I wish I could find the better article for it that doesn't delve right into punching and gets to the meat of the danger of debating, “He who fights monsters” and all that.
(As to the disrespect thing, it wasn't here, but the comment section of a comic where you said things you didn't think I'd see, but that's neither here nor there. Thank you for your apology about the video though, you probably weren't even aware of what was happening in the comment section, and you can't be blamed for youtube's algorithm rabbit hole.)
Anyway, I'll pull some better quotes from the articles.
From the first article:
What liberals are not getting is that defending a Nazi's right to “free speech” is playing right into their game. Nazis and all other groups of fascists always hide behind the right to free speech until they grab power. It's a strategy that's been used time and time again.
In 1928, when the Nazis entered the Reichstag for the first time, their future Minister of Propaganda proudly declared, “We do not come as friend nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies: As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.” He continued to write that democracy was “stupid” for even allowing them to enter the Parliament.
Seven years later, when the Nazis had completely taken over the government, he wrote, “we have declared openly that we used democratic methods only in order to gain the power and that, after assuming the power, we would deny to our adversaries without any consideration the means which were granted to us in the times of opposition.”
Back then, it was a mistake to even allow Nazis to participate in democracy when they explicitly stated their intentions. And right now, men like Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos have also made their intentions very clear. We need to believe them.
Liberals often like to argue that even though Nazis are despicable, we should debate them to prove how awful they are. Sadly, liberals' debate skills will not defeat fascism. In fact, it only further legitimizes it by making Nazism seem like a legitimate opposing viewpoint rather than the destructive force it truly is.
Quote from another article that it links to:
Fascism is a cancer that turns democracy against itself unto death. There is no reasoning with it. It was specifically engineered to attack the weaknesses of democracy and use them to bring down the entire system, arrogating a right to free speech for itself just long enough to take power and wrench it away from everyone else. Simply allowing Nazis onto a stage, as the BBC did when it let British National Party leader Nick Griffin sit and debate with political luminaries on its Question Time program, is to give them an invaluable moral victory. Like creationists who debate evolutionary biologists, the former benefit mightily from the prestige of the latter.
In using this tactic, Nazis abuse the democratic forum to illegitimately lend credence to something that is otherwise indefensible, the equality of the stage giving the unforgivable appearance of “two sides” to a position that is anathema to public decency. This is not because Nazis love democracy or free speech, but because they know how to use this strategy to unravel them.
As to the second article, you said
The second one I read for a little bit, but the author was basically trying to justify his own deplatforming of someone who it sounds like had bested him in previous exchangesDude, what article did you read! XD She did not deplatform known white nationalist and misogynist Steve Bannon, she refused to speak at a conference alongside him, and in fact her exact quote is this:
To speak personally, my opposition to Bannon’s place at this conference has nothing to do with wishing to see him silenced — that would be infeasible as well as illiberal.
I’ve spent much of the past five years hearing out and attempting to debate people like Bannon, and in my experience it only emboldens and legitimizes them. As far as I am concerned, I am not interested in hearing those arguments again.
This is a woman who refused to speak on stage with a known misogynist who is not going to argue in good faith, faced backlash for declining the appearance, and then another conference rescinded their invitation to Bannon after the backlash.
She was never bested by Bannon because she refused to engage him in debate in the first place. If you've ever had to argue with someone who fundamentally has no respect or regard for your humanity, you should know it's pointless.
A good quote I heard is “If you wrestle a pig, you both get dirty, but the pig likes it”.
Here's another quote from her long discussion though:
Focusing the conversation on the ethics of disseminating speech rather than the actual content of that speech is hugely useful for the far right for three reasons. Firstly, it allows them to paint themselves as the wronged party — the martyrs and victims. Secondly, it stops people from talking about the actual wronged parties, the real lives at risk. And thirdly, of course, it’s an enormous diversion tactic, a shout of “Fire!” in the crowded theatre of politics. But Liberals don’t want to feel like bad people, so this impossible choice — betray the letter of your principles, or betray the spirit — leaves everyone feeling filthy.
Again, I know people passionate about free speech and censorship especially in light of recent events, and don't wish to categorize people who are concerned as downright siding with the bad guys, but a lot of the victims and targets of fascist violence certainly view it that way.