@futurebird What I tend to do in this kind of case, is challenge them on it - when someone makes a concrete claim like this, that opens the claim up for validation. Crucially I won't be debating them, I will be pressuring them instead, and making them look foolish.

So I might ask them "when did that ever happen? can you link me to an article about it?", and continue to push for them to tell me a specific case where this happened, *any* case.

If they tell me "do your own research" or something like that, I prod them further - "if it's so obviously true, then surely it should be easy for you to link me to an article? Just one link is enough"; basically reframe it so that refusing the request would be obviously unreasonable.

Usually one of two things will happen: either they start backpedaling and trying to exit the conversation, or they come up with a case that they *think* meets the requirements, but doesn't - usually once they link an article, even if a misleading one from a fascist rag, it provides enough information to dig and find the real story, and confront them with how they're wrong about what happened.

Typically, after a few cycles of someone trying to do this and either backpedalling or being confronted, they start mellowing and becoming less argumentative, more critical.

It's not the most pleasant way, and it takes a couple rounds to really stick, but I've found it to work pretty well. Results may vary depending on how you're perceived - I tend to take on a very overpowering attitude in these conversations to drive up the pressure.

I don't know exactly how different types of privilege affect this approach. Having a rainbow flag in my display name doesn't seem to have interfered with it, but I also don't really have more data than my own experiences.