remember when mandela actually became president of south africa after spending 27 years in prison, he made a speech and said something like “the boers are no longer our enemy, they are our countrymen.”

And then what happened?

But if one can reach out to them, talk to them and get them to listen and hear

Facts Don’t Change Minds – Social Networks, Group Dialogue, and Stories Do

The best way to break someone out of a partisan media death spiral is to cut the power cord to their television.

I absolutely agree that there are a host of people in a gray zone of misinformation who can be pulled back from the brink. But I'm not multi-billion dollar media mogul capable of saturating their every waking hour with counter-programming. And I'd be foolish to assert I could undo in a few short dialogues what they've ingested after decades.

If you look at what the Feds did with TikTok, that's the real working strategy. Cut people off from a contrary media diet. Shut down radio stations. Starve out newspapers. De-tenure professors with unorthodox historical bias. K-Street Project any lobbyist who won't exclusively back your people. Purge political parties of anyone sympathetic to rival views. Blacklist the Dixie Chicks and get Donahue fired.

That's how you shape the public discourse.

Not by politely asking your 60-year-old uncle to turn down the Michael Savage Radio Hour for a minute and reconsider his white nationalist views.

“the boers are no longer our enemy, they are our countrymen.”

South African here... a disturbingly large proportion of the "boers" don't see it that way - and it's been more than thirty years.