Rhetorically speaking, "I don't want to sound rude" can have the opposite effect as the one intended by the writer (when I'm on the receiving end that's almost 100% of the time). It basically states, from the get-go, that the opposing argument is so deeply flawed, requiring such a strong, ruthless counter-argument, that there's a good possibility that you might offend your interlocutor's sensibilities. Even if you're so fucking right that your answer erupts from the depths of your logical mind with the power of a thousand volcanoes, that's not a good way to create rapport. At this point, no one knows your reasoning yet. You may sound like a douche bag. You may be right, but not as right as you think. You may also be very wrong, and in that case you not only promised something you couldn't deliver, but you also made it hard to take the conversation forward. Because, by belittling your interlocutor, you created an environment where getting it wrong is not admissible, and he/she will apply the same rule to yourself. Even in the case that you're right, your behavior discouraged further questions. All because you wanted to be nice! Communication is hard.

(EDIT: Those in the comments have asked me to remove specific names. I have replaced names with emoji that I like.)

We recently had:

• a thread whose OP defended a confederate statue erected by white supremacists on purely apolitical grounds
• a thread whose OP defended scientific racism on purely apolitical grounds

I'm really annoyed. If you really want to defend something that looks to everyone else like white supremacy, please avoid:

• Claiming to be apolitical while disagreeing with someone's politics. If you're telling someone else "your political stance is wrong," you're having a political opinion. "You're being too political" is a political opinion the same way "there is no God" is a religious opinion. This happened like a kajillion times in both threads.

• Granting benefit of the doubt to white supremacists or sources only used by white supremacists. Example: In the confederate statue thread, 🦇 effectively said "OK, so the builders of the statue hired a white supremacist speaker to commemorate it -- but they're not white supremacists and neither is the statue." Seriously, come on. And stop citing the spokespeople of white supremacist groups to prove they're not white supremacists -- they intentionally tone down that shit for the media, which is why you look super tone deaf when people post actual accounts of things they did, like holding town hall meetings about how great lynchings are when they thought no one was looking.

• Claiming you'd agree with whoever's arguing with you, except for one inconsequential fact you never mentioned any other time. Example: In the confederate statue thread, 🦈 said that he wouldn't mind if the statue had been taken down legally -- but every other time it came up he said it was wrong to take down the statue at all, because that was whitewashing history.

• Calling leftists "childish" and "easily-offended." Words like this do have a place in politics, but you've been misusing them. I read both threads front to back -- one or two people ended their arguments with "I'm offended" but basically everyone also said "here's why your view of the world is wrong" or "here's why this is bad and it hurts people." When you start your post by saying "oh, how childish!" and then just repeat the thing you said in the first place, you're basically saying "I'm not listening."

• Accusing leftists of being unwilling to grapple with the facts. Again, this is allowed and fine when it's true, but you've been abusing it. For instance, in a thread by 🦐 on The Bell Curve the original poster claimed The Bell Curve was state-of-the-art, and leftists were ignoring it. That's not true: there was a huge leftist response immediately after it was published, from academics and popsci guys too. Several people linked leftist articles and takedown videos, which he ignored. Maybe the leftists are wrong, but it's not that they ignored it.

Here are some of the ways you were possibly tricked into believing white supremacists:

• They told you their sources were good, and instead of checking, you believed it.
• They told you left-wing sources were shrill and unresearched, and instead of checking, you believed it.
• They told you there was a conspiracy against their viewpoint and that's why the criticism isn't credible. (For The Bell Curve, it's the political correctness conspiracy -- for statues, it's the easily-offended liberal masses.)
• They told you there was more nuance to the situation than it looked like and made an emotional appeal. Intelligent people like to imagine there's no way things could be as simple as they look -- "not everyone would be smart enough to uncover that this apparent act of white supremacy was, in fact, politically neutral!" -- so you believed them.
• You are probably a little bit racist. (Or even a lot racist.) You might not be racist enough to hate black people, but you might be racist enough to find white supremacists more credible than their victims, even though you know the historical facts say their victims were telling the truth.

Here are some preemptive comments:

• I don't want to censor anybody. This thread is not censorship.
• I do want to shout bad opinions down with better opinions. People who support free speech, which I think is most of the people on this website, also want this. This is an example of me trying to do that.
• Yes, leftists can do all the things I listed. (And yes I'm a leftist.) When I go to a site like Twitter or Tumblr I see left-wingers saying all kinds of horrible, unsupported shit they heard from their idiot hippie friends. It's frustrating and sickening and it's a giant part of the reason I don't go on those sites very often. But on this site I only saw right-wingers doing this stuff, not left-wingers. That kinda surprised me because usually it's the side with the biggest groupthink bubble that says really stupid stuff and keeps on trucking.

Thank you and sorry for the long, mean post.