How to win arguments with bigots: a guide for Nick Clegg - The Guardian (blog)

If you want to win someone round to your point of view, calling them a bigot is never likely to be the best starting point. Yet that is what the deputy PM nearly did to the opponents of gay marriage. "Continued trouble in the economy gives the bigots a stick to beat us with," ran the press-released draft of a forthcoming speech. "Bigots" – hastily disavowed – now reads "some people", which will soon be the hot euphemism. ("My Jewish friend wanted to join a golf club, but some people blackballed him.")

All this is unlikely to get "some people" on Nick Clegg's side. For a start, the very term "bigot" denotes someone immune to being reasoned round in the first place. Second, put yourself in their shoes. Someone calls you a bigot, and you'll immediately think they're an asshat. Consequently, whatever case they are trying to make will, in your mind, be contaminated by asshattery.

Already – "bigot!" "asshat!" – you've left the realm of argument and entered the misty and intuitive world of essentialisms: what someone is, rather than what they think or say. This distinction is well made in US radio host Jay Smooth's short video, How to Tell People They Sound Racist, where he talks about the difference between the "'what they did' conversation and the 'what they are' conversation". His point is that the latter, though tempting, is unprovable so actually lets them off the hook. The old Christian saw "love the sinner, and hate the sin" articulates the same distinction. It may be noted as a side-point that that saw has, unfortunately, provided cover for a good bit of bigotry over the years. Here, we risk swerving into deep waters.

Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, teaches us that the starting point for any argument is the "ethos" appeal: that is, the way a speaker sells him or herself to his audience. Reviling your enemies helps you sell yourself to your friends. Selling yourself to your enemies, though, is the way you win an argument. The conversation about any given issue may be geared to one or the other. In politics, it's the difference between speaking to your base and reaching out to the floating voters.

When you take turns decrying something that has offended you in the Daily Mail, you're involved in one form of identity politics: affirming your membership of the group that finds things in the Daily Mail offensive. In election terms, you're dog-whistling to your base. That's not necessarily futile: we need battle lines. And weight of numbers can translate into main force.

But if you want to persuade someone of something, the task at hand is to stress your common ground, not emphasise your differences. Say you're trying to bring a particular stripe of Tory round to a liberal view of immigration. Calling him a racist will be much less effective than appealing to his principles: if you're so keen on the free movement of capital, why is the free movement of labour not also a liberty you should be championing? He'll have an answer: but at this stage you're in dialogue.

In the online world – in comment threads, on blogs and in those invigorating hurricanes of competitive outrage that blow from time to time through Twitter – we see a lot more of the former. We've read plenty about deindividuation and disinhibition: the way instantaneous and often anonymous commentary makes it much easier to hurl abuse. But we should also note that social media is expressly set up to put people in touch with the like-minded: there's a structural bias in favour of the dog-whistle.

It's a question of the audience at which you are aiming. Clegg's proposed speech was not aimed at the people he called bigots: it was aimed, largely, at people who already agree with him. "Bigots" was shorthand for those who don't and are never likely to. It's a dog-whistle term intended to present an ethos appeal to Clegg's own constituency. We are reasonable: they are bigots. Let's rally together to thwart them.

When it comes to winning round the bigots, Clegg would play a subtler game. He'd seek common ground. "Of course you're not a bigot: you're wrestling with deep doctrinal difficulties in good conscience. That guy over there – [points to foaming-at-mouth Scottish cardinal equating gay marriage with slavery] – that is what I'd call a bigot. Hey: why don't we isolate him and see what we can work out?"

Unfortunately – which is exactly what we're all still struggling to get used to in the wired world – you are less and less able to choose your audience. The bigots are online too. And they can hear you talking about them.