"We were concerned about giving him a platform. We didn’t anticipate he’d bring the gallows & rope & finish the job"

[Zaune]

The Guardian, via this tweet.

On the last day of the probationary period of my first “job” in journalism, I had a problem. It was an international current affairs magazine programme, and I was taken on as an intern because I spoke foreign languages. In that capacity I had been asked to call the far-right Front National (FN) in France and invite then leader Jean-Marie Le Pen on the show. I wouldn’t do it.

I had two main reasons. The first was journalistic. At the time, the FN had about 12% of the vote and no seats in the legislature. We had the whole world to choose from. Why bother with these?

The second was moral. I felt strongly that we should not give these people airtime to peddle their divisive lies. They were not a group I simply had a political disagreement with. Their politics of discrimination and scapegoating were antithetical to democratic norms. The media, I felt, should not smooth their path to respectability by giving them a platform and treating them like everyone else. The prospect of creating a spectacle, which in turn attracts viewers and clicks, should not override an ethical responsibility to avoid spreading hate speech and offensive propaganda.

(When I shared these objections with my boss, I think he was irritated but also mildly amused. The stakes were low for both of us. It was a poorly paid position I’d been in for just a week; it turned out he wasn’t wedded to the idea in the first place.)

In July this year, I interviewed the American white supremacist Richard Spencer, for a documentary on the roots of white anxiety in America. In the course of our exchange he claims that Africans contributed nothing to civilisation (they started it), that Africans benefited from white supremacy (they didn’t) and that, since I’m black I cannot be British (I am). A clip of that interview that has now gone viral.

The most common response to that video has been a variation on the theme of physical retribution (“I can’t believe you didn’t punch him”; “I’d have punched him”; “Someone should punch him”). That’s not my style. But beyond that, many have raised the issue that I raised all those years ago – “Why give him a platform?” “Who stands to gain from this?” These are reasonable questions. Indeed I asked it myself, on camera, before I interviewed him, saying: “I’m quite conflicted about interviewing Richard Spencer. Ordinarily, giving someone like that oxygen is something I think journalists shouldn’t do.”

So why did I? Well, the primary reason was journalistic. The documentary seeks to unearth the roots of white anxiety in America and how that is affecting the nation’s politics. Given US president Donald Trump’s record of race-baiting it seemed like racism should be in the mix. There were some things we did take off the schedule – like an interview with the Ku Klux Klan – because we felt they did not represent anything significant. But Spencer seemed to have a different currency. He coined the term “alt-right” – a synonym for the extreme right. Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist at the time of the interview, used to run Breitbart News (and since his resignation from the post does again), which he boasted was a platform for the alt-right.

Unlike the FN in France 25 years ago, who were still quite small, it felt as though these far-right ideas had travelled quite rapidly from the margins to the mainstream, and were infecting the US body politic at the highest level. If these people were, as they claimed, providing the intellectual underpinning for the Trump administration, then it seemed to me it is more dangerous to ignore them than engage and hopefully expose them.

The fact that three weeks after the interview neo-Nazis and their fellow travellers, including Spencer, descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, leaving one dead and several injured as many chanted antisemitic and racist slogans, only confirmed the point.

Having established that we would interview him, the next question was: how. For the risk remains that in giving him time we legitimise him as acceptable mainstream actor and dignify his views as being both reasonable and credible.

Throughout this trip, and throughout my career, I have met many people with views I’ve found objectionable. My general strategy is to let people speak for themselves and faithfully relate what they say – challenging only factual inaccuracies – in the hope that I can draw out why they think what they think. To be as empathic as I can, in the hope that I can work out where they are coming from.

But it was my view, shared by the team, that this was different. Spencer’s supremacist views are well-known. So while we would put Spencer on camera, the aim would be to challenge his views not indulge them. The aim was to be civil but firm. My first question – “You want to create a nation of dispossessed white people. Is that right?” – was hardly a curveball.

What did we expect? From what we had seen before, he would appear charming and reasonable while giving his egregious and offensive views an intellectual gloss. He would find it in his own interests to be believable and engaging, and my task would be to get the mask to slip.

What we did not expect was that he would be ignorant, historically illiterate, incoherent and personally insulting. The reason I called time on the interview was because Spencer was spent – beyond baiting me, he had nothing to offer, and frankly, I had no desire to hang around a white supremacist conference a second longer than I had to.

I’ve become accustomed to 21st-century racism being far more sophisticated, and we were concerned about giving him a platform. We didn’t anticipate that he’d bring the gallows and the rope and finish the job himself in such ostentatious fashion. By the end of the interview I don’t think anybody is in any doubt about what his views are. The risk resides in whether, having seen the interview, people are more likely to identify with him and his views or less. On balance, given his performance and the response, we think it was a risk worth taking.

Thought for the day: Denying people like Richard Spencer a platform means denying them an opportunity to make complete fools of themselves in front of the whole Internet.

[mr friendly guy]

The problem with that argument is, that stupid people buy into stupid shit. There is no way to know if giving these guys a platform doesn't galvanise undecided idiots as opposed to make undecided people see how stupid they are. And lets face it, if you're undecided about Nazis at this point, there is already something wrong with you. Thus I can understand that it might be easier to do nothing rather than try and do something and run the risk of making it worse.

[Zaune]

If you're undecided about the original Nazis, yeah. If you're undecided about the Alt-Right and the "race realists" and other movements who take the trouble to wrap their views in weasel words and dodgy rationalisation to affect a veneer of respectability... Well, you're still a gullible idiot, but you're probably not a malicious gullible idiot.

[Flagg]

If you're undecided about the original Nazis, yeah. If you're undecided about the Alt-Right and the "race realists" and other movements who take the trouble to wrap their views in weasel words and dodgy rationalisation to affect a veneer of respectability... Well, you're still a gullible idiot, but you're probably not a malicious gullible idiot.

Who cares? They share the exact same ideology. And malicious or not, a racist shit is a racist shit and they do just as much damage. Giving them a place to air their garbage makes you an accessory. This bullshit is just self-justification.

[K. A. Pital]

There wasn't anything sophisticated about "alt-right" arguments when they were first aired, and there isn't now.

There is no surprise that the intellectual level of these arguments was extremely low, practically zero. After all, the rise of the "alt-right" started this way - dumb racist claims.

There is no point in giving these claims a larger platform. The rise of the neo-nazis is challenging enough already - they've got their venues with their drones consuming Nazi shit every single day. They already have own information platforms where they should be technically making fools of themselves every day, but these platforms keep working and drawing people to their cause.

If they get one less chance to make fools of themselves, that is not going to change much.

[mr friendly guy]

We could use an analogy with some of the pseudoscientific claims. Lets use anti vaxers. I am going out on a limb and going to say most of them are not malicious, and they want what's best for their kids. However they are idiots. And there are people who idiotically believe them and become anti vaxers who also want what's best for their kids.

Giving them a platform (on something other than a site designed to mock them) can cause fence sitters who are stupid to take their side. It can also cause fence sitters to go against them, but like I say, if you couldn't evaluate evidence very well in the first place (ie are still a fence sitter) you are most probably vulnerable to their bullshit. Even if the fence sitter isn't malicious, they are still causing harm when they swallow the anti vaxer bullshit hook, line and sinker.

That's why I am somewhat apprehensive of arguing each and every time we give some of these crazies air time we automatically let them make fools of themselves AND weakens their cause. Empirical evidence suggests that sometimes they make fools of themselves AND strengthens the cause.

Edit - now someone might say, well is there any evidence that denying them air time might weaken them. I would argue yeah. Repressive governments on the other end of the scale can do this. They don't need to stop people thinking something, they just need to stop them organising in large numbers to be a threat to the government. Denying air time limits one's ability to organise large numbers, simply by the fact that less people are aware of such organisations (speaking generally here, not just in reference to Neo Nazis).

[Zaune]

Edit - now someone might say, well is there any evidence that denying them air time might weaken them. I would argue yeah. Repressive governments on the other end of the scale can do this. They don't need to stop people thinking something, they just need to stop them organising in large numbers to be a threat to the government. Denying air time limits one's ability to organise large numbers, simply by the fact that less people are aware of such organisations (speaking generally here, not just in reference to Neo Nazis).

Look, I know very few people on this forum are more openly in favour of matching the neo-fascist movement dirty trick for dirty trick than I am, but I don't think that saying "no-platforming works really well when it's totalitarian governments doing it to pro-democracy groups" is a very good rhetorical tactic.

[mr friendly guy]

Edit - now someone might say, well is there any evidence that denying them air time might weaken them. I would argue yeah. Repressive governments on the other end of the scale can do this. They don't need to stop people thinking something, they just need to stop them organising in large numbers to be a threat to the government. Denying air time limits one's ability to organise large numbers, simply by the fact that less people are aware of such organisations (speaking generally here, not just in reference to Neo Nazis).

Look, I know very few people on this forum are more openly in favour of matching the neo-fascist movement dirty trick for dirty trick than I am, but I don't think that saying "no-platforming works really well when it's totalitarian governments doing it to pro-democracy groups" is a very good rhetorical tactic.

Firstly, not all ideologies suppressed by authoritarian governments are pro democracy groups, so lets get that idea out the way.

Secondly, I really hate how these debates have very little empirical evidence, ie not even examples, but just in theory. Like in theory these guys make fools of themselves and then helps the idea die. Clearly dumb ideas don't always die when exposed, or else Jihadism in Western countries would have died a long time ago. Now every time some idea is starved of oxygen doesn't mean it weakens to the stage where its not a problem, but there are clearly times where it weakens where its less of a problem. We don't even need to go as far as authoritarian governments, for example just mainstream media not giving them air time also starves them. The point is, regardless of the method used to starve them off attention, regardless of who it targets and independent of who does it, it clearly does impact a group's ability to organise.

You can say ok, it works but I still don't want to no platform someone, but we aren't even getting to that stage if don't even acknowledge it can sometimes work.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Flagrant Vendetta rule violation has been cleansed.