It’s a spectacular trick to get someone to amplify your message when they disagree with you vehemently, describe you as an idiot and decry you as dangerous. But that is exactly what some conservatives have managed to do.

I had been noticing this sleight of hand for a while but it was finally crystallised last week after the climate zealot and federal politician Craig Kelly declared in a widely reported speech that we shouldn’t worry about climate change and that, rather than being the cause of global warming, “fossil fuels actually protect us”.

While this statement is incendiary, and stoked the outrage Kelly no doubt expected, there is nothing new or strange about it.

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Kelly has made extreme statements like this his stock-in-trade and you could substitute his speech for those by Tony “climate change itself is probably doing good” Abbott or Barnaby “people in the Kmart don’t care about the Paris agreement” Joyce.

But what is strange, and what’s so damn smart, is how widely these comments have been repeated and amplified by the very people who oppose that message. To put it simply – a lot of progressives are being played for mugs.

Imagine if Kelly, Abbott or Joyce sidled up to one of your more left-leaning friends and said to them: “Hello there, I’m going to make a speech and it’s really important to me that the message gets out. Be a chum and share it all over your social media feeds and tell your friends about it.”

Your left-leaning friends would tell them to go to hell. But then they do exactly that when left to their own devices.

It’s shared with commentary, usually “this person is an idiot”, but the claims are still being amplified. Polarising figures win the numbers game almost by default – and not just with climate.

Take the time Pauline Hanson wore a burqa into parliament as an example. I would wager that her actions did not surprise the majority of her supporters, and that it upset even fewer than that. They know Hanson’s game – that’s what attracted a lot of them to her in the first place. She loses nothing from the outrage and gains everything.

The media firestorm after this stunt saw her views commentated on, shared and picked over for weeks. Those who supported or hated her continued to do so. But there would have been a small handful of people who were invigorated by the outrage – and that helped her. That’s why she looked so happy despite the protestations and condemnation from both sides of parliament that day – it’s all oxygen.

There have been numerous studies, the most shocking around anti-vaccination claims, that suggest attempting to “set the record straight” is actually the same as spreading the false claims yourself.

The researchers found that, despite their intention to combat anti-vaccine lies, “over-time exposure to these interventions strengthened participants’ belief in those lies and falsehoods”.

Despite advertising refuting anti-vax myths, the researchers found that people remembered the myths, not the refutations. Think about that next time you repeat something said by someone you disagree with.

It also suits polarising conservatives to be opposed by a group they steadfastly insist on portraying as the “liberal elite”, “latte elite” or inhabitants of the “quinoa corridor”.

The anger around Kelly’s statements creates an illusion that there is still a debate going on. That there are still even sides.

In his book Insane Clown President, journalist Matt Taibbi described the way Donald Trump would stoke outrage and use the media to not only amplify his polarising statements but use their reporting to portray himself as a victim.

This perception was further reinforced each time media figures, celebrities, or anyone else he chose to describe as “elites” attempted to criticise him.

In fact, as Taibbi points out, “[Trump] made his campaign into a class conflict and he used the media as the representatives of the class enemy, because they were the ones in the room. It was a brilliant strategy.”

These are reasons enough to stop but there is one more, and it’s the most insidious of all.

The anger around Kelly’s statements creates an illusion that there is still a debate going on. That there are still even sides. That climate change isn’t an issue that has united farmers, firefighters, surf lifesavers, soldiers, tourism operators, scientists and most of the rest of the country.

This false perception is helped when Labor’s rising star Sam Crosby comes out to debate Kelly’s comments. Ridiculous ideas should be laughed at and mocked, not debated and amplified.

The Overton window is a well-known phenomenon in communications and political strategy that basically says there is a “window” of ideas that are acceptable to the public.

Everything inside the window is normal. Everything outside the window is radical, ridiculous or unthinkable. But that window changes – during the US election Vox did an explainer of how the window works and what Trump-style politics had done to debate in the US.

“The easiest way to move that window was to force people to consider ideas at the extremes, as far away from the window as possible,” Carlos Maza wrote. “Because forcing people to consider an unthinkable idea, even if they rejected it, would make all less extreme ideas seem acceptable by comparison.”

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By saying extreme things, these polarising figures shift what is “normal”. Their statements are the new extreme, making what was once extreme seem reasonable. And if you’re repeating their lines, you’re helping them.

If we boost Kelly’s assertion that we don’t need to worry about climate change and that fossil fuels protect us, rather than endangering us, we are messing with the dials.

People who say polarising things are not stupid. They are very far from it. When they make statements that seem stupid, they’re doing it for a good reason. There is a purpose and a strategy that is well thought out – and it’s working.

Don’t amplify things you don’t agree with. Don’t help people who look to reduce serious issues like climate change. Resist the urge, even if it feels good.

By all means refute, but treat these people like Voldemort from Harry Potter – they shall not be named, their claims shall not be repeated.

That’s the way to really hurt them.

• Simon Black is a campaigner at Greenpeace