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This is a crucial point. Here is an absolutely excellent essay expanding thoughtfully on this line of discussion: https://longreads.com/2018/09/18/no-i-will-no

• Animats 6y ago
  That has some good points. Remember the classic forum comment, "please don't feed the trolls". That worked until the trolls became too numerous. The latest idea comes from The Lincoln Project, which is funded by a group of anti-Trump Republicans. They read the Sun Tzu quote, "If your opponent is of choleric temper, irritate him." So they make very strong anti-Trump ads and pay to run them on Fox News during shows Trump is known to watch.[1] They're deliberately trolling Trump. The goal is to make Trump lose it (which he has, on Twitter) and make it safe for Republican politicians to move away from Trump (which is happening). This is boss level trolling. [1] https://youtu.be/bk6d4TgO2NY https://youtu.be/bk6d4TgO2NY
• NoodleIncident 6y ago
  > There’s a term for this sort of bad-faith argument: it’s called the justification-suppression model. The theory is that bigots refrain from directly defending their own bigotry but get hugely riled up justifying the abstract right to express bigotry. I doubt I'll remember it, but I was searching for some term to describe why this essay immediately set off alarm bells. I probably don't know enough about PG to know if he's really writing this essay in such explicit bad faith, but it certainly activated some neurons in my internet-trained mental spam filter. Now I have a name for that pattern