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Very well put. I've also heard it said like this, "abusing the truth is the easiest way to lie".

The pattern is 1. take something that's true then 2. use it to imply the Truth. Step 3. is if anyone doubts 2, challenge them to disprove 1. Even if you don't deny that 1 is true and just challenging that 2 doesn't follow from 1, the waters have already been muddied in the eyes of many onlookers.

It's silly that this works but there's so much over-communication now that simplicity is very effective. People often repeat the fallacies verbatim too.

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I'm kind of counting on normal being in the minority here.
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Abnormal isn't distributed along a single axis.
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I might object that being right-wing, or having fear of the effects of immigrants even, does not necessarily entail racism. But it would be more interesting to say that they are related, and that valuable ideas about nice traditional architecture and nostalgia for the good old days are also genuinely related to racism and colonialism and fascism, which means that there's something of value to extract from all that garbage before you can do a clean separation of the ideas. Mercifully I don't have time to write this comment right now, but it was probably going to include the word "culture" in several places.
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This is the "two truths and a lie" methodology.
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> That is condescending, makes normal people feel unheard, and then when someone does hear them on the innocuous subject

And that is why all the pollsters were caught flat-footed by Trump in 2016. The people who did feel unheard learned to not respond.

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> The people who did feel unheard learned to not respond

When politics exclude a group, or a group feels excluded, it's easy to lure the group into supporting anti-politics, which is a nice way to say "fascism".

This is kind of where we are now, with the far-right preying on the most vulnerable people that feel ignored by politicians.

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>stalking horse for right-wing thinking.

So? Many people (not all) are right-wing because they want to preserve beauty. Being a right-wing is not a rare thing, it's the second most popular belief system in the West.

>Another popular one on social media is the Greek and classical world, especially its comparative lack in modern education compared to, say, 1900. That's an easy intro to colonialism and racism

Racism is much less of a thing in Europe, compared to the USA, yet fascination with Antiquity is just the same or even higher.

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