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Notes -
The effectiveness of agree-and-amplify is context dependent though. It makes sense in dating because the two of you are not discussing the merits of whatever insult the woman throws at you. You are either showing how you handle a curveball, or you are simply both joking around and having fun by making absurd statements.
I would argue it makes a lot less sense when one party is entirely serious about the insult. If the girl genuinely believes that big truck = small dick, agreeing and amplifying will just make her think she is correct.
A debate setting is serious, and it is expected that both parties argue in good faith. In that situation, agree and amplify will either convince the viewers that the accusations are correct or show them that you do not care about the rules of the debate. If one party defects this way, then the intellectual value is pretty much lost. From my perspective, either Nick Fuentes is an actual racist or he is so obtuse that I cannot know what his views are, because at any point he might be joking.
So the only thing he manages to do is show of his authority or his frame, by showing the viewers that he is composed even when under pressure while managing to throw off the frame of his opponent. I admit this is a good goal to have in a debate, but it doesn't do much for me personally when he otherwise comes off as either racist or untrustworthy.
A more charitable read would be that by blithely denying the label and then agreeing dismissively and moving on he demonstrates a level of disdain/apathy for the label. He doesn't care whether he technically meets the dictionary definition of the word "racist". It's a word. He cares about [crime statistics] and object level concerns. Having the confidence to take one for the team and say "if you're going to derail the object level debate and go on some unimportant tangent about whether I'm a "racist" then fine, I'll let you win this point, since I don't expect any of my audience to care anyway, so we can move on to something worth talking about."
He's not taking it seriously, but in 2025 taking a debate about whether someone is "racist" or not seriously is pointless. Everyone just uses it to mean people they don't like. I would argue that Morgan defected first by bringing it up in the first place, so a sarcastic dismissive reply to that particular point and then a transition back to something that actually matters is an appropriate debate tactic that doesn't make me trust him less.
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