5 ms·
Why is every article about the right so negative? Soros is rarely derided on HN like this
by JBReefer 10y ago
Why is every article about the right so negative? Soros is rarely derided on HN like this
- jnordwick 10y agoThis year it is especially weird considering it is Hillary that is really making a killing from the billionaire club and massively outspending Trump too in virtually every market.
- acdha 10y agoIt's not “the right” but a specific subset characterized kind of fact-free propaganda and bigotry characterizing the alt-right. You can easily find people from the more intellectually-coherent portions of the right who also aren't happy with that type of attack, would prefer to be talking about actual issues, and don't appreciate being grouped in with a bunch of self-described shitposters. If Soros was found to be funding an equivalent group – maybe PETA or one of the black bloc groups, but there's really nothing comparable in both popularity and derangement currently – you would find similar disapproval for the same reasons. We don't because he's not the monster under the bed claimed by the less factually constrained.
- gozur88 10y agoThe fact that you don't know about something doesn't make other people "factually constrained". >That funding comes in addition to more than $33 million in grants to the Black Lives Matter movement from top Democratic Party donor George Soros through his Open Society Foundations, as well as grant-making from the Center for American Progress. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/16/black-lives-matter-cashes-100-million-liberal-foun/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/16/black-lives-...
- astazangasta 10y agoYou shouldn't quote the Washington Times without doing your homework: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/19/no-george-soros-didn-t-give-33-million-to-blacklivesmatter.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/19/no-george-s...
- gozur88 10y agoYou impugn a source and respond with a link to The Daily Beast? Isn't that special. If you'd read the article you linked you'd see, after much hemming, hawing, and redefining terms they admit their own headline is wrong.
- astazangasta 10y agoI did read the article; where do you see anywhere in there $33 million being given to Black Lives Matters? The claim is specious.
- gozur88 10y agoNo it isn't. The article just tries a little mental flimflam with "umbrella organizations". If you think about that for a minute it's just a no-true-Scotsman argument.
- narrowrail 10y agoNear as I can tell, Soros founded the Open Society Foundation (OSF) in 1993, and Soros is not involved in the day to day operations. The OSF, in turn, gave a grant to BLM. The way the washtimes puts it (and Limbaugh etc.), one might think Soros himself gave money directly to BLM, but that's not the case. There is more nuance and context that is relevant, and it is a distinction with a difference.
- gozur88 10y agoSo your contention is Soros founded OSF with a boatload of money but has no influence on where the money goes? I can get you a bridge for cheap. One thing I've found disturbing about this election is the extent to which Democrats can stare blatant corruption in the face and not see it.
- astazangasta 10y ago>Now, as The Daily Beast reported last week, “Black Lives Matter” is an umbrella term for a decentralized network of everything from blogs to in-person meet-ups—like movie nights or lectures—to protests to Facebook pages, making the task of pinpointing the number to $33 million impossible. This is the only use of the word "umbrella", here. It does not describe an "umbrella organization", a master control system. It describes the absence of central organization, an anarchist model of organizing, which, by the way, has been the favored method of organizing on the left for several decades. It is pointing out that it is impossible to give a grant to a group of people who lack central organizations. Some money might have gone to groups that are working on issues that BLM activists might care about - but $33 million has not been granted to BLM activists. If you believe otherwise, show us the list of grants.
- acdha 10y agoastazangasta already addressed the choice of sources but there's also a problem with the way you casually equate a group you don't like with the one you're supporting: People can legitimately have different opinions about Black Lives Matter but there's no question that it's a real political movement with leaders, stated positions, etc. with many supporters around the country. Whether or not you agree with their positions or think that they're taking the best actions, that's a very different thing from a PAC some rich guy created to spew propaganda memes online.
- throwanem 10y agoWait, are you getting the idea that the Pepe meme's current usage is astroturf? Because the Pepe meme's current usage is not astroturf. Palmer Luckey is jumping on a bandwagon here, not creating one.
- acdha 10y agoNot saying it's AstroTurf but rather than it contributes nothing of value to public discourse. There are no ideas, no facts, etc. – only hate. (Again, to be clear, I'm also not saying that this is true of all right-wingers – it'd be a huge step up if, say, he'd used that money to promote libertarian ideals, given a podium to a theologian or nat-sec hawk, etc. so there'd be something to talk about and maybe learn from. This is just the intellectual equivalent of trying to live on a diet of cotton candy.)
- throwanem 10y agoWell, if it's intellectual content you're after, the political environment of the United States in 2016 is a bad place to look in general; rare Pepes are just the cherry on top. (Oh, I suppose Gary Johnson must have a thought or two bouncing around in that rather square head of his, but he's so completely bereft of anything resembling rhetorical skill as to be not worth voting for even to make a point - can you honestly imagine the man at a UNSC meeting, or representing our nation to others? One shudders!) I think that writing off the Pepe meme thing as "hate" and leaving it there is convenient, comforting, superficial, and insufficient to capture the essence of the matter. Since I no longer police my acquaintances for political compatibility or spend all my time inside a filter bubble, I've had the interesting opportunity to get to know a few Pepe posters. They're remarkable people, and from what I've been able to gather, fairly typical: young enough to enjoy drama and feel it strongly in their lives, thoughtful even if they haven't had the time or the scope to develop a broad and nuanced understanding of politics and ideologies, and very angry at the progressive left in power for what they perceive, I think accurately, to be its efforts to circumscribe for ideological reasons their thoughts, beliefs, words, actions, and opportunities. Pepe posters feel such effrontery is best met with loud, brash, insulting, and unstinting defiance. I feel it's best met with calm, thoughtful, reasoned, and discursive defiance. But I can and do respect the effectiveness of what they do, and they conversely seem to find it useful having an old guy around who's read books and thought thoughts they haven't yet found time for. It is, of course, your prerogative to respond in whatever fashion you please to this analysis. I'm not asking you to feel sympathy for Pepe posters. They wouldn't want it even if you were inclined to extend it. I'm just providing a bit of insight into why they do what they do. Whether you're interested in understanding your political opponents, or would rather simply deride them in ignorance because they do not believe or behave as you do, is entirely for you to decide.
- DominikR 10y agoOh, so these Trump supporters are creating deranged art, therefore they are equally deranged themselves? What is your proposal on how to deal with them? Burn their books and art publicly?
- acdha 10y agoI have no way of knowing whether they truly believe what they're saying or simply is using it as a political weapon, but that doesn't matter because in either case the correct thing to do is to reject it as unserious. If they choose to spend their time circulating white supremacist memes, that's a shame but we don't need to censor it — only refuse to play the false equivalence game.
- gozur88 10y agoBecause the people who read this site generally lean leftward.
- flukus 10y agoDo they? If I had to characterize the political leanings of the majority of software devs it would be libertarian.
- astazangasta 10y agoYou can be a left-libertarian or a right-libertarian. Left vs. Right is about whether you favor the interests of the people or of the elites; a libertarian is usually someone who doesn't particularly care for a strong government. Says nothing about whether they are generally opposed to elite power.
- tnones 10y agoA better model is that "left" opposes oppression and favors care, empathy and equity, while "right" opposes barbarism and favors loyalty, family and just rewards. Most right wingers would e.g. see the dominance of left-wing thought in academia and entertainment as its own form of elite power, an unearned and unwarranted influence not based on merit, which only pays lips service to its own ideals of rationality and impartiality.
- drewrv 10y agoThis isn't the right, it's white supremacy.
- leurfete 10y agoCan you back that up with anything specific: evidence, examples...?
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoThere's not a lot of difference between the two.
- icanhackit 10y ago> Why is every article about the right so negative? To paraphrase Noam Chomsky (IIRC) in many respects the left in the US is equivalent to the center right in most other highly developed countries. HN has an international following. Combine US-based "left" with the rest of the world and you'll have a strong leaning away from the extreme right. Add to that, Trump comes across as technology illiterate, sometimes hostile [1], which goes against the grain of the average HN reader. [1] “We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people.”