From The Reactionary Playbook: Playing Devil’s Advocate

When you’ve ever been in a discussion with a privileged reactionary about any social justice topic online or offline, you might have come across one that used the phrase of “playing devil’s advocate” to present a counter argument to you pointing out social injustice, oppression or likewise under the cover of “just trying to add nuance” or “see both sides” of the issue. And as rational and nuanced as this may appear — or at least as rational and nuanced they want it to appear — there’s everything wrong with it.

Origin

During the canonization process employed by the Roman Catholic Church, the Promoter of the Faith (Latin: promotor fidei), popularly known as the Devil’s advocate (Latin: advocatus diaboli), was a canon lawyer appointed by Church authorities to argue against the canonization of a candidate.[3] It was this person’s job to take a sceptical view of the candidate’s character, to look for holes in the evidence, to argue that any miracles attributed to the candidate were fraudulent, and so on. The Devil’s advocate opposed God’s advocate (Latin: advocatus Dei; also known as the Promoter of the Cause), whose task was to make the argument in favor of canonization.
- Wikipedia

Common Usage

This is of course not how we use it in every day language. But I’ll let the dictionary speak for me, because after all, the type of person abusing “devil’s advocate” as introduced earlier will stake the validity of their worldview on dictionary definitions.

someone who pretends, in an argument or discussion, to be against an idea orplan that a lot of people support, in order to make people discuss and consider it in more detail
- Camebridge Dictionary

a person who advocates an opposing or unpopular cause for the sake of argument or to expose it to a thorough examination.
- Dictionary.com

a person who upholds what is regarded as the wrong side or an indefensible cause, perversely or for argument’s sake

If you play devil’s advocate in a discussion or debate, you express an opinion which you may not agree with but which is very different to what other people have been saying, in order to make the argument more interesting.
-Collin’s Dictionary

So, to sum up, playing “devil’s advocate” means going against a majority, popular or established position for one reason or another.

Wrong On Every Level

The problem with using this in any discussion of topics concerning social justice, oppression and similar is obvious now:
They are not contradicting a majority, nor a popular or established position. If the position they were contradicting like that was any of those, they’d actually be a minority expressing a fringe position. But they don’t. They defend oppressive systems, concepts and/or people of privilege, which by definition hold the power over the narrative and people already. So before we even get into the moral aspect of it, they even use it wrong by the definition of their own dictionaries, as they don’t represent a position they don’t agree with, they really just present their actual position.

The moral side of it, of course, is even more damning. If you use your time, energy and — most importantly — your privileged position to prop up the oppressive system, find excuses and justification for its existence and proliferation and steal the time and energy of those you “discuss” with you act as an agent of this oppressive system. Even worse if the people whose time and energy you’re wasting in your ultimately unnecessary act of obedience to the oppressive system are people you hold privilege over or are the ones oppressed by the system. You’re not playing “devil’s advocate”, because you’re not defending a position you don’t agree with, you are merely repeating your privileged and oppressive opinion while claiming to stand of the marginalized position, while doing the exact opposite. The hegemonial system does not need “devil’s advocates” and you’re not defending a fringe position, you’re defending the hegemony.

In this, it follows the age old tradition of reactionary rhetoric to represent the powers that be in a way that tries to cover up that fact and instead guise itself as a marginalized underdog position which needs to be given a platform as not to endanger an alleged balance or nuance in the given discussion. No one will try harder to be seen as the victim than the perpetrators.

(There was a link to a piece by Richard Stallman here, but since he turned out to be a major creep, I removed it. Just so you know and don’t feel gaslit when you can’t find it again)

Bonus: Meme!

Image Description: Tweet by Antifa McMuffin Prepper (@BadBunnyTwitch)
Hi! I’m a white dude who likes to play devil’s advocate by other people’s struggles are theoretical to me. It’s fun to debate ur rights! I’m here to exhaust u so I can stop progress & maintain the status quo, which serves me. Im uninterested in learning; ur frustation is my goal