Gesturing at literature as a defense without engaging in the literature is, and always has been, an endorsement of the ideas in the literature and not "intellectual engagement".

If the other founder went "here's his blog post where he discusses <these ideas> that potentially justify the support for this party without just being support for right right hate and other political positions" that would be intellectual engagement. That's not what occurred here. What occurred here was a vague gesture in the direction of far right writing as if that somehow justifies the concept.

If it's intellectual engagement you want, how about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

It's far better to respect people's ability to reach their own conclusions about things. If someone sends me media and tells me in advance what I should think of it, it devalues my estimation of them more than it does of the media in question (which I try to keep an open mind about).

No what I want is for people to not advocate for crimes against humanity like taking hundreds of thousands of people (in their own words) and ripping them away from their homes and sending them to a country that some of them have never even been to and won't speak that language in our have legal status in or so on.

And barring that I would like other people to not direct people to the first group of people's propaganda and writings as if it was a valuable thing to read in itself and to suggest that you might agree with them.

And barring that I would like people to not refer to the above as "intellectual engagement" and defend it on those terms when it is nothing of the sort because there is no engagement.

> It's almost as if rightist politics were some kind of cooties

Rightist politics may not be, but rightist rhetoric surely is. Consider GW Bush' statement "if you're not with us, you're against us" (or the 2025 equivalent "either you support genocide, or you're an antisemite"): where is the room for intellectual engagement in statements such as these?

Your suggested "intellectual engagement" with absolute positions such as these serves absolutely no other purpose than to lend them an air of legitimacy. There absolutely exist rationales that do not deserve to be "heard" or "considered".

Or put another way:

  "Let's meet in the middle", says the unjust man.
  You take a step forward; the unjust man takes a step back.
  "Let's meet in the middle", says the unjust man.

The irony is palpable.

It's amazing isn't it, how a single thought-terminating cliché can so easily inspire others?

> Consider GW Bush' statement "if you're not with us, you're against us" (or the 2025 equivalent "either you support genocide, or you're an antisemite"): where is the room for intellectual engagement in statements such as these?

Why are you considering them, then?

> There absolutely exist rationales that do not deserve to be "heard" or "considered".

How do you know which ones are those if you never hear or consider them?

The practical application of the principle that you espouse is that someone has to intellectually engage with these things, and then decide on behalf of the rest of us proles whether we should be "allowed to lend them the air of legitimacy" or not.

To that I say: there's no socialism without freedom, and there's no freedom in general without freedom to think for yourself and make your own judgments. Any ideology that purports to restrict that is inherently authoritarian, whether on the left or on the right, and should be fought tooth and nail.

I would characterise myself as being very left. Yet people who I perceive as to the right of me perceive themselves as much further left.

I have always considered compassion the driving force underlying left wing views. I really can't understand the mind of the spiteful left, it seems such a contradiction of values.

As for those on the far-left, it's like they want to be their own kind of fascist while also proclaiming to be anti-fascist.

"Far left" can mean a lot of different things, but generally it means far left economic positions (on matters such as property rights, for example). This is orthogonal to authoritarianism though - yes, there's absolutely a large authoritarian left wing tendency, the "tankies", but on the whole in the West various libertarian takes (anarchism, most obviously, but as with right libertarianism there are degrees here) dominate.

>I'm very far left myself,

I know it is now an internet meme, but those who considered themselves far left 10 years ago would no be a moderate.

Only if your definition of "far left" was taken from the likes of Fox and Breitbart, who apply this label to anyone left of Clinton, more or less.

I'm a libertarian socialist though. And by "socialism" I mean all that stuff about the means of production etc, not higher taxes. As far as I'm concerned, the American mainstream left is still closer to American mainstream right than they are to my views.