’d inflicted. Not two minutes later, i got a reply:

Come say that to my face. You are launching a serious accusation against an academic in a public forum, based on no evidence. Do you have anything real to say, or are you trying to be a bully and stoop to the level of violence you claim to oppose?

holy shit. Somebody was mad

at this point i got a ping from one of my group chats

friend: lmao that guy in the email thread is angery

me: Hahaha incredible

me: should I even respond

me: what if he brings an academic injunction against me

me: or like, murders me in an alley

friend: you should ask him out for coffee so that you can meet in person and say it to his face

me: lmao

Yes, i lmaoed, but as i turned the idea over in my head, i ceased to lmao. It actually made sense. I could defuse the situation a little and make the guy look like a coward when he inevitably refused. So i replied to the email thread:

Sure, wanna get coffee? Let’s talk it out.

A minute later, his reply:

Let’s do it! Let’s meet in the department coffee shop at 3.

Well fuck. Okay. Guess i had a coffee date with this dude.

I went back to my work, but as the time for the coffee date loomed, i found myself unable to take my mind off of my opponent. Who was he? what did he believe? i couldn’t decide if he was just some libertarian freezepeach dipshit, or a genuine dissembling neonazi, radicalized on the frog-based side of the internet.

So i decided to do some digging. I googled the guy, and started reading through his personal website. The more i read, the more my eyebrows raised. This guy was like my evil twin.

For one thing, we had the same first name. We worked in the same field, on similar research areas. We were both vaguely misshapen white dudes. But where i wrote libre software, he ran startups. Where i was just a poor hardworking CS grad student, this guy had received a fucking Thiel scholarship. And where i was a socialist, this guy… Well, i still wasn’t quite sure.

I paced in my dorm room, staring at my phone, unable to make up my mind. Libertarian, or neo-nazi? libertarian, or neo-nazi?

Finally, i spotted the punchline in his bio:

I am a proud contributor to the LessWrong community blog.

Aha, a rationalist! that is, both.

Armed with this knowledge, i walked over to the department coffee shop. Eventually the dude showed up; slightly more uncanny-valley looking in real life. We sat down to chat; and after a few brief and stilted greetings, got down to talking politics.

Sadly, at this point my memory of the conversation is mostly a haze. I do remember that at one point he said: “When I was young, my father once told me that when people said they were anti-neoconservative, they were actually anti-Israel.” I believe this was an abortive attempt to explain the concept of deception… via zionism. iconic.

At another point he said something about not liking the federal government, and i waved the topic off and said, “yeah yeah, states’ rights,” not wanting to bother engaging.

Eventually, we finished our conversation, and with one final clammy handshake i left the coffee shop and headed back to my dorm, feeling vaguely bemused. I decided to chalk the conversation up as a win, since i hadn’t gotten murdered in an alley.

Luckily for this tale, my memory isn’t the only source on our verbal duel. Not 10 minutes later, i got another private email from the guy, containing a full transcript of what he thought we had talked about.

I’ve transcribed it below, in its entirety.

Hi brokenAmmonite,

Here are the notes I took after our meeting. Have a great weekend!

---

Met with brokenAmmonite, who wrote something online that could easily be read as accusing me of being a Neo-nazi. It was a very pleasant and informative conversation between two people who disagree, the kind I’d like to see more of in the world.

Things I learned:

• People who give that kind of reaction online can still privately agree that there is also prejudice from the far left
  • I got the impression that he does truly believe that free speech is good, and has at least some positive affect towards states rights.

Our value differences:

• • Sees this as a real threat / cause for alarm

Our worldview differences:

• • “I disagree with everything you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.”
• • “Dig into more about what they say and who they are”
  • “Defending an alt-right group is suspicious.”
  • States that he respects that some people don’t believe in hunting dog whistles.

Incredible.

In the end, nothing more came of it. We both emerged from our bipartisan dialogue perplexed, with our private opinions of the opposition (i suspect) utterly unchanged.

and that’s the story of how i learned that i have some positive affect towards states rights.