Last week, Heineken released an ad that was hailed as the “anti-Pepsi,” i.e., the “right” way for an ad to tackle politics. It shows three pairs of people with vastly different views: a man who describes himself as “new right” and claims “feminism today is an excuse for man-hating” paired with an ardently feminist black woman, a transphobic man paired with a trans woman, and a climate change denier paired with a man who says “we’re not taking enough action on climate change.” The pairs aren’t told of their opposing views at first. They build a bar together and answer icebreaker questions like “describe yourself in five adjectives.” Then the big reveal: the videos of them discussing their views are projected onto the wall. A voice comes over the loudspeaker: “You may go or you can stay and discuss your differences over a beer.” All three pairs stay. The message is that if only we could sit down (preferably over a Heineken) and get to know each other, then we would see there’s more uniting us than dividing us. The Internet lit up, mostly with praise of the ad, saying Heineken had shown Pepsi how it’s done.

Except they hadn’t. For one, the Heineken ad commits the same sin as the Pepsi ad: acting like its product can solve the world’s problems. But it has another major flaw: false equivalence, also known as false balance.

False equivalence is giving equal weight to two opinions when, in fact, the two opinions are not equal. False balance occurs when journalists commit false equivalence, overcompensating in an attempt to seem unbiased. A great example of false balance comes in media coverage of climate change. While the scientific community is near-unanimous in its assertion that man-made climate change is real and a threat, coverage of climate change often gives equal weight to climate-change deniers. On Earth Day, Bill Nye appeared on CNN, alongside an environmental activist and a climate change skeptic. He called out the network, saying, "much as I love CNN, you’re doing a disservice by having one climate change skeptic, and not 97 or 98 scientists or engineers concerned about climate change.”

The Heineken ad does the same thing. It gives equal weight to the climate change denier, but the thing is, these two men aren’t just having a disagreement. One is denying facts. You cannot treat two viewpoints as equally valid when one is willfully ignoring scientific consensus.

This is even more of a problem with the other two pairs in the ad, where their “differences” are about the rights of one of them. The man paired with the feminist describes himself as “new right”—what’s been called “alt-light”—and says “women need to remember that we need you to bear our children.” I felt creeped out listening to him. But apparently, the black, feminist woman simply needs to hear him out over a beer, and it’ll be fine. Same with the trans woman. She and the transphobic man don’t merely have differences of opinion; they’re not debating healthcare reform or charter schools. The transphobic man does not believe that people like her exist.

Both she and the feminist are made to feel like if they don’t “stay and discuss their differences over a beer,” they’re bad people unwilling to engage with the other side. But what if they legitimately felt threatened by the other person? If I were paired with a man like the anti-feminist, I would feel very uncomfortable. When the pairs are first introduced, they face each other as music reminiscent of a Wild-West-shootout plays, as if they’re on equal footing and are both fighting to convince the other. Except a woman does not need to be convinced that her sole job is to bear children.

(It’s worth noting that the transphobic man does seem to come around, even asking for the woman’s phone number so he can discuss more with her another time. I won’t deny this positive aspect of the ad. But we don’t know how much he is truly convinced, nor do we know if the pairings that weren’t chosen for the final commercial had such civil conversations.)

One of my friends, who’s Jewish, said she wants someone to make a parody of the ad in which the pairing is a proud Jew and an avowed neo-Nazi. Would we consider these merely “differences” that need to be “discussed”? No, the neo-Nazi is clearly in the wrong, and the Jew is obviously going to feel threatened. At least I hope this is what we’d think. After all, CNN was criticized last year for using the on-screen banner “Alt-Right Founder Questions If Jews Are People" in a segment that went on to debate whether Trump needed to formally denounce supporters like alt-right (read: white nationalist) leader Richard Spencer.

In our current political climate, we frequently run the danger of normalizing extreme views. It’s seen as stifling dialogue and staying in a “liberal bubble” if people protest having Spencer speak at a college. But Spencer does not represent a normal conservative viewpoint. It’s one thing to invite a Republican thinker to debate tax policy. It’s quite another to invite a man who greets his followers with a Nazi salute and “Hail Trump!” and calls for “peaceful ethnic cleansing.”

This sort of false equivalence helped get Trump elected. His statements like “Mexican immigrants are drug dealers and rapists” and “women should be punished for having abortions” were treated as ordinary policy statements. He was allowed to constantly share blatant lies. His ridiculous, unfounded claims, like that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, are treated as valid accusations that need to be investigated.

Now, I know what you may be thinking: well, the people in this ad aren’t neo-Nazis. No. But the problem is, we have to draw a line somewhere. There have to be certain, fundamental values we use as a baseline. LGBTQ people are people. Women deserve the same rights as men. Climate change is real. If we don’t agree on basic facts, if we treat intolerance as a mere difference of opinion, we will never make progress.

I don’t know what that line is. And I’ll admit, just like normalizing extreme views is a slippery slope, so is deciding which views are up for debate. But we can’t just ignore this problem.

I should also add, this doesn’t preclude seeing people with opposing views as people. Part of the Heineken ad’s message is that we’ve all had struggles, and we need to be compassionate even toward people with vastly different, even bigoted, views. I agree. I’m from a conservative family and a conservative hometown, and I used to be right-wing myself; I often hear loved ones say intolerant things or deny scientific facts like climate change. I do think that peaceful dialogue is the way to change minds, and I do think we have to see where the other side is coming from. But that doesn’t mean we then have to treat bigotry or denial of facts as equally legitimate viewpoints, or treat something like women's equality as up for debate.

I think Heineken had the best of intentions with this ad. I don’t think they were really trying to argue that the alt-right’s beliefs are justified or that climate change isn’t real. However, the ad made it seem that way. While, ultimately, the transphobic man was won over, the climate change denier was not, and all we get out of the new-right man is a toast to “smash the patriarchy” that, honestly, felt mocking to me. Heineken could have made the ad’s focus about unlearning harmful views. Instead they chose to present those harmful views as simple disagreements. They made it seem like both sides needed to be won over.

In striving to be “balanced” and to “see the other side,” they gave way to a false equivalence that has become far too common, largely thanks to Trump. We were unprepared for a political figure who lies so brazenly, who cares so little for basic social mores. We didn’t realize that some views are so egregious that they cannot be presented in a balanced way, that they deserve to be called out even by an impartial press. And now we need to define what those views are.