I don’t want to debate right-wingers online, its just a waste of time, but that’s where they get most of the support from. its not that the right wingers have an established community online and they do hate speech, the worse thing I get sad about is the people they brainwash.
I’m still learning theory, but I also want to start educating myself on discourse and meta-discourse too, and pointing out the fallacies that they go for, why they go for it, why the uneducated believe it.
I know there are resources on this, I just wanted to know where I can start. Would linguistics be a field of study connected to this? I think it does make sense.
As materialists, we should focus on substance over form, every time. Most people will eventually see through the hollowness of these liberal “debate tactics”, and realize that they aren’t making any real points.
I’ve read a few rhetoric-focused books, but none really had much value… one book that does stand out tho, is Cialdini - the psychology of persuasion. It goes through some of the most common tactics used by exploiters to to elicit automated responses, taking advantage of psychological and evolutionary shortcuts that helped us survive for thousands of years, and now being honed and used by advertisers and propagandists, to make a profit.
When you say substance (or content) over form, are you exclusively referring to rhethorical arguments or making a general statement?
If (and I am assuming here) it’s the latter, then it is important to note that form dictates content. The content of bourgeois, liberal capitalism may be malleable yet it is form which determines it.
The substance is the actual thing in reality while the form refers to various ways it’s presented outwardly in specific circumstances. Good examples are how the rule of the bourgeoisie is the substance of capitalist states but the form can differ (liberal democracy, military dictatorship, etc.), or how class struggles (substance) take on different forms in different contexts (proletariat vs bourgeoisie, colonized people fighting for national liberation, etc.). On a rhetorical level, liberalism, for example, talks about defense of human rights, equality, and freedom (form) while in actuality (substance) liberalism justifies exploitation, slavery, genocide, etc. which we also see it doing materially.