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I just cannot see the difference between banning those 'far right' groups while allowing 'far left' which are basically the same. The red flag, pictures of Mao

• matt4077 9y ago
  When did you last see a rally of people with posters of Stalin marching through the street? What's the left-wing equivalent of the hundreds of armed militias in the US?
  • gedy 9y ago
    > What's the left-wing equivalent of the hundreds of armed militias in the US? Maybe Berkeley? The Portland riots? That was frightening behavior.
    • random023987 9y ago
      > Maybe Berkeley? The Portland riots? That was frightening behavior. You mean Antifa? Those aren't leftists, those are anarchists. They believe that government is incapable of protecting against fascism, and are instead committing vigilante violence. This doesn't represent the "left", who would instead fight fascism through constitutional and judicial protections. They only thing Antifa has in common with the left, is they both hate fascism. But they have completely different views on the role of government.
      • dragonwriter 9y ago
        > You mean Antifa? Those aren't leftists, those are anarchists Antifa isn't all anarchists, those that are are mostly specifically anarchocommunists, and anarchocommunists are emphatically leftists.
        • random023987 9y ago
          > anarchocommunists are emphatically leftists Perhaps I should have been more specific, and clarify that the antifa values, goals, and belief systems (thank you for the term) anarchocommunisism is completely incompatible with the democratic-social capitalist hybrid model espoused by the contemporary American political left.
      • s_m_t 9y ago
        You could just as well say communists aren't on the left because communism is supposed to be a stateless society. If we're going to stupidly map all of politics onto one dimension we have to apply our reasoning equally stupid to both sides.
      • laretluval 9y ago
        Antifa may not have the same explicit political program as the "mainstream" left but when street fighting happens, they defend the left, not the right.
        • random023987 9y ago
          > Antifa may not have the same explicit political program as the "mainstream" left but when street fighting happens, they defend the left, not the right. You mean they attack the right. It's right there in the name, Anti-Fascists! The enemy of my enemy isn't necessarily my friend. They aren't out there advocating transgender rights or arguing for paid family leave. They are there to clash with Nazis.
  • StanislavPetrov 9y ago
    >What's the left-wing equivalent of the hundreds of armed militias in the US? Only a fool tries to draw a distinction between hooded thugs that advocate violence against people they disagree with. Unfortunately there are people openly calling (and committing) violence from all across the political spectrum. https://www.halseynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/antifa.jpg https://www.halseynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/antifa...
  • gluelogic 9y ago
    I actually remember seeing recent images of this very thing. If you image search for "2017 May Day protests stalin" you will see many different photographs, but to be fair it does look like the same single poster in all of the different photos. https://redyouthuk.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/may-day-2012-2.jpg?w=900 https://redyouthuk.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/may-day-2012-...
  • reaperducer 9y ago
    Seattle, 2011. But there's probably been more. I don't hang out at these kinds of events.
• random023987 9y ago
  > The red flag, pictures of Mao, Stalin Where do you live that you see people marching in the street waving flags of communist dictatorships and ranting against immigrants and... whatever the leftist version of anti-Semitism is... maybe... anti-vaccination? (that's sorta equally irrational)
  • Grue3 9y ago
    I live in Russia, that stuff happens all the time. >whatever the leftist version of anti-Semitism is... Like the others said, it's just anti-Semitism. National Bolshevik Party is a good example.
  • xienze 9y ago
    The left is very much pro-Palestine, anti-Israel. You must not be paying attention. And if you want to see Communist flags, go to any Bay Area protest. There's always Communist hangers-on in attendance.
    • random023987 9y ago
      > The left is very much [...] anti-Israel. That's funny, someone should tell that to המחנה הציוני
    • 0x4f3759df 9y ago
      The man on the street might be pro-Palestine, but all the politicians Left and Right are pro-Israel
  • legostormtroopr 9y ago
    > whatever the leftist version of anti-Semitism is I believe that's just anti-Semetism. https://jewishjournal.org/2017/07/13/anti-semitism-and-anti-zionism-collide-at-chicago-dyke-march/ https://jewishjournal.org/2017/07/13/anti-semitism-and-anti-...
  • jquery 9y ago
    They don't rant against immigrants, they rant against the bourgeois. And it's not a theoretical boogeyman, my wife's parents suffered greatly in China by having their property taken from them, a small factory they had worked hard for decades to build. To this day she cannot talk about it publicly for fear of what would happen to her parents.
• sigmar 9y ago
  >I just cannot see the difference between banning those 'far right' groups while allowing 'far left' which are basically the same. Can I ask what websites/pages you are speaking of specifically? I think any group promoting genocide should be removed and haven't seen any liberal equivalents of the daily stormer.
  • stale2002 9y ago
    I can give some. Reddit r/socialism and r/Anarchism are very pro violence against anybody who is not far left. They support violence against the people who are supporting our current "Capitalist regime". As they like to say "the liberals get the bullet too".
    • Apocryphon 9y ago
      The practical difference between the two is that revolutionary leftist groups in the U.S. have been essentially toothless since the '60s, (rowdy black bloc protesters and extremist SUV-dealership torching ecologists aside) whereas since the '90s there's been an uptick of organized right-wing extremism in the form of militia movements, white supremacist groups, etc. So one cluster is a group of internet tough guys, and the other cluster are internet tough guys who may or may not be actually affiliated with armed militants. This is my perception of the current situation, definitely could be helped by a fact check of FBI or other law enforcement stats, though.
• ucarion 9y ago
  You surely do see the difference between "far right" groups and "far left" ones. There are important differences. America has a history of white supremacy, and so Americans are rightly very concerned about its reemergence into the mainstream. The extreme left does not have white supremacist tendencies; the extreme right does. If the extreme left were trolling across the Internet at the scale the extreme right does, and if this leftist trolling were leading distraught men into plowing cars into crowds of fellow citizens, we would rightly be more concerned about extreme-left Internet groups. But today, it is the extreme right that does this, not the extreme left. Far-right would-be terrorists are of greater concern and numbers than their far-left counterparts. The far-left does have fascist tendencies -- I went to UC Berkeley, I've seen it first-hand -- but it simply isn't at the scale the far-right is currently at. This difference of scale is very relevant, and is part of what escalates society's response to the threat. But I do agree with your sub-point that there's an asymmetry between reactions to Stalin and Hitler. There's probably some historical explanation; disgust toward historical figures is a socially acquired reaction. Excluding countries with special relationships to these men (i.e. Germany, Russia), it would make more sense to treat both with equal disdain and mockery.
  • AckSyn 9y ago
    This is some serious level concern trolling going on. They're both equally repugnant regardless of any "history of white supremacy" and none should be tolerated. That's where it should sit. Remove the extremism from the media e.g. antifa and nazis, who really share the same kinds of hatred, bigotry, and intolerance they just don't realize it. What you're left with is sports, the weather, and the occasional crime. But that doesn't sell airtime, does it?
  • Yetanfou 9y ago
    Plowing cars into groups of people is mostly done by people following an ideology which is not generally considered to be "left" or "right" as those labels are not used to describe religiously-inspired movements. In the 2017 EU Terrorism Report [1] - The EU being where I'm based and as such where I have most experience in these matters - done by Europol it is shown that the "left" is a much bigger threat than the "right", with 27 terror attacks executed by "left-wing" terrorists versus 1 attack by "right-wing" terrorists. As an aside, "nationalist" groups are responsible for 99 attacks. Islamic terrorists are responsible for the majority of deadly attacks (135 out of 142 were killed by jihadis). As to what concerns the amount of "trolling" (in which I include breaking in to sites and downloading their data for later perusal, defacing sites, DDoS-attacking sites and similar actions) done on the 'net I'd say that, at least in Europe, the "left" is far more active than the "right", partly due to the fact that the "left" is better organised. One of the reasons for their better organisation is that "left-wing" organisations are given far more leeway than "right-wing" organisations, something which is related to the difference in reactions to "left-wing" icons (both the older ones - Lenin, Stalin, Mao et al - as well as the newer versions - Castro, Chavez, etc) versus "right-wing" icons (mostly Hitler and those around him). Public support for the latter is a punishable offence in some countries and frowned upon in most. Public support for the former is no problem whatsoever and done quite openly. I've never seen people carrying banners with the portrait of Hitler, I've seen plenty carrying portraits of Marx/Lenin/Stalin and Mao. I've seen banners telling us to follow the good example set by Chavez in Venezuela. I've seen a book fair which has "Lenin's corner" as a regular feature. Not some niche left-wing book fair either, the biggest one in the country and the focal point for the cultural intelligentsia. Could you imagine a book fair having "Hitler's corner"? [1] https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/2017-eu-terrorism-report-142-failed-foiled-and-completed-attacks-1002-arrests-and-142-victims-died https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/2017-eu-terroris...
• jordigh 9y ago
  Why the hell is this about forming teams, one on the left, and one the right, and why are Stalin and Hitler on opposing teams? They formed a fucking alliance, fer crissakes, until one of them decided to betray the other. No honour amongst thieves. A mass murderer is a mass murderer, regardless what they say they are. Hell, Hitler said he was forming a socialist worker's party, which sounds a lot like a dictatorship of the proletariat. It sounds like the left. Why aren't we saying that Hitler is "extreme left" just like Stalin? There's something different between the political speech I grew up with in Mexico and what I hear now. Pretty much every Mexican distrusts the government, it's widely acknowledged that all politicians are corrupt, because we see corruption in the police force as a routine, daily thing, and we draw our team lines differently: the government versus the people. Not left vs right, but those with power versus those without. El pueblo unido jamás será vencido; no pasarán; these are our slogans. There's something weird and pernicious about the way this left-vs-right discourse is unfolding in the English internet, and I see it leaking into other places. I don't like this game where the goal is to find how the opposite side is totally equal to this side and we have to tally the score to see who is more extreme.
  • AOsborn 9y ago
    I accept the basis of your argument - that point scoring is unhelpful. However, I feel you're missing the point when discussing censorship. If censorship is to be justly applied, there must be some objective measure of what is offensive - which then must be applied equally regardless of political alignment. This is definitely not happening at the moment. Personally, I think a better perspective is to reduce and/or avoid censorship altogether, especially as far as internet infrastructure is concerned. Corporate entities shouldn't be enforcing the views of their stakeholders on the individual. Free speech is free speech, even if I don't like what you're saying.
    • mirimir 9y ago
      > Personally, I think a better perspective is to reduce and/or avoid censorship altogether, especially as far as internet infrastructure is concerned. Yes! Systems ought to be designed such that censorship is impossible. Not just that we won't censor because we're so liberal and all. No, just plain uncensorable by design. Edit: language