It's counter-productive too.

I was friends with a guy who was really into InfoWars in the early 2000s. I'm no longer in contact with him for unrelated reasons but I have to think that keeping friends who weren't in that world helps people from falling deeper into it.

Isolating people from good ideas doesn't seem like a great way to change minds.

Especially in a friendly context (and of course depending on your relationship) you can rag on them when they say something way out of line. It’s partially friendly banter, but also social pressure to consider infowars entertainment and not something to be taken as a serious news source.

Doesn't this go both ways though? I'd be willing to bet there are plenty of people that get dragged into white supremacy because they make friends with a few at the bar. Just normal chat at first with occasional "facts" about a group thrown in.

Sure it goes both ways. That’s why a culture of taking offense to minor transgressions rather than giving people the benefit of the doubt is so detrimental. It goes back to that comic where someone asks about racism and the anti-racist tells them it’s emotional labor and to google it, then the white supremacist pulls out all his “research” and talks about white supremacy at length.

That person who can easily be influenced to be a white supremacist doesn’t feel accepted. I don’t really mind accepting people and opening up to them about my own flaws and ideological inconsistencies. Some people are going to fall into the wrong crowds - you can’t win everyone over, but blocking someone out because they’re superficially racist or they have “regressive” views or whatever else is a great way to get a confused person to be very sure about those views.

It definitely goes both ways but I think it's important to recognize that _most_ people don't fall for those fringe beliefs. Keeping ties to the people that do fall into them gives them a lifeline to pull themselves out.

Additionally, I find the thought process of the person that wants to shut down those "dangerous" ideas pretty repulsive. It seems implicit to me that they are trying to protect those that are lesser than them. There's an implicit superiority there.