Why are (Some) Socialists and Far Right so quick to Assume they know what you're saying.

Holding Libertarian views puts you in quite a unique position where you seem to spend your time being attacked from all sides (granted I do bring it on by getting involved in some emotionally charged topics) so in the average day I tend to have debates with the Right on topics such as Gay Marriage, Immigration, Equality and so on, whilst at the same time having debates with the Left on The NHS, Austerity and EU Membership to name just a few.  Personally I love having debates like this and I see them as a great way to understand other people’s views as well as challenge the validity of my own held views.

This double attack has lead me to see even more similarities between socialists and far right debaters. I first blogged about how I consider the Far Right and the Left to be the same ideology a few years ago. The latest similarity I have noticed is in their common response to a challenging view which I call the Assume – Anger – Attack response. I should stress that I am not saying that this response is constant and there are occasionally some well reasoned and well articulated debates with Socialists however the level of AAA responses seems to me to be massively higher in the Left and Far Right than in any other group I regularly debate with (Although Extreme Atheists come close) Essentially the AAA response goes along the lines of 

1)      Assume I understand what you are saying, allowing my own bias to cloud my judgement.

2)      Get Angry about what I assume you are saying, this prevents logic from entering the debate.

3)      Attack, Attack, Attack – I have assumed you are bad so must now attack first.

As an example, recently I commented on a facebook post, now I should say up front that I was almost definitely in the wrong as I hadn’t quite understood what the original post was about – To be honest it was something that was so far from my view of the world that it never really occurred to me. One of my more left leaning facebook friends then put on a comment that attacked me, accused me of taking an opinion that was actually at odds to my own and stated that my views were actually dangerous. I was obviously confused (This was after all completely at odds with what I was thinking.) so I queried it and was again met with more assumptions about what I was saying – Assumptions based on the bias of the commenter and quite likely the incorrect assumption that I hold Right Wing social views – I responded with trying to clarify what I had meant and for the first time it was pointed out that my view wasn’t aligned to the original post, it went on for a few more comments until I eventually realised what he thought I was saying and I confirmed that I must have misunderstood. A long conversation based solely on the fact that he had followed Assume – Anger – Attack rather than a model that seeks to understand the other side before responding.  I call this the EEE model, Explore – Empathise – Exchange, based solely on the fact that I wanted three words that started with the same letter.

1)      Explore, Does the other person see the world the same as you.

2)      Empathise, Is there an emotional reason they took this view, why do they feel this way.

3)      Exchange, Now that you understand where they are coming from you can exchange your ideas.

Maybe if we all followed this model we could get a lot more understanding and a little less confrontation.