1. I address myself to the uncorrupted souls:

It’s distressing, I know, to find your thinking contradicted by a confident consensus.

You don’t want to believe anything false. You’ll get on board with anything justice is shown to demand.

2. Yet your thinking doesn’t agree with what everyone supposedly knows.

This is distressing. Did you miss something? Is there something bad in you holding you back from recognizing what’s obvious to everyone else – to people thereby better than you?

3. Maybe you did. Maybe there is.

But also, importantly,

Maybe not.

Maybe wave after wave of lies are crashing over our public sphere.

Maybe what distinguishes you from those in consensus is that they are less attentive to the questions of what’s true and what’s just.

4. Maybe you’re pure of heart and soul. Maybe you’ll lose what’s best in you if you ignore your misgivings and go along with the mob.

But this raises a problem: how should I conduct myself? What should I say?

You appear trapped. The consensus says only bigots question it.

5. Have heart! Cleave tightly to your purity. Be clear and simple in your speech.

If you remain calm, humble, and genuinely curious, you’ll soon determine whether it’s you that’s at fault, or whether you’re virtuously resisting widely accepted lies.

6. An example of how to proceed: as I watched the post-debate analysis, I learned that there’s a consensus behind

(P) The Proud Boys are a white supremacist organization.

It’s also subscribed to by those on Fox, the ‘Republican’ on CNN, @DavidAFrench and @sullydish.

7. A lesser version of myself would’ve dismissed this fake news consensus and insisted he ‘knew’ (P) was false. But instead of saying,

‘I don’t believe (P),’

even though that’s true, let me be more humble and open and say,

‘I haven’t yet seen any good reason to think (P).’

8. This is better, for instead of setting up a shouting match, it invites my interlocutor to offer such reasons as there are.

Maybe there are such reasons, and I just don’t possess them.

What do I know?

9. Well, I’ll tell you where I’m at: I’ve watched a good number of Gavin McInnes videos. The guy’s hilarious. My natural judgment is he’s authentic when he denies the Proud Boys care much for race, and are rather concerned with defending Western civilization.

10. Gavin’s interracial married, after all. And many proud boys, including their leader, are non-white, as is often pointed out. We can debate the merit of their stance on violence, but even if we censure them for that, it’s not a reason for (P).

11. I’ve also attended over the years to the media’s presentation of the Proud Boys. I’ve read Michelle Goldberg and others and I’ve found their arguments wanting.

12. A wider study of the media has me by now quite confirmed in the view that journalists predicate bigotry of right-leaning folks too freely.

This leads me to lean towards thinking (P) is one such case:

13. Those forming the consensus aren’t saying (P) because it’s true. Dishonest woke journalists are saying (P) to smear a right-wing group – one that is, we must surely concede, primed for violence. Others join the consensus out of fear of the woke mob.

14. But maybe I’m wrong! Maybe I’m rationalizing to make this issue cohere with everything else I think.

I commit not to my rejection of (P). I ANNOUNCE it, as the current state of my thinking.

I commit to the truth, and seek your aid in finding it.

15. If all you can offer me as evidence of (P) is articles from Michelle Goldberg types, however, I’m afraid that won’t defeat my resistance to (P). If you can only cite the ubiquity of the consensus – well, look back to how I began (see 1 through 6).

16. Yet I’m humbly aware of the paucity of my thought. I’ve never met a Proud Boy. Perhaps it’s well documented that they’ve been taken over by white supremacists since I stopped paying attention.

17. Given the nature of the group, I’ve no doubt it attracts many actual white supremacists. I’d be interested to learn whether they’re rejected or tolerated by the group when they reveal themselves. If they’re tolerated or worse, (P) indeed becomes a reasonable description.

18. If they’re not, however, it seems unfair to predicate “white supremacist” of the group, “proud boys,” because of these unwelcome attachments, yet not to predicate “violent” of the group BLM as a whole because of the individuals doing violence in its name.

19. Finally, it’d be unjust, I say, if twitter censored me for this thread. I’m a citizen trying my best to think things through. I’ve told you where I stand, I reiterate, not to fight ‘your truth’ with mine, but to seek THE truth with you.