I’ve noticed a pattern with this sort of thing, that when people are complicit in systems that they benefit from, they’ll put forward arguments they don’t really believe in because they’re obligated to by their own cognitive dissonance. I was first introduced to a term for this pattern of behavior by PhilosophyTube: a phantasm.

It’s a way of organizing feelings, selective observations and misrepresentations. A way of intepreting the world that also does things to the person using it.

Okay, that’s a bit vague. The video essay goes on to provide some cohesive examples, but if I could try to summarize it:

A phantasm is a self propagating system of incoherent beliefs that a person generates to willingly deceive themselves about their own complicity in systemic oppression of others in order to alleviate cognitive dissonance and maintain the belief that they are a “good” person.

I’ve seen this behavior most notably in alt-right, anti-vax, and conspiracy theorist types, but I’ve also seen it a lot with anti-vegans.

One of the main symptoms of this self deception is to blindly parrot bad arguments that perpetuate their own deception, even when they don’t believe their own arguments are coherent.

I think, sometimes, depending on the severity of the phantasm, this behavior can also be a search for a refutation. Part of them might want to reject the phantasm, and given sufficiently well gounded arguments and/or evidence, some people are capable of rejecting the phantasm.

In any case, I think there’s a lot more going on psychologically than simple willful bad faith. Phantasms are incredibly hard to dislodge when people are emotionally invested in maintaining them, and I don’t have a good answer about the correct approach, or even if there is any sort of generalized right way. It may well be that every single instance requires a unique solution.