General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: About "white supremacist liberals" [View all]joshcryer
(62,269 posts)It serves the very purpose that you suggest even if the underlying argument is sound or at least has some merit. The first thing that happens is that people automatically discount what is being argued.
I've seen similar word appropriation or re-purposing in environmental circles. Where people who believe that technology can help us solve the environmental problems are called genocidal. On one hand it's not terribly off base because, say, factory farming is pretty egregious, but technology making lab grown meat takes us further away from that bad use of it. That may be a poor example, I'm just saying, if someone makes an argument using words how they're not used in common parlance I can understand it being dismissed outright.
It stems from anger mostly and in our modern media atmosphere of clickbait nonsense it also probably comes from how we get our information. We can all do better in that respect.