Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
The right wing fundamentally do not care about facts and meaning. You can give as many stats and facts as you want that disprove their position and it doesn't matter. They're not arguing facts. They believe they're right, and they'll make whatever noises they want to justify that.
Highly recommend the essay that quote is from: "Anti-Semite and Jew". It's written from that post-liberation of Paris/ending of ww2 perspective, but a lot of the insights on the nature of that kind of societal hate still hold up pretty well.
Time for the sartre quote again
The right wing fundamentally do not care about facts and meaning. You can give as many stats and facts as you want that disprove their position and it doesn't matter. They're not arguing facts. They believe they're right, and they'll make whatever noises they want to justify that.
They're bad people.
Too bad I haven't read Sartre, that quote is brilliant and I already have reinvented it poorly a few times.
(Usually while analyzing verbal encounters with Turks\Azeris on Armenian issues, though, since open anti-Semites are hard to find, but them too.)
Highly recommend the essay that quote is from: "Anti-Semite and Jew". It's written from that post-liberation of Paris/ending of ww2 perspective, but a lot of the insights on the nature of that kind of societal hate still hold up pretty well.