First, I love a 40k quote. Second I haven’t sat down to read the article yet, so please take all I say with that in mind. I want to respond to your point about them not having multpile perspectives.

I think its harder than that. I don’t think its everyone voting on that side of politics but I recognise the type you’re talking about. I think those people don’t have any respect for people they percieve as lefty liberals; or greenies; or hippies; lazy pencil pushers; i suppose its whatever loose and lazy label suits their rhetorical needs in the moment.

And thats the key, all those terms are used to flatten their opponents into these two dimensional constructs, a soft dehumanisation, which they can then dismiss and disregard.

Whether the lack of respect is learned behaviour through local community, mass media, or both its the case that it allows them to dehumanise any people that loosely fit these categories and therefore before that person has even spoken to them, they’ve dismissed anything they’re saying.

So to refer to your proposed solution, to be able to first show them the ‘Abyss’ their confidence in their lack of respect needs to be shaken and broken, or someone that fits a mould they already do respect. Perhaps for Pauline Hanson personally that might’ve been Paul Hogan, considering her comments last week.

So the two options are finding an influencer that doesn’t change their dehumanising attitudes, whichbis probably the easier but less sustainable road, or breaking their self confidence in the mental barriers they’ve erected, a complicated but sustainable option.

For the second option, I think the experience of the eventual majority acceptance of the queer community to a large degree by so many is the case to point to.

Maybe one of many of these cases that have been turned into movies might be Kinky Boots. A story where the straight owner of the boot company fails over and again at being the masculine success story while being pulled out of the abyss again and again by the happily feminine gay man. But theres thousands of these stories in real life, I’m not sure how much of Kinky Boots is real, certainly some of it is.