Welcome to the site! To improve this answer, you could elaborate more on the 'try to understand and address their legitimate concerns' part of your answer, since I think you have the right solution in mind for the right reasons, but as it's written now it's not easy to understand why and how, it mostly reads as an attack.

You're answer reminds me of this question interpersonal.stackexchange.com/questions/4842/…. We should be careful about creating enemies who may not be enemies. Assuming bad intention could be destructive, just like the related question has a person who's assuming everyone of a kind is bad.

Where in the question did you read that OP is "forcing" his "viewpoint on them"?

as it stands, this answer is a suggestion for the OP to change his views/behavior, and it does not actually answer the question that was asked.

@henning "their obviously false position" is quite a red flag, isn't it?

@FiatLux since this very answer emphasizes the importance of context, I think it's disingenuous to suppose that homophobia & racism are not obviously wrong.

@DoritoStyle Sure we can agree that they are wrong, but it's very easy to read the OP as "if people from the opposite political spectrum talk about free speech, how can I shut those bigots down". Also if homophobia and racism were obviously wrong, they wouldn't be as widespread as they are.

To quote the original question: "For instance, figures like Richard Spencer have taken to trying to frame their position behind a veil of "fighting for free speech" while it's pretty obvious that they're only concerned with protecting their own ability to say their usual hate. They're obviously very opposed to the people who demonstrate against them having equal rights to free speech, so it's pretty obviously not really about free speech..."

The poster is quite clearly talking about coded language, and presumably has already considered whether the person is talking about religion for its own sake or as a stand-in for condemning LGBTQ people. You may benefit from reading about political "dog whistles": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics (Some people might learn about them without knowing the subtext, and repeat them unknowingly, but I think even then it's appropriate to say that it sounds like they're using the words to imply something else.

@sgf "Also if homophobia and racism were obviously wrong, they wouldn't be as widespread as they are" why do you think that? There are no proof of gods or miracles and yet over 90% of people on earth are religious. Humans are not machines that follow what is obvious, they are confused, often irrational containers of emotions

@MicroMachine following that same logic, then surely as "irrational containers of emotions" no human can decide what is ultimately right or wrong? How can anyone rely on their own reasoning to be rational?

@Stacey because someone knowingly harming another person through the voicing of their opinions is fact, not something subjective (everyone knows what hurt feels like and agrees it's a negative emotion). I understand that the original question implies that harming someone's feelings is "wrong". A rational approach (versus emotional) is any solution that doesn't "harm" others. i.e. LGBTQ+ person or PoC is not "harming" people by just existing.

@jkf a person does not chose to be a minority (PoC, LGBTQ+, etc, that's just an example), but a person voicing harmful opinions does indeed chose to do so, sometimes knowingly, therefore they are 100% accountable for their behavior. Nothing prevents them from not harming others but themselves. There is definitely a polite and a rude way to tell someone their opinions are outdated are harmful, this is what the OP is about

@micromachine Absolutely, but this question (from what I can tell) is about what to do when the person in question is not actually expressing such opinions, rather the OP feels that they are hiding their true opinions by talking about something else?

Also someone seems to be deleting my comments rather selectively and diligently; some feedback and accountability would be helpful here...

@jkf mine too :(

Comments are not for extended discussion, nor are they for expressing your disagreement with an answer (see this meta post). If your comment is not suggesting improvements or requesting clarification it is subject to deletion by mods / flags. If you'd like to discuss the answer, you can take it to Interpersonal Skills Chat.

@EmC Serious question, as this does not seem to come up on other stacks: where is the appropriate place to discuss whether a question should be closed? I used to enjoy this stack but questions (which appear to me to be) agenda based and unanswerable are now pretty dominant; seems like a legit thing to bring up?

@jkf controversial questions get a lot of attention here and hit the HNQ list fairly reliability. Usually there's discussion in chat/on meta about them. I don't know if there's a meta for this one.

@jkf Given the activity on this question so far, and since it's already been closed once - Interpersonal Skills Meta is the right place for extended discussion about a question.

@EmC So it would be appropriate for me to ask this as a question ("should question so-and-so be closed?") in Meta and then link to this question in a comment in the original question? I'm also curious to what degree comments on this question are being deleted by direct moderator intervention vs user flagging -- it's seems like the latter has potential for abuse by groups of > 3 users...

@jkf To your question - correct :) The part about comments should be its own meta post though if you want to ask about that. (Do check out our existing metas on comments though, the latest one is a good starting point as it links to a bunch of previous discussion.)

@emc I see there are quite a few questions about this already, which seem to be significant downvote magnets. I can't help but wonder whether there is a group of users going around downvoting content which does not conform to their worldview? I will ask a question about those comments -- it seems like this question is on it's way to closure in any case, although it seems like if we don't want discussion of close votes in the comments, a link to meta should be provided somewhere where it can't be deleted or buried so easily.

@jkf You should always believe that someone can and will delete your comments. Then, under this pretense, think "Is it worth it to post this? Will I be glad that I got my message across? Would I be ashamed that a mod saw it?"

Amusing how you're really on top of comments, except for the one from the author of the original question...

@apaul I'm sorry but I'm not sure what you mean?

interpersonal.stackexchange.com/questions/13194/…

Also... The question has been closed, edited, and reopened. Not sure if you'd noticed.

@apaul I noticed the edits -- it seems like there are now two questions; the original, asking how to politely tell people that you think they are bigots even when they are not currently being bigoted, and now a second where you are asking how you should train your nephew not to listen to people who you think are bigots. The second one could perhaps have valid answers, but seems to me it should really be a separate question. I did read your comment above, but I'm afraid it doesn't alter my initial thoughts on the question.

@MicroMachine "Obvious" means something like "hard to miss", right? So I'm afraid what's obvious is not what is true, or demonstrably true, but what is obviously true - something it's harder to see than to miss.

Ah... That says a lot... Out of curiosity, do you know who Richard Spencer is? Were you aware of the person before answering the question?

@sgf I'm afraid the comment you are referring to was deleted? Something can be as obvious as the earth being spherical and yet people will deny it. Obvious is relative to whether or not the subject is looking at blatant facts, not what they chose to see/believe/trust/deny etc

@MicroMachine It was not, it is the one 24 comments about this one, if you care to count. "blatant" is just another word for "obvious" here. You're free to define "obvious" as "obvious to you", but I'm sure that if the fact that bigotry is wrong were obvious generally speaking, there would be fewer bigots in the world - obviously it isn't obvious to them. And since there's a whole bunch of them, if it isn't obvious to them, it isn't obvious, generally speaking, even if perhaps it is obvious to me and to you.

@sgf your entire argument hinges on the idea that no one ever knowingly does anything wrong.

@apaul Not sure if the Richard Spencer question is for me? If so I am Canadian and don't know much about him, but he certainly sounds unpleasant. It seems like your first question generalizes poorly if it is strictly about Richard Spencer though, as it seems unlikely that very many people would be dealing with him on an interpersonal level. As I said your second question on how to deal with acolytes of Richard Spencer could potentially attract useful answers.

@FiatLux I'd like to pose the same above questions to you, as I'm not sure how this answers the question at all.

@Beofett You mean a majority of people pretend to be bigots but really consciously know that bigotry is wrong?

@sgf I know you're not asking me, but I honestly think that reconsidering one's whole system of values and one's education is a whole lot of work and that people with little ethics will find it too much work to do it. They can be conscious that there is something wrong but prefer to think the world is against them. These are extremely frequent in several psychological profiles. They do not necessarily think in terms of "right" or "wrong" because the emotional level involved in IPR is too high to have moral values.

These comments have devolved into philosophical debate, bets to move to a chat-room at this point.

@MicroMachine But if realising that something is wrong is a lot of work, doesn't that make it's wrongness kinda non-obvious by definition?

@sgf what you are describing in the comment where you tagged me is pretty much the definition of sociopathic tendencies, where a subject has little to no way to put themselves in the position of another person. I do not need to get hit on the head with a hammer to know it hurts, they do not need to know a slur is harmful. But the obvious is irrelevant when some emotional disorders have created their own reality as a survival instinct

@MicroMachine Buy now you're depecting bigotry as the exception, rather than the rule. If we are at such a state by now, it's due to several generation of very very hard work.

@sgf but there is a tenuous relationship between the psychological terrain and the system of beliefs that can fit into it. Wrongness is obvious to a strong mind and not obvious to a weak mind, and a strong mind does the research and educates itself etc. It's violently simple. Why do people eat sugar, drink alcohol, smoke, text and drive when there are vast amounts of knowledge about negative consequences?

@MicroMachine Of course the majority of people does things that are obviously wrong. I do obviously wrong things every day. But it is a lot harder to agree that the majority of people can believe something that is obviously wrong.

@sgf Wow, you're really committed to taking strawman arguments to the extreme.

@sgf Perhaps it's more that people consciously know that they're being rude or cruel, but they feel it's ok because that person isn't deserving of basic human decency, because that person is black, or gay, or Muslim. Bigots don't tend to think they're bigots, they just think that it's ok to think and act the way they do.

@Beofett No, I'm committed to taking semantic arguments to the extreme.

I might have missed that when it was removed. Was it something worthwhile?

@sgf Mhmm kinda says an awful lot about where you're coming from...

@apaul It wasn't, it was half of a post that I accidentally uploaded and deleted instantly, sorry for the tag. About semantics - I think it's important to be careful to use words "correctly", especially when talking about views that one despises.

@apaul But to be honest, I wanted to believe at the start that your question is not "How can I politely tell people I won't listen to their arguments when I suspect that deep down they're trying to push a bigot agenda by using unrelated arguments", since disregarding an argument because of its potential use is one of the most uncivil and self-defeating moves possible in a discussion, but judging from your constant wild stabs at my underlying motives

coupled with continuously patronizing me while evading taking on my arguments makes it appear as exactly that.

And honestly it shouldn't matter whether I'm a bigot, or a racist, or just a despicable person in general - if my arguments are bad, you can show that without resorting to ad hominem attacks, and if they are good, they're good regardless of what sort of person I am.

But that's precisely what you're unwilling to see, and that still appears to me to be the crux of your question.

@apaul I am not aware of who this Spencer guy is, and I am willing to give you that he is as evil as it can get, worse that Stalin. But it does not diminish his arguments in any way. He managed to convince you step son by his arguments, you can analyze those arguments, and provide counterarguments. You will get nowhere by calling him bigot/evil/whatever or otherwise resorting to ad hominem.

And if you will not be able to refute his arguments, well, maybe it is you who should change your mind? At least on some issues.

@sgf putting absurdities in the mouths of the people you're arguing with is not a "semantic" argument. It's logical fallacy, and, as apaul already mentioned, a really good indication of your underlying motive.

It is also important to find some common ground. Is you and the opposite side of argument are operating under completely different premises, you should discuss those premises first and adjust basis or your counterarguments accordingly. Otherwise you will continue argue about two different things.

@Beofett I reread the debate, and I think I can see now how on earth people get inflamed by me calling someone out on the misuse of the word "obviously". Please tell me if I'm right in assuming the following: I. The word "obviously" can be used in two ways: If I say that my comments are obviously controversial, I can mean that it is obvious to me now (i.e. I realise with the evidence before me) that they are controversial, or I can mean that it is obvious that they are controversial, period.

The latter is a much stronger claim, of course. When apaul uses "obviously wrong" in his OP, I believe he meant that it is obvious to us civilised people that bigotry is wrong. When FiatLux says that apaul using "obviously false position" is a red flag, I'm pretty sure that he means that it's a bad idea to say that the other side's position is obviously wrong, instead of arguing against it. (Just ask a mathematician what they think about saying "From this it follows obviously that x".)

Then DoritoStyle says "I think it's disingenuous to suppose that homophobia & racism are not obviously wrong." and that is the comment I responded to. I have difficulty parsing this comment in any other way than "It's disingenuous to suppose that it's hard to see how homophobia & racism are wrong." - and this is what I disagree with. Racism and homophobia have been the norm for centuries, so how could we argue that it's easy to see that they are wrong?

But if I'm reading that comment wrong, that's certainly a possibility. I'm not a native speaker. However, I repeat that there is nothing gained from taking guesses at the other party's true intentions - my true intentions can be much more benign than you'd think. (In this case: I committed myself to a point in a comment I didn't spend that much thought on and was unable to let go because I was tired.) It just creates a climate of hostility.

I never understood what people meant when they say that the left and the right can't talk to each other anymore in America, but now I have some inkling of what it might mean. If all you do is saying "You're comitting a logical fallacy, but instead of pointing it out I will make sinister suggestions about your moral character and underlying motivations", civilized discourse is impossible indeed.

@sgf To recap: your original comment was that since there's a lot of bigotry in the world, it isn't obvious that its wrong, because otherwise there wouldn't be so much of it (feel free to correct me if I misrepresented your comment). I pointed out that this argument assumes that people don't knowingly engage in wrong behavior.

Your response was to seemingly translate that into my claiming that "a majority of people pretend to be bigots", which is not in any way related to what I said.

When I pointed that out, you seemingly took pride in your "extreme semantic arguments".

You didn't clarify. You didn't excuse your comment as not fully thought out due to being tired. You didn't apologize for misrepresenting what I said (intentionally or not).

You simply made a dismissive remark.

So it's pretty hypocritical to then pretend to take a stance of moral superiority.

@Beofett "Wow, you're really committed to taking strawman arguments to the extreme" surely is a dismissive remark to begin with. Had you pointed out my error to me, instead of assuring me that there is one, I might have seen where I had been wrong and apologised, and also might have seen where I needed to clarify.

But if I misrepresented what you said, then that stems from a semantic point again: I always assumed that bigotry is a set of beliefs, not a sort of behaviour, and so I thought that to be a bigot when you consciously know that bigotry is wrong, you had to pretend to be one without actually being one.

@sgf You continue to refuse any personal responsibility for taking what I said and twisting it to something completely unrelated to what I said. At best, my comment was snarky. And given your reply to my original point, it was not unmerited. If you're saying that you honestly thought that I was somehow claiming that people pretend to be bigots, then I'll apologize, if you can explain how you reached that conclusion

I mean, it's like being a flat-earther when you know that the earth isn't flat: You're just pretending

@sgf I see what you're saying now. I apologize for my snarky remark. I have never encountered someone who had your particular beliefs about what bigotry is.

@Beofett And I apologise for twisting your words. I didn't do it on purpose

Bigotry is a behavior. It can be rooted in a belief, true, but people have contradictory beliefs all the time

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bigotry The Cambridge Dictionary gives me as a definition for bigotry "the fact of having and expressing strong, unreasonable beliefs and disliking other people who have different beliefs or a different way of life"

Which would presuppose beliefs as well as actions

People who believe themselves religious frequently engage in behavior directly contradictory to their religion. Ever see a Christian hold a grudge, instead of turning the other cheek? They're not "pretending" to hold a grudge.

@sgf Words typically do not have one single definition that is the source of all truth. merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bigotry: obstinate or intolerant devotion to one's own opinions and prejudices

@Beofett So is devotion an action or a conviction? ;)

Another common definition is intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.

Dictionary.com defines it as stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own.

So again... belief can be a part of bigotry, but is not necessary.

Or rather it depends on your definition of bigotry whether it's a necessary part?

Because the Cambridge Dictionary appears to share my beliefs about what bigotry is.

Note that the Cambridge Dictionary entry you refer to is the English version. The American version is strong, unreasonable ideas, esp. about race or religion

Both are the Cambridge Dictionary's definition

Alright, but surely if I have unreasonable ideas, that's part of my beliefs, not of my actions?

But I'm curious: If you thought I was operating on the assumption that bigotry is defined by actions, what on earth could I have meant by "pretending to be a bigot"?

How is expressing opinions not an action?

It is for sure. But expressing opinions you do not hold is pretending, no?

@sgf Why would I waste time speculating on what you meant? You were attributing something I didn't say to me.

And you certainly didn't waste any time attributing it to malice.

Anyway, while semantic quibbling can be fun, it really bears no relevance for the discussion, nor do I have continued time to spend on this. Have a good day.

...

You too sir

@sgf Nor did your response about extreme semantic arguments give me any reason to think malice wasn't intended. Regardless, we've already resolved that misunderstanding.

@Beofett I wasn't attributing something you didn't say to you. I was trying to paraphrase you to make sure I understood you correctly.

That's why I started my sentence with "You mean..." and ended it with a question mark.