It depends. The guy (and yes, it’s a guy) who mainlines Ben Shapeeno videos and was president of his College Republicans chapter? Yeah, you’re not going to convince them of anything.

But in a media environment that’s been saturated with militant anti-communism for at least the last 70 years, you’re also going to find plenty of people who regurgitate bad arguments because they’ve passively assimilated them from the background noise and never really dug into the matter. If you get them interested in digging a little deeper, you might get somewhere.

And of course – especially online – there are always the folks reading, listening to, or watching the conversation but not participating. They might be closer to that second guy, but they have enough doubts about a bad argument to not voice it themselves. They might be persuadable even if you can’t reach the first two.