Can we reliably read thoughts based on our imagining of his past thoughts?

When I imagine his inner thoughts when listening to the clip, it sounds clearly like joking to me. Without any backtracking.

We should not rely on imagining other people's inner thoughts... Not a very sound method.

It is obvious that much of this speech was sarcastic. To the point that I would say that it requires willful ignorance to say otherwise. Take for instance:

> And I see, like, 'kikes are ruining everything'. [laughs] Good—good—good job... You're making your movement look like you're not full of Nazis! Great! Bravo!"

Is it your genuine belief that the statement "You're making your movement look like you're not full of Nazis" was meant non-sarcastically? Do you genuinely believe that Benjamin stated that statements like "kikes are ruining everything" among the Alt-Right makes the group not look like Nazis?

Again, to say "yes" to these questions requires willful ignorance in my opinion.

I agree, if not sarcasm, "kikes are ruining everything" was clearly intended as mockery. I listened only the to the first part of the video, and then grabbed quotes from the transcript. If I'd understood the context, I wouldn't have included that one as an example.

Analogies are flawed, by their nature. In this case, we don't have a clear case of X, followed bu backtracking and claims of not really saying X. Instead, we have the same X, that some people interpret as malice and hate speech, and other people interpret as using alt-righters own bad language back at them.

"You see Praetor, we don't know that he didn't think a bad thought."

This insistence on attributing maximum malice is part of the problem.