Steelmanning (as opposed to strawmannin) is a rather obscure concept defined as:
A steel man argument (or steelmanning) is the opposite of a straw man argument. Steelmanning is the practice of applying the rhetorical principle of charity through addressing the strongest form of the other person’s argument, even if it is not the one they explicitly presented. Creating the strongest form of the opponent’s argument may involve removing flawed assumptions that could be easily refuted or developing the strongest points which counter one’s own position. Developing counters to steel man arguments may produce a stronger argument for one’s own position
Apparently, the Washington Post called up economics journalist Noah Smith and asked him to make the best case for Trump’s economic policies, ostensibly in order to give people a good faith argument that they could easily understand so they’d realize that Trump’s policies aren’t actually very good. Steelmanning. Smith declined because while there may be some reasonable uses for this type of argumentation. using them with Trump’s ramblings easily turns into sanewashing.
This is what some journalists and most headline writers are doing. By making Trump’s inane blather into coherent arguments they are missing the point entirely. Trump’s an imbecile and a lunatic and there is no real policy except revenge, racism and xenophobia. Giving his wild fascistic bleating the veneer of respectable policy proposals, regardless of your motive, is to mislead the public.
People need to hear his insanity as it’s delivered. Only then do you really understand what’s going on.
David Roberts explains it well:
Kudos to @Noahpinion for refusing this absurd assignment. And the @washingtonpost should be ashamed of itself for still, at this late date, failing to understand Trump & his movement.
As @whstancil has articulated so well, the whole appeal of fascism is that it releases you from any obligation to be decent or intellectually curious or coherent in your beliefs. It is a permission structure to wallow in your basest instincts, which is why it attracts assholes.
When Trump tries to pitch his giant nationwide pogrom as a solution to the housing crisis, he is bullshitting. He’s reverse engineering some plausible rationale for what he & his followers really want, which is to make brown people suffer.
In other words, the real truth of Trump’s housing policy is raw xenophobia & racism. By “steelmanning” that argument, the WA Post will be directly deceiving readers, leading them to believe that the real truth of the policy is some coherent set of “reasons.”
Whatever your thoughts on steelmanning in general, specifically steelmanning *fascism* is an intellectual sin. The point of fascism is to unleash raw ugly instincts — that’s why it is built around “rallies,” ie, mobs where people can subsume their individual thought.
Steelmanning an individual fascist policy, just in and of itself — regardless of *how* you steelman it or what specifically you say — is grossly misleading. There are not good, credible versions of these policies, because they were not derived from credible policy objectives.
The “real truth” of fascism is the ugly instincts toward cruelty, persecution, resentment, and anti-intellectualism. The rickety “policy” they offer as a facade for those instincts is a pretense, a distraction. Steelmanning it makes it look otherwise. Shame on WaPo.
I wish I could understand why the media hasn’t learned this lesson by now. It’s been almost a decade of this. It’s not as if they have anything to lose by being honest about what they, and every other sersone who isn'[t indoctrinated in the Trump cult, can see with our own eyes. Trump already sees them as an enemy of the people unless they are groveling at his feet like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. There’s no benefit to trying to make the nonsensical make sense.
It’s their job to tell the truth and they simply are failing to do that a good part of the time.