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What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

• jothezero 7y ago
  Is this really what hacker news has become ... ?
• DArcMattr 7y ago
  ... Then everybody clapped.
• bugdisp 7y ago
  There is at least one other non-tech related article like this (with questionable sources) of a similar subject posted at the same time with a similar number of upvotes.
• JCSato 7y ago
  Yeah, that happened.
• fzeroracer 7y ago
  There are bits of this story which simply don't add up or end up feeling quite embellished. The reaction from the principle seems quite far-fetched and the ending feels like it was meant as a call back to the beginning rather than something that actually happened. Regardless though, this story is generally correct in how the alt-right appeals to younger and more vulnerable individuals. They tend to recruit through avenues like video games, discord and so forth. A lot of memes can also help drag people into the fold with not-so-subtle racism and xenophobia which kids might not be able to fully grasp at their age. It's one of those things I find strange because I grew up heavily addicted to the internet as well and it's hard for me to think of many memes which were weaponized to such an extent.
  • yasp 7y ago
    For all the talk about Russian social media meddling, I'm surprised no one ever speculates about foreign meddling in media such as the chans. To what extent has chan culture been influenced by foreign agitprop?
    • soulofmischief 7y ago
      Outsiders, maybe, but many within these kinds of boards understand the extent of the psy ops going on more than anyone speculating from outside.
    • yellowapple 7y ago
      > I'm surprised no one ever speculates about foreign meddling in media such as the chans I feel like plenty of people do speculate about that - and for good reason, given that anonymity includes not knowing the nationality of any given "anon" (and even 4chan's operators won't ever really be able to know, given how common it is for non-Americans to use American VPNs for other things - e.g. bypassing region locks on media services). Same goes even for places that don't have a concept of an "anon" per se, like reddit or even Hacker News. I might claim to be an American citizen living in the SF Bay Area, but that doesn't mean I actually am an American citizen living in the SF Bay Area. Y Combinator might be able to see that my posts are more-or-less consistently coming from American IP addresses (barring a point in time where one of the GeoIP data providers believed my home IP to be Canadian, thus locking me out of various content on Spotify and shunting me over to the Canadian version of Newegg, much to my combination of chagrin and amusement), but it's quite possible that those IP addresses are just the far ends of VPN connections from, say, Russia.
• GreaterFool 7y ago
  Why are Americans so obsessed with Nazis? I mean, I'm from Europe and I don't recall growing up worrying about everyone being a secret (or overt) Nazi, which, unless promptly punched in the face, would somehow take over. WWII and Nazis destroyed Europe. Are Europeans worried about Nazis? Not as far as I can tell. Yet all I see from American news is Nazis this Nazis that. Can someone explain?
  • tamalesfan 7y ago
    In before the delete.
    • jsf01 7y ago
      How do you view flagged content on mobile?
      • yasp 7y ago
        Preferences > showdead
    • dang 7y ago
      Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
  • CalChris 7y ago
    I worked in Italy and my boss was very conscious of the fact that his neighbor was a Fascist. I saw VV graffiti in the streets.
    • davidw 7y ago
      I lived in Italy for many years, and one of the more dismaying aspects of the culture is how much some people still identify with actual fascists and communists. They're both terrible ideas that should be widely repudiated by both left and right.
      • 7y ago
• nixarian 7y ago
  It doesn't seem like the woman even seriously dealt with the fact of the false accusation, or the reality that it implies. All it takes it a woman's word, and men can be destroyed. That young woman, and everyone who supported her, are to blame. And people like that WILL be to blame for any escalation. Yet the story just end with some bizzare turn-about - a suggestion all it takes it letting your kid read counter-arguments and treating them like an adult. The "alt-right" is recruiting people who are genuinely disaffected, and you're not going to solve it all with counter-propaganda. I really wonder if someday, assuming this story is actually true, that boy grows up and gets falsely accused of rape and gets thrown into prison. His only hope being, of course, that the woman has a change of heart and recants.
• narrator 7y ago
  This kid might grow up to be part of the 50% or so who voted for the current president. We have to put a stop to this radical behavior by any means necessary!
  • dTal 7y ago
    Did you read the article? The kid is already reformed, and the "zero tolerance" attitude you display was the cause of the disease, not the cure. If there's one lesson here, it's that we should treat people humanely and maintain open minds.
• educationdata 7y ago
  The author herself obviously had a problem. She disagreed everything with her son read online, and believed he was totally wrong and she was 100 percent correct. This is just pathetic.
  • NazisAreStupid 7y ago
    To be fair, she only believed that because he was totally wrong and she was 100 percent correct.
• ukulele 7y ago
  > He would be offline for a month and would need other mods to cover for him. To ask for help, he had to out himself as a kid. I wonder to what extent the alt-right actually is a young teen movement, with adults mixed in (being the ones who show in person). Is there any at least semi-reliable data on this?
  • sushisource 7y ago
    Fascinating question. I certainly wouldn't be surprised at all if they account for a substantial portion of online participants, but I don't know of any data on the matter.
  • mirimir 7y ago
    I've watched the so-called alt-right develop online over the past 2-3 decades. Usenet, Live Journal, Encyclopedia Dramatica, the chans, etc. At least at the start, it was mostly about trolling and lulz. The anger of TFWNG. But somehow it's been captured by the actual right wing. That's frightening. There's a lotta young male angst out there.
    • smrtinsert 7y ago
      This is literally connected to Steve Bannon.
      • mirimir 7y ago
        Maybe so. I don't recall seeing his name, back in the day, but Wikipedia tells me that he's done lots that I would have agreed with. Biosphere2, for example, SF fan that I am. And that movie about Ronald Reagan. But the rest of it is batshit insane, like something out of Hunter Thompson. A right-wing Wavy Gravy.
    • ashleyn 7y ago
      I can't quite tell if I simply grew out of racial humour or it's genuinely taken on this propagandist, explicitly political subtext it didn't have before. Whichever, I don't really appreciate it nowadays.
• dTal 7y ago
  This is gripping, insightful and beautifully written. I especially like how it leads with the request to go to the Mother of All Rallies, so that the reader gets to experience the same knee-jerk reaction as the parents. I like how that knee-jerk reaction is later proven wrong. It compellingly illustrates the importance of open-mindedness, and that "sunlight is the best medicine". Very thought provoking.
  • camelite 7y ago
    It's fiction imo
    • bifrost 7y ago
      I agree, its completely fabricated. There's only one believable thing in it - the failure of the school.
    • MrOwen 7y ago
      How did you arrive at this conclusion? At least for myself, no red flags or gross inconsistencies were readily apparent so I took it as truth.
• boapnuaput 7y ago
  Fascism is seductive. It has little idological substance aside from that needed to apologize for promoting the ethnostate, and instead operates on style and spectacle. We let our teenagers become broadcasters, influencers, reviewers, and players, but failed to teach them how to avoid being parasocially suckered, influenced, gaslit, and used as pawns. Perhaps we need to craft an educational system which is more substantial. Or perhaps we need to teach early grade-school civics and ethics, so that teenagers will have had a round of memetic inoculation before being introduced to modern cryptofascists. I certainly think that my scant lessons in high school were crucial in helping to rebut some of the stupider strains of online thought today, like sovereign citizenship, flat-Earth astronomy, or (the modern flavor of) the Lost Cause.
  • dTal 7y ago
    Not that I necessarily disagree, but I quaver at the thought of a government that understands memetics well enough to craft such a course. Defense can so easily turn to offense...
  • i_am_proteus 7y ago
    Fewer members of this generation are learning ethics through religion. I'm not religious and I don't believe that religion is necessary for ethics, but I do recognize that religion was a traditional vehicle for introducing young people to an ethical system. Grade-school civics is one solution, but I think there are some other family- and community-based ways (religious or otherwise) we can raise the next generation with a strong ethical code.
    • opportune 7y ago
      There can also be secular ethics classes in early high school. I had one in my private school. We covered virtue ethics, deontological ethics, utilitarianism and briefly outline some modern material. Won't give people a great understanding but should at least introduce them to the concept and give them a foundation they can use to learn more
      • 7y ago
• debatem1 7y ago
  Angry, marginalized young man adheres to angry, marginal philosophy; news at 11. Take away the memes and this is a story as old as time.
• 0xdeadbeefbabe 7y ago
  Whoa that line about the press and their symbiotic relationships is interesting if ugly.
  • dTal 7y ago
    A big, unstated theme was how memetics goes for the most radical, extreme, offensive viewpoint. The same phenomenology that causes the press to seek out Nazis to talk to, causes search engines to return only radical viewpoints. It's what people want, but it's not good for us.
• h2odragon 7y ago
  I got removed from a different forum the other day for posting this link along with "people worked up over Nazis vs Commies just need to get outside, meet each other, and see that we're all just folks."
  • ergothus 7y ago
    Not my takeaway at all...if the teen in the article didnt have an unusually high amount of critical thinking, meeting in person would have not have changed much.
    • deogeo 7y ago
      Critical thinking? As the story presents it, his conversions to and from alt-right were entirely emotion based.
      • Rebelgecko 7y ago
        That was not my interpretation at all, especially in the part where he interviews marchers and finds that some of their beliefs are "internally inconsistent"
        • deogeo 7y ago
          What do their beliefs matter, if his own are consistent? That's just association fallacy.
          • ergothus 7y ago
            We're literally talking about how this teen decided who is trustworthy. As pointed out in the article, googling around to confirm GAVE HIM "confirmation". Recognizing that their views fell apart under inspection despite the previous confirmation required (as written, at least) above-average critical thinking.
  • vzcx 7y ago
    This is a little too... optimistic in my opinion. I dislike both nazis and commies, but it seems clear to me that there are deep and irreconcilable value and cultural conflicts at play in society. Ultimately, these groups do not "speak the same language of Good and Evil," as Nietzsche would say, and are potential precursors to new societies. They should be allowed to part ways, permanently, in my opinion.
• sarcasmOrTears 7y ago
  13 years old in Italy join communists groups and communism and socialism are promoted by many unpunished public school teachers. The only problem wih the alt-right is that is not fashionable, otherwise people would rejoice at the interest in politics this 13 year old is having. Truth is you're all a bunch of totalitarians who want impose your ideas and don't like free speech which ironically is what the alt-right has always loved and the reason why it was born, to defend free speech. Yep well done, we needed "nazis" to defend free speech, science, reason and logic, that's how bad academia, media, politicians, billionaires, etc have got. Nice work, keep it up.
  • tarsinge 7y ago
    What you are missing is that the ideology are not equivalent. If you meet an extreme socialist and disagree, even if it's violent, it's still an opinion issue. But if you are say black and meet an extreme fascist, then you have no option, they hate what you are not what you think.
    • sarcasmOrTears 7y ago
      If a socialist gets in power it takes all your property and decides what you have to do for the rest of your life. If an alt-righter gets in power free speech is protected and so are all nations, except those that want to destroy other innocent nations. Socialism is seizing privste property and enslaving people by definition. The alt-right has many flavors but the core is free nations for all peaceful people of all colors and cultures + free speech. That's the truth, anything else is a complete misrepresentation.
      • eropple 7y ago
        Tell that to Heather Heyer. Don't hold your breath for an answer.
      • krapht 7y ago
        I think you're using the word "alt-right" wrong. When other people use it, they're talking about the people who marched in Charlottesville, and lurk on freerepublic and Stormfront. A free nation for a certain pale skin tone, and those blacks and yellows can go be proud Africans and Asians on their respective continents. But not red people, we already took their land, so they can suck eggs.
• 0-_-0 7y ago
  My favourite quote from the article: 'For the next ten minutes or so, the reporters filmed the Nazi. When they finally turned away from each other, each side seemed happy, shaking hands, nodding enthusiastically, and smiling their thanks. It was the most nakedly symbiotic transaction I’d ever witnessed. The reporters and the Nazi needed each other. There was no meaning—no job—for one without the other.'
• hinkley 7y ago
  > Sam prides himself on questioning conventional wisdom and subjecting claims to intellectual scrutiny. For kids today, that means Googling stuff. One might think these searches would turn up a variety of perspectives, including at least a few compelling counterarguments. One would be wrong. The Google searches flooded his developing brain with endless bias-confirming “proof” to back up whichever specious alt-right standard was being hoisted that week. Each set of results acted like fertilizer sprinkled on weeds: A forest of distortion flourished. I would like to nominate “Sam” as poster child for why the feedback systems in Google Search and Facebook are so damaging. It’s one thing to continuously confirm the beliefs of old people, it’s quite another to funnel impressionable children into one extreme or another based on a few semi-random data points.
  • mejari 7y ago
    I saw a similar thing with a religious apologist, they had a very specific claim ready to throw out out to me on a specific supposed "prophecy", and later googling that I got page after page of religious propaganda. They'd targeted that particular thing, rather than trying to take over more general listings for "prophecy in the bible", so that only articles that agreed with them showed up. It took some creative googling to eventually get to an actual academic historical paper on the subject, which then of course immediately blew what they claimed out of the water.
    • cauliflower2718 7y ago
      What's the prophecy?
  • eropple 7y ago
    Google-related, but I'd submit that YouTube is one of the prime culprits. Kids like stuff like video games. Video game recommendations devolve into chud territory in two hops - fascist in three or four.
    • opportune 7y ago
      I wonder how much of this is due to marketing. I know for example PragerU heavily advertises on Youtube. Is there a way for an advertiser on youtube to get better recommendation placements?
• mirimir 7y ago
  > Sam pledged fealty to the idea of men’s rights because, as he said, his former administrator had privileged girls’ words and experiences over boys’, and that’s how all of his troubles had started in the first place. I wonder how common this dynamic is now.
  • jniedrauer 7y ago
    Unfortunately I've heard this story more than once now. School faculty are terrified of public scandals and many of them are checked out of their jobs. So they tend to take the path of least resistance (blame the boy just in case, to avoid ending up on the news). The solution is probably some variation of "pay teachers more."
    • yellowapple 7y ago
      I don't think "pay teachers more" is sufficient. It's one part of the solution, but the other part is "be at least a little bit hesitant to fire junior teachers". When I was in high school, pretty much all of my teachers under 40 were constantly on the verge of not having a job (due to constant budgetary inadequacies); they'd be repeatedly pink-slipped only to barely manage to keep their jobs another year. Naturally, the more "experienced" teachers with more tenure were less fearful of this. Never mind that the younger teachers were almost always leaps and bounds more engaging, while the older teachers were far less engaging. Everyone liked the younger teachers more than the older teachers - everyone except the teachers' union, that is (this is, naturally, why I came out of high school believing labor unions to be outright detrimental to worker welfare, and why I still tend to be skeptical of them). Naturally, in an environment where you're doing everything you can to not get laid off, you're going to end up being a lot more risk-averse (lest that layoff spontaneously turns into outright at-fault termination).
      • mrguyorama 7y ago
        As a teacher's son, you've made a bunch of fairly ageist generalizations that are not true. There are plenty of shitty old and young teachers, and plenty of amazing old and young teachers.
• JarlUlvi 7y ago
  This article comes across as the epitome of FAKE
• klodolph 7y ago
  What resonated with me is how impossible it is, as a kid, to make sense of being in the school system. The interaction with an administrator was school discipline gone awry... but it could have easily been something else. (Discipline is the most likely, there are tons of misguided zero-tolerance policies.) I'm lucky that my parents were advocates and organizers and that they knew people in the school administration. When a teacher emotionally abused me in class I was in a different class the next week. When I ran out of math classes to take at high school, I took them at college. Years afterwards I was tutoring a high school student in mathematics. They asked me a question about school and I felt a moment of panic, as I remembered all of the shit that I went through. By the time I finished college, it made sense to me. I could make it through an awful class or cut through red tape and weird requirements. I knew that I had survived a couple decades of bullshit, I was still here, and a little extra bullshit wasn't going to kill me. But at age 14, I remember being angry and upset all the time about things that happened at school.
  • baby 7y ago
    Heck. I'm still making nightmares about being back to school.
    • asark 7y ago
      Mid 30s, same, and my k-12 experience wasn't even bad. I wasn't really bullied. I was popular enough, and moved between a few different friend groups, some of them semi-cool (though one of the nerdier groups was my "home"). School's just that traumatic, I guess. I worry about that for my kids. Unlike an adult, if you're in an environment that's making your life hell (and normal school life is friggin' intolerable, from an adult perspective, without awful-yet-common levels of bullying or social bullshit happening), you don't have any real way to get out except to wait. Assholes can't be "fired". Hell, someone might commit battery and be back in the seat next to you before long, let alone lesser crimes. You can't really get transferred, with any certainty. You can't quit and go somewhere else, and anyway the environments are so screwed up you'd probably end up somewhere that's still bad, even if it's better. You can't even do much to avoid the jerks. The school work itself's a mess even in the best case, and wastes huge amounts of time—any bright kid's gonna notice and find it, at best, very annoying. You're not even being paid. Keeping the kids indoors all Winter while the sun's out (recess is nearly dead around here, even at the good schools, and they avoid going outside anyway if it's even a little shitty) is dooming tons of them to short-sightedness (insufficient bright sunlight during formative years, turns out that's the main thing that does it), SAD, and probably contributing to obesity. It sucks.
• bytematic 7y ago
  That was a great article, I think this is a big problem right now. I'm not sure how I would handle it as a parent. Two things that stood out to me were the principal/officers at the public school and how they dealed with that situation, or even the girl that reported Sam. I wonder if they know what they created. Also this part: "I liked them because they were adults and they thought I was an adult. I was one of them,” he said. “I was participating in a conversation. They took me seriously. No one ever took me seriously—not you, not my teachers, no one. If I expressed an opinion, you thought I was just a dumbass kid trying to find my voice. I already had my voice.” Does every kid just go through this phase, whether it is happening or not, how best to navigate it?
  • chii 7y ago
    Every kid goes thru the phase where they want to be acknowledged, and their views verified by others (despite that they don't actually know their own views, and is still absorbing). Those who would want to prey on this can take advantage. It's the role of the parents and public institutions like schools, to teach right from wrong. In this story, the school failed, but the parents tried and got lucky. But you can imagine the story could have easily gone the other way.
    • stevenwoo 7y ago
      No need to imagine, here's a headline from late 2017: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/teen-charged-with-killing-girlfriends-parents-they-had-worried-he-was-a-neo-nazi/2017/12/23/e2102894-e761-11e7-833f-155031558ff4_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/teen-char...
• gatherhunterer 7y ago
  > Sam’s guidance counselor pulled him out of his next class and accused him of “breaking the law.” Before long, he was in the office of a male administrator who informed him that the exchange was “illegal,” hinted that the police were coming, and delivered him into the custody of the school’s resource officer. At the administrator’s instruction, that man ushered Sam into an empty room, handed him a blank sheet of paper, and instructed him to write a “statement of guilt.” It is not surprising that it started with someone whose lack of ability to respond caused them to resort to the most extreme measures, thinking that nothing could be worse than doing too little. They have a lot in common with the disillusioned youth whose hateful ideology they were stoking. These adults saw a child as an easy adversary and jumped at the opportunity to get a win and sing their own praises. Bureaucrats make poor educators and poorer law enforcers.
  • vzcx 7y ago
    Yes! This is an anti-public school administration article masquerading as an anti-alt-right article.
    • KODeKarnage 7y ago
      It can be both.
    • oh_sigh 7y ago
      No, it is both of the antis- you specified. Specifically, it is a story about how the author believes the bad behavior of school administration pushed their sun into the bad world of the alt-right.
      • vzcx 7y ago
        Oh, I don't mean to say that it is secretly uncritical of the alt-right. It's clear that the alt-right runs counter to the mother's morals, just that these morals are taken as given and assumed in the audience as well. It is not a direct critique of the alt-right. There are tons of strange subcultures and radical groups out there looking to eat your mind and the minds of your children. "My child joined the alt-right" is far more of a catchy title than "my child joined a neoreactionary reading group" or "my child joined some communist revolutionaries." Those groups are either things no one has heard of or are has beens. The alt-right still have some energy as today's "evildoers." It's our modern "my child became a satanist," or, hell, "my child became a protestant." All this is reminiscent of that old "Is Your Child A Hacker." Where is our "Is Your Child A Shitlord?" Of course, the entire story could be a fabrication, for all we know. Since it's the evil of today and will surely grab some eyeballs... why not stick in some valuable reminders of how absolutely terrible being a child in the school system is? If that was the intention in this piece, I salute the author!
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• alexandercrohde 7y ago
  I was totally onboard with this article until the last sentence. I was enjoying this article as an exploration of emotional vulnerability, the connection between beliefs and belonging, the mixed blessing of internet anonimity. But if the (suspiciously articulate) kid goes from alt-right to antifa, I don't think that's any sort of progress to be applauded. I interpreted the article's point to be that alt-right is just emotionally hurt people venting online, and they do antics for attention and the media latches on to it to sell clicks, even if it's all BS. But if that's the case, the best way to handle it is not to counter-protest, but just to hear out the fears and insecurities.
  • ip26 7y ago
    Presumably the author & son are alluding to the middle-aged man holding the poster, which I should hope is obviously nowhere near the same as antifa.
    • bargl 7y ago
      Yup this is what i was thinking.
    • alexandercrohde 7y ago
      Well, I don't know if I think a middle-aged man who goes to a rally to hold up a sign saying "NO TRUMP. NO KKK. NO FASCIST USA," is progress over the alt-right. To me it's the exact same thing -- an overly zealous person who takes politics as a tribal game and has no sincere intention of changing anybody's mind.
      • deanCommie 7y ago
        "KKK" and "No KKK" are exactly the same thing? FFS...can we stop with the false equivalence? When one side is preaching intolerance, and the other side preaches intolerance to intolerance THEY ARE NOT BOTH EQUALLY INTOLERANT.
        • mindslight 7y ago
• Pxtl 7y ago
  Now I'm wondering which subreddit it was.
  • CydeWeys 7y ago
    /r/MemeEconomy most likely
• Joking_Phantom 7y ago
  I have no answer for the rest of the article, but I've been poking around school administrations for quite a while now. One of the problems with public school administrators and teachers is that staff are relatively difficult to adjust. Whether it be firing, transferring, rotations, etc. The article makes no mention of any of the complicit faculty suffering consequences. No, I don't think anyone has to be immediately fired. But mistakes happen, and staff that interact with kids on a constant scale like this need to maintain trust. Faculty that mess up like this need to be transferred away at the minimum. Making the victims take corrective action is completely wrong. Teachers and administrators alike need more accountability, and more mobility within positions. Witch hunts like this need to be stopped before they traumatize kids. Employees should be shuffled around when inevitable interpersonal conflicts poison the relationship between school and community. Give adults and kids alike a break, a chance at a fresh start, an opportunity where their past mistakes don't destroy their future prospects.
• GreaterFool 7y ago
  It's an interesting story. I find the conclusion not unsurprising. The author seems to assume the existence of `alt-right` as a monolithic group with a specific agenda. As far as I can tell that's not true. These groups may come out together to protest because they've been lumped together by the media. If they weren't all branded `alt-right`, would they connect? If you want to disarm them, divide them! Don't label them as a single group. A lot of these groups have internally inconsistent ideologies. These can be overlooked for a while as one is drawn to the community. But eventually the novelty wears off and cracks start to show and one realizes that a lot of the personalities are one note and don't actually have anything interesting to say. This is true about the Left and the Right. And then one moves on.
  • 01100011 7y ago
    I dunno...if you lump them together they start to believe it and end up tearing each other apart in internecine battles surrounding their subtle differences in beliefs.
    • GreaterFool 7y ago
      I think that's exactly what is currently happening to the left! EDIT: But I think the left believe they must be united at all cost. Because anyone not in their group is wrong. I don't get that vibe from any other part of the spectrum: moderate left (if it still exists)/center/right/alt-right/far-right.
  • vzcx 7y ago
    People don't go to radical groups for the ideology: They come for the emotional outlet and camaraderie. Some radicals will flip flop enormously during their "career." They are activists. The guy with anarchist and nazi symbols is not an unusual sight. He's a perpetual misfit without the creativity to fashion his own ideology, someone looking for an edgy support group, who wants to be both with people and distinct from society at large. People actually interested in ideas might end up thinking radical (as in, things other people find strange or upsetting) things, but they'll take a different path and won't engage in activism. They are philosophers, and if they write and are original enough, maybe the best of them will be remembered and appreciated sometime after their deaths.
• cfv 7y ago
  Editorialized but frank 1 sentence summary: "My son turned into an American Taliban right in front of me and I blame his previous public school based on this one incident". Now look, I'm pretty sure the American education system heavily needs an overhaul, but the whole story is just so unbelievable I was half expecting the words "and then the whole plane clapped" somewhere in there as a dog whistle of sorts.
  • rjdagost 7y ago
    I got a similar vibe- I think the article is fiction, or at least primarily fiction. Everything fits too perfectly into the narrative the anonymous author is telling. And the ending is just too cute to be believed.
  • marshray 7y ago
    I have a son this age (and some familiarity with his encounters online) and I found it eminently believable. I think I'll have him read it.
• ohboyherewego 7y ago
  This article is not good. It has its good points but the rest of it is deeply and completely flawed and it definitely has the feeling of ideological propaganda. If you don’t know why that is the case, I will explain. Firstly, it causes me actual physical pain to read because I have a son and society has become so default toxic towards men and assumes that they are somehow evil and guilty for....wanting sex and not knowing how to get it, or laughing at stupid jokes... The reason this article is bad is that it is that it does exactly the things which cause the alt-right movement to get stronger and stronger, while knowing that it is doing them. It is hard for me to look at this other than a form of propaganda. Here are the real, severe problems: 1. Categorize everyone who disagrees with you as a Nazi or alt-right. 43% of the population leans republican, call them all Nazis and you get the alt right. 2. Ignore or dismiss 100% of the counter arguments without naming what they are, just that they “must be wrong” 3. dismissing the entire validity of the alt-right by saying “there was one Nazi there” There was a Nazi in Seattle once, he got punched in the face after ten minutes by a mob from the Internet. It doesn’t mean that everyone in Seattle is a Nazi. What Liberals are going to have to do in order to get people like me to ever vote for them again is the following: - admit There are extreme views on both sides and we can see how certain aspects of the Democratic Party are out of control, but that doesn’t excuse allowing Nazis, get rid of them and we will get rid of our nutcases also - If you don’t agree with 100% of what we are saying you still are welcome. We are not going to destroy your career and reputation if you want to argue over specifics - We are not going to use the words “whiteness” and “privilege” as a derogatory insult implicating all white people as being bad. I work in tech, my twitter stream is filled with anti male and anti white rhetoric. I have blocked dozens of people for this reason. - We are going to proactively eliminate bad actors with extremely racist and negative, toxic views from our own side Until the Democratic Party and liberals admit to these things, moderate their tone, I am never, never, never coming back, and I voted for Obama twice. It is time to stop pretending that there is only a single right answer, this article is exactly the propaganda that is driving the alt right and if it continues you are going to see it grow and I will be joining it, at this rate, I’d this continues.
  • unabridged 7y ago
    >Until the Democratic Party and liberals admit to these things, moderate their tone, I am never, never, never coming back, and I voted for Obama twice. I always find this argument fascinating. "Some people made fun of white males, therefore low income people shouldn't get healthcare/college". I dislike identity politics too, but I don't let it change my values.
• moosey 7y ago
  > When we did confront Sam—say, if we caught a glimpse of a vile meme on his phone—he assured us that it was meant to be funny and that we didn’t get it. It was either “post-ironic” or referenced multiple other events that created a maze-like series of in-jokes impossible for us to follow. I have made it clear to people I know that parroting vile positions online "because of humor" isn't really a clarification that you can make, and even when fine in person it still offers safety to those that hold and speak then with fervor. Giving white supremacist positions as a joke cannot be effectively separated from being a white supremacist (most aren't violent), and satire in this era is nearly impossible. Perhaps having been on the receiving end of racism and it's associated violence has made me bitter. I got increasingly angry at the authors apparently laissez faire attitude about everything and trying externalize so much blame for what happened. The parents have given up on responsibility and this is the obvious result. If you don't shape the culture and ethics of your children then someone else will.
  • maxerickson 7y ago
    Peer influence is a real thing, parents aren't the only ones that get to shape their children, whether they like it or not.
  • liquidise 7y ago
    But laissez faire IS a cultural and ethical stance. “Live and let live” was a powerful cultural standard I remember from my childhood. Deciding that these parents have “given up on responsibility” is a loaded accusation to make because their child has adopted political ideals you disagree with. Given the thoughtfulness of the piece i’d characterize it as unfair.
    • anigbrowl 7y ago
      It seems like there might be a little bit of inconsistency between 'live and let live' and 'political ideals' that involve killing lots of people.
  • gatherhunterer 7y ago
    I have a friend who went to a Jewish high school in the U.S. (reformed, not Yeshiva) and graduated with enough Holocaust jokes to write her own anti-Semitic encyclopedia. Children challenge their surroundings, it’s part of growing up. If Sam (from the article) feels like he has been marginalized, misrepresented and punished unfairly by a system that does not even try to understand him then I am sure he would relate the experiences relayed in a Holocaust museum. A little perspective goes a long way.
• novok 7y ago
  This thematically reminds me of the tweet "When did you become radicalized by the U.S. health care non-system?" https://twitter.com/AllOnMedicare/status/1124042436345569286 https://twitter.com/AllOnMedicare/status/1124042436345569286
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• tathougies 7y ago
  The writer is a rich white person which means she is part of the most ideologically intolerant group in America. It is thus not shocking that her son's adoption of several mainstream views basically made her think he was the next Hitler. News flash: continuing to support the political establishment that supports #me too after finding your reputation harmed by a false accusations that those belonging to your parents ideology say don't happen is completely unreasonable. The fact is the kid joined the alt right because it is one of the few large groups that has continuously pointed out the misandry of #believeallwomen. Perhaps the parents should belong to a movement that does not seek to criminalize their son. Also maybe the parents should acknowledge reality (that false accusations do happen and ruin lives) and seek to convince more people of that rather than continuing to support the very ideology who ruined their sons life. Of course they wont because white rich people are one of the most ideologically homogeneous groups and they're always on the right side of history /s
  • tracer4201 7y ago
    Non white American here. I don’t know what you’re talking about other than you seem to defend alt right views and women seem to make you insecure.
    • tathougies 7y ago
      Also non white here. I think your source of misunderstanding is that you think it is my opinion that rich white people tend to be politically intolerant and insulated from political diversity. To be clear that is not an opinion: that is empirical data: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/us-counties-vary-their-degree-partisan-prejudice/583072/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/us-coun... Not sure where you're getting the stuff about women though. Forgive me for having sympathy for victims regardless of gender of perpetrator. If that's an alt right view then I guess we should all be alt right
• tathougies 7y ago
  Sams response to his treatment -- that men ought to have the right to be presumed innocent -- seems the only reasonable reaction. The mother should be ashamed of herself for believing that men should not have rights. The father too i presume
  • mirimir 7y ago
    Well of course it is. And the system really put him through hell. He had to change schools, and lost all of his friends. But you're being unfair to his parents. They did all they could to fight it. And they paid a lot to put him in private school. Still, he did overreact. And he eventually agreed with his parents that he overreacted.
    • tathougies 7y ago
      Its normal to overreact as a teenager. No need to write articles about itm. Our inability to see childhood and adolescence for what they are is to our detriment
    • ryanmarsh 7y ago
      The child wrote a false admission of guilt (apology for something he did not do). What kind of lesson do you think he learned from that?
  • dang 7y ago
    Please don't take HN threads onto the very ideological battlefield the article is about. We're hoping to have more interesting discussion here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19863844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19863844 and marked it off-topic.
• 01100011 7y ago
  Reminds me of my soon to be little brother. When I met him he was 14 year old Vietnamese-American kid, immersed in meme culture, spouting white supremecist ideas under his breath and making Holocaust jokes. Fortunately he seems to have grown out of it now. The whole 4chan culture is so appealing to young boys. Inside jokes, porn, violence, conspiracy, and you can participate. Frankly I'd probably have been sucked in if it was around when I was a kid(I still had a 4chan phase a few years ago but wasn't stupid enough to go alt right).
• apo 7y ago
  Very well written piece. The most thought-provoking part is how the author links the ham-fisted behavior of the school administrator with the path her son followed. The truth of the charge isn't the problem. The problem is how due process flies out the window when the charge is leveled. Both accusers and accusees suffer from the same lack of due process. Its very tempting for other party to seek revenge that can lead to truly awful consequences. Still, I can't help but wonder if the author isn't ascribing too much significance to the episode. The lives of teens are very full and extremely complex. They rarely reveal to parents everything that's happening to them.
• ve55 7y ago
  The ending of this article is a little hard to believe. It seems to end the exact way that the author would have wanted it to, something that is very uncommon behavior in teenagers in these situations.
  • ladberg 7y ago
    I don't know, I'd believe it. Two years is a long time for someone who's just starting high school and a lot can change in that time.
  • marshray 7y ago
    I assure you it's quite common for teens who exhibit shocking behavior to grow into well-adjusted adults.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • bryal 7y ago
    The endings probably aren't as perfect in most cases, but those cases make for less inspiring articles than the few that do. The only ones we read about are about the rare cases where the almost unbelievable happens.
• charliebrownau 7y ago
  LEFT WING MARKIST Political Activists outlet falsely labels an Right Wing Nationalist " alt right/far right" Yup , welcome to last 5 years on Clown World Btw German nazis were LEFT WING NATIONAL SOCIALISTS
• charliebrownau 7y ago
  LEFT = Socialism/Marxism (USA Democrats/Current AU+NZ+CA+UK gov) = Equal Outcome + "Diversity" + Censorship + Open Borders + Victimhood/Group blame + Remove Due Process & Evidence NON LEFT/RIGHT = Democracy (USA Trump/AU One Nation/UK UKIP) = Equal Opportunity + Merit + Free Speech + Proper border control + Individual accountability + Due Process & Evidence
• crsv 7y ago
  It’s a very well written piece, but it just feels too well written, to the point of feeling to precise, too calculated, too... contrived. Aside from the opinions expressed, the ideological concerns, the relevance to the current political landscape - these are all relevant and interesting explorations, but the whole narrative is just too picture perfect and too close to a screenplay. It just feels like good fiction.
  • marcell 7y ago
    Yea there’s no way to tell, but I got the same feeling. It seems too much like a fiction with a narrative arc, and neat story with a good resolution. Who knows.
  • brohoolio 7y ago
    It seems like good fiction until it’s your life and then it seems terrible. I can assure you, as someone who has multiple family members get sucked up into this ideology, this is how it happens.
    • vokep 7y ago
      As someone who also has watched people get sucked into dogma of both sides...yes this is how it happens but, the story does give a feeling of being too perfect. I doubt they would just make things up, but it feels likely that a lot of liberty was taken with making it all fit really nicely. Again all that said, the points within it, are true and valid, the story at plot level is very realistic and is happening all the time.
  • anigbrowl 7y ago
    It's a sort of standard form for human interest articles. Much like a movie, it might be better if it were were more open-ended or reflected the untidiness of life, but many people want reassurance and a minimum of loose ends. The unusually young subject makes it more of a parenting article than a political study IMHO.
  • basetop 7y ago
    It's propaganda. It's a caricature coming to life. A caricature created by the establishment media. It's like if foxnews ran a story "What happened to my 13 year old daughter after consuming establishment media or democratic speeches". And then daughter turned out to hit every checklist of a "leftist" fanatic caricature. Or christian publications that would publish "stories" about how hollywood movies or rock 'n roll turned their child gay or in devil worshippers. A lot of these "stories" involving children are even manufacture ( in order to write an article ) or sought out specifically. Just like the UVA rape story.
• 127 7y ago
  Anyone with real right wing ideas is the devil.
  • vzcx 7y ago
    And the devil is literally Hitler. Left and right are different peoples: they speak in different tongues of good and evil. Enlightenment liberalism is dead. Enlightenment liberalism remains dead. And we have killed it.
• lpernille 7y ago
  This is why I homeschool my kids. I think as geeks we've solved the problem of learning, look at all the stuff we've built by figuring out how to learn by ourselves. We don't really need schools for this function anymore.
  • kristofferR 7y ago
    You can't homeschool social skills though.
    • jostylr 7y ago
      That’s what Sudbury schools are for.
    • elevation 7y ago
      Humanity was socializing long before public schools existed, and by no means does the present public school system have a monopoly on teaching social skills. Statistically, home schools produce outstanding educational outcomes compared to public schools on standardized tests, so public education proponents insist that they compensate for this by providing better "socialization". This claim is conveniently difficult to refute with hard data since "socialization" is harder to quantify, but it doesn't prove public schooling produces better socialization outcomes. To the contrary, homeschooling is so effective at education because it's taylored to a particular student's developmental level in each area, including socialization. Home educators have tremendous schedule flexibility, and in many areas, large co-op resources, presenting endless opportunities for friendship, teamwork, conflict, community service, and time to develop their own interests (programming? theater?) with other like minded students. For instance, while day-school students are stuck in a room not interacting with one another, a nine year old home schooled student may attend day rehearsals for a play at the local university, volunteer at a local food bank, or build robots with their FRC team, all before playing little league baseball after the day school students become available. These opportunities don't just lock students into same age groups all day for 10 years, but allow time for them to participate in the real world community outside with a broad range of both peers and adults. The diversity of opportunities for homeschool students often results in a student whose social experience and civic responsibility is as outstanding as their standardized test scores. You can absolutely homeschool social skills.
• PaulBGD_ 7y ago
  This happened to myself in middleschool, almost 10 years ago now. Was pulled into an office, told the police would be called, and was told I needed to confess for hours to something that was unrelated to me. The school never had any retaliation from my family who didn't see it very serious at the time.
• RickJWagner 7y ago
  It's going to be such a long slog until the election. Already, there is an increase in the number of articles meant to subtly smear people. Call them racists, neo Nazis, extremists, etc. On the other side, photos of Antifa, anarchists and other extremists will be shown. Please do your best to look for the truth. The vast, vast majority of people are good. (To be sure, there are some bad ones. But they do not dramatically increase in number as an election draws near!) It is completely evil to sow the seeds of fear, doubt and hatred in this manner. Please look to the good in people. Turn away from the hatred. Edit: I am in no way excusing neo Nazis, alt-right, alt-left, Antifa, etc. I am saying that these nutballs are few and far in between. Almost everybody you meet out on the street today is going to be a decent person.
• austincheney 7y ago
  This article sounds like a mother immersed in social media not parenting her child’s social media access. There is probably some level of gullibility and influence from each of their online habits. I don’t have any sympathy for the problems here, and I can say that as a parent of two teenagers. Parent your damn children and stop relying on media to form your opinions for you. The cliche some of friends use to explain this failure is: You’ve made your bed, now sleep in it.
• protomyth 7y ago
  Tim Pool (self described as left of center) has his take on the article https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOyb8cN_A_8&t=946s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOyb8cN_A_8&t=946s
  • techntoke 7y ago
    Alt-right commentator who pretends to be left of center.
  • iron0013 7y ago
    Why is it that when someone claims to be left of center I know that they’re about to say something right-wing? It’s a transparent attempt to nudge the Overton window by making it seem as though “the center” is even further right than the commentator.
    • wahern 7y ago
      One of this week's XKCD themes, Waiting for the But: https://xkcd.com/2146/ https://xkcd.com/2146/ I don't mean to pick on anybody. It's a common rhetorical device, which is why the comic is funny. I've used it and struggle not to (not always successfully).
    • rspen 7y ago
      If you actually bothered to watch more than one of his videos you'd easily be able to surmise he is politically left of center. He's probably more of a classic liberal than a modern one, but he wants things such as single payer health care, progressive taxes, etc. Those are definitely left of center ideas.
    • burfog 7y ago
      Pew Research has determined that the Overton window has barely moved at all for the right-wing, but has moved quite a bit for the left-wing. This means that what you perceive as nudging may in fact just be trying to hold it in place. We can call it a Theory of Overton Relativity. https://imgur.com/QJd2gRB https://imgur.com/QJd2gRB (a really interesting set of histograms) https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/05/takeaways-on-americans-growing-partisan-divide-over-political-values/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/05/takeaways-o...
• caprese 7y ago
  > they mailed an emoji-themed fidget-spinner to his bunk address AHAHAHA trolled that kid hard when they found out he was a kid
• megaremote 7y ago
  So, does this chap just take the word of his kid for truth?
• lancefisher 7y ago
  When my brother and I were in high school, he got into a discussion with the English teacher. At one point of disagreement, he asked her heatedly, “what are you on about?” We’d been watching a lot of Monty Python. She misinterpreted it as, “are you on the rag?” and proceeded to flip out. She went to the principal, and they began some Title IX paperwork along with extreme disciplinary action. This was a small rural school. My class had less than 70 students. My parents didn’t have a lot of resources, but they showed up the next day with a lawyer in a suit carrying a briefcase. The school was completely unprepared for that type of response and immediately backed off. They were able to clear up the misunderstanding. It means so much for parents to listen to their kids with respect, and stick up for them. I’ve never forgotten it.
  • bigred100 7y ago
    I wonder why teachers and school administrators don’t simply interact respectfully with their students instead of engaging in such extraordinarily bad behavior. Is mental illness or social disability common in their profession?
    • dragonwriter 7y ago
      > I wonder why teachers and school administrators don’t simply interact respectfully with their students instead of engaging in such extraordinarily bad behavior. Lots of them do; if 1,000 do that and one acts badly, guess which one is going to be the focus of a story that gets widespread exposure?
    • Aromasin 7y ago
      I do extracurricular lessons with schools - teaching engineering through fun experiments and the like. I'm not very deep into the teaching sphere as such, but I think close enough to make some anecdotal observations. Frankly, I have seen some pretty disgusting practices from teachers I've worked with. Not to say that is the majority, but it only takes a handful of poor teachers to muddy the water. Three theories as to why that is happens: Firstly, many teachers subconsciously have a tendency to see their classes as a group entity, not as a selection of individuals. As such, when a couple of kids behave badly in class they abstract that feeling of "getting attacked" to the whole group, and lash out defensively against everyone in said group. The amount of times I've seen a teacher unfairly punish a kid because a different one has irritated them over the course of the lesson is astonishing. Secondly, from my experience it seems that the type of people that go into the profession (thinking more pre/middle school ages, not high school/university) often have a propensity towards narcissism. I don't know why, but this is just what I've observed. They have little power outside of the classroom, had little power growing up, and were never really especially gifted academically; but now they've been given power over large group of kids with little to no means to respond. I see a lot of teachers projecting the problems they have/had at home or with the school bureaucracy onto their classes, and use them as a metaphorical punching bag for their internal struggles. Thirdly, teaching work at lower ages has sunk from a middle class job to a middle-lower class job. The stagnant wages has meant that a lot of talent has been put off teaching where we need it the most, and with that has gone some of the better educated. Some of the children I work with are honestly better at some subjects than their teachers are (thank Khan Academy, YouTube educators, et al for that!) and some teachers do not appreciate it. Just last month I saw a teacher shoot down a child for correcting him, even though he was not only right, but polite about it. I was sure to let the administration know what I thought of this behaviour... Note; please don't take this commentary as me condemning teachers. The overwhelmingly vast majority of them are incredible people that in my eyes are poorly compensated for the service they do - but like I said earlier, it only takes a couple of bad eggs to put some kids off of education for life, and that dissolution translates to the class rooms of teachers who are truly amazing at what they do, which ruins their experience with teaching too.
• Simulacra 7y ago
  My favorite was when the administrators and teachers would tell me to “move away“ from bullies. That’s nice, how do you move away from a bully in a packed classroom of 30 kids?
• CriticalCathed 7y ago
  I'm always skeptical of the veracity of these articles. This one doesn't pass the sniff test. It has a narrative arc that doesn't recall reality. Seems contrived. The thing that rang truest was the school interaction. That's where my trouble with authority started -- overzealous, bored, administrators.
  • bdhe 7y ago
    What about the narrative arc seems contrived to you? Is it the ending? Because I agree with that. Everything else seems plausible does it not? And where does your trouble with authority take you now?
• jl2718 7y ago
  I’m not an expert, but maybe institutionalizing children like prisoners is bad for their emotional development.
• schoolthrowaway 7y ago
  Just to add to the pile. I was once accused of kicking a teacher during a class. I was at the back of the class when it happened. What followed was 2 days of "guilty until proven innocent" karangaroo court, the teacher vowing to get me put in the remedial class (he knew I was striving for valedictorian, he was trying his best to inflict whatever pain he could on me). I was terrified, beyond upset and I don't think I ever truly got over the injustice. Luckily I had pigheaded parents who point blanked refused to accept the idea I could have done something so stupid. I will always remember how my life could have changed for the worse due to the pettiness of one man who was suppose to be looking out for the future of kids. One of many, many injustices I witnessed. No wonder kids are getting angrier and more stressed.
• NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  That's a good read, as the parent of a teenager I probably am not supervising him as much as I wish I did, but fortunately he hasn't fallen into that world.
• faissaloo 7y ago
  >Ergo, clueless normies who put their own spin on your brilliant memes deserve to die. The term 'normie' means alot more than just 'someone who ruins memes'. Normies are primarily hated because they often treat 'autists' as other or less than. >“I liked them because they were adults and they thought I was an adult. They took me seriously.” I totally agree with this, growing up it would anger me to no end that people wouldn't take me seriously because of my age, Aaron Swartz used to say 'I hate when you don't take me seriously'.
• lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  The "alt-right" is the natural reaction to the bombardment of progressive leftism (for lack of a better concept) perpetrated initially by the media and now by mainstream society in general, including silicon valley. Most of these alt-righters aren't educated enough to articulate a good ideological response to this bombardment, but they know that people are being manipulated, and the best thing they can do is state the complete opposite (or what they see as the complete opposite) to what progressive media says, which makes them be this way. Another thing to consider is the hypocrisy with which most people criticize the "alt-right", but don't even bat an eye when the 'progressives' act the same way. When mainstream society becomes reasonable again, alt-righters and similar movements will disappear.
• honkycat 7y ago
  A lot of "both sides" or "I can see how this happened. If only... " in this thread. People with obvious political agendas are trying very hard to seem reasonable. I've clocked you. I see you. Both sides do not have merit. The alt-right is hateful and violent. The alt-right is anti-science and denies the value of human beings because of the color of their skin or where they were born. The alt-right denies horrible atrocities occurred in the last century. The alt-right advocate genocide and violence. Do not let these people walk in the daylight acting like "both sides have problems." This child is very lucky he had a brilliant caring mother who was there for him during this time in his life. Otherwise, he probably never would have come back.
• wozer 7y ago
  America is going crazy, and it's spreading its madness around the world. Sorry for the blanket statement, but from an European perspective, the US really seems to go crazy.
  • sterlind 7y ago
    There's a resurgence of alt-right parties in Europe; this isn't just a US thing. I bet there are European Kekistanis just like this boy, but that just proves politics doesn't care about borders now that everything's online.
• garfieldnate 7y ago
  A few thoughts after reading this (very compelling) article: * It's strange to see a patriarchal over-protection of girls being called liberal. I think we've come full circle on this one. * Why does this thirteen-year-old have full, unfettered access to the entire internet? That seems like a recipe for disaster. My kids will have dumbphones and access to the desktop computer in the living room, with age-restricted filters and probably internet activity logs. I would not invite random strangers into my home to teach whatever they wanted when I wasn't around. * I love parenting articles that teach me what I have to teach my children. The parents here loved the trusting aspect of their son, but this really burned him. First he overtrusted the adults at his school, then he overtrusted google search results. I can relate to this! My parents admired my trusting, sweet nature as a kid, too; looking back, I think I was trustful to a fault, especially of adults. "Naive" would be a better description. For example, when an adult said something really unacceptable, I would always try to justify their words and try to learn from them. This led to confusing lessons and some self-esteem issues that needed to be corrected when I had grown out of my naive adult trust.
  • mango7283 7y ago
    I'd be curious to hear how you plan to teach your children to not be overly trusting/naive of adults/authority figures while simultaneously ensuring adhere to your oversight and regulation. It sounds like a fine line to thread.
    • garfieldnate 7y ago
      I think I said the wrong thing when I said not to "trust" adults; what I really meant is that it's dangerous to teach kids that adults are infallible; otherwise they can be taken advantage of by those in positions of power. I think it's important to teach children proper behavior and to show by example that adults are beholden to the same rules as they are, including their parents.
  • garfieldnate 7y ago
    I spoke with my wife about the article and realized I missed a really important negative point about the parents. If the son had become a gung-ho "SJW", espousing extreme views and causing hurt to other people (whose word would of course be unheard as his was), would they have worried about him or would they have encouraged it? The son says he was happy to be out of the "cult" of the alt-right, but the culture at his school was also essentially a cult, which he was violently ejected from when it turned on him suddenly. The parents weren't doing their son any favors by being so consistently biased; the mother could only barely except that her son was discriminated against for being a boy. The article seems to say that the mother realized how badly she had written off anything her son said, but doesn't really hint at any introspection or rethinking regarding her own world view. And at the end it sounds like they are going to go be protesters at the next rally, which fuels the them-or-me mentality that caused their troubles in the first place. The moral seems to be "my son was wrong for a year and I finally convinced him." Wouldn't it be a better ending if they reconciled the experiences of their terrible year with the other wonderful things they believe about human rights and dignity in general? It's like they still think you have to choose between women's rights and men's rights.
• wtdata 7y ago
  I keep trying to tell all of my social circle that the normal (although not proper response) to an extremist point of view, is to either embrace it or to vouch for the oposite one. Very few people seem interested to even give it a thought about that and happily continue expousing their extremist points of view (when it's an extremist left point of view of course, since they are told by all the media and social networks that's the moral point of view to have). When stuff like this has become the norm, exactly what reaction would you expect? "One morning during first period, a male friend of Sam’s mentioned a meme whose suggestive name was an inside joke between the two of them. Sam laughed. A girl at the table overheard their private conversation, misconstrued it as a sexual reference, and reported it as sexual harassment. Sam’s guidance counselor pulled him out of his next class and accused him of “breaking the law.” Before long, he was in the office of a male administrator who informed him that the exchange was “illegal,” hinted that the police were coming, and delivered him into the custody of the school’s resource officer. At the administrator’s instruction, that man ushered Sam into an empty room, handed him a blank sheet of paper, and instructed him to write a “statement of guilt.”"
• pard68 7y ago
  When I was in 3rd grade a girl accused me and my best friend of purposefully stepping on her. We were forced to sit in a room, no parents, no lunch, until we confessed. Eventually I was told I could go to violin lessons if I admitted to my wrong. So I lied to get out of the room I had been left in for 5 hours. My friend never lied. He got in a lot of trouble because I did lie. He left school the next year after being dogged by the administration for every wrong that could be piled on him. Last I heard he was in jail. I am utterly ashamed of that lie. Probably the worst lie I ever told.
  • dondawest 7y ago
    Damn. That’s tough. I’m sorry that happened, but almost no third graders would be able to successfully deal with such a classic “prisoner’s dilemma.” All I’m saying is, try not to blame yourself, anyone would have acted the same in that situation. The system is to blame, not you. :/
• pard68 7y ago
  Chuckled at the list of things considered 'alt right'. The window is moving so quickly. Some of these things a good half of the US or so would agree with.
• ponyous 7y ago
  Excuse my ignorance, but what makes all of this alt-right? This left/right labels always confused me as I can't clearly see the difference.
• defactoStarbord 7y ago
  But you can't join it if it's not a regimented organization? You can identify political leanings, but last time I checked, uh... it's not something joinable, so... Isn't the title... flawed? Seriously, it's this kind of misguided conceptualization that really, really fucks up political discussions. The editorial stylings of this journalism are bending the conversation in a twisted way. There was never any way to "join" neoconservatism. There was never any way to "join" liberalism. There was never any way to "join" centrism. Political movements don't work like that. That's not how any of this works. Little kids getting brainwashed by garbage has been a thing for a long, long time. No teenager "joins" the Insane Clown Posse, when they start buying t-shirts, memorizing lyrics and changing their style. Is it hugely disappointing for some parents to see that happen? Yes. But their kids didn't "join" anything. They just developed hideous interests, partly because the spectacle itself is the engrossing aspect of the interest. Whateverrrr...
• packetpirate 7y ago
  I can definitely relate to his feelings of not being taken seriously in school and being put in the spotlight without oversight. I frequently did dumb things when I was in middle school, and it became a self-actualizing thing as I became increasingly frustrated that I had been pegged as some kind of criminal for doing mostly average rebellious teenage things. But what really got me was when I was increasingly blamed for things I DIDN'T do, and the frustration of it all led me to lash out because I had a difficult time refuting baseless claims against me. School administrators don't give a damn about the majority of their students. They mostly care about their image and the top 5% of students who make them look good. If you're even remotely troubled, the school system chews you up and spits you out. I think the worst example of this from my own experiences is during High School when I was put in "alternative education" because they just didn't want to deal with me anymore. Nobody thought "maybe it isn't that he can't do the work, maybe there's problems he's dealing with that nobody cares to ask about" or that the increasing frustration of being a social pariah and someone who can't find the words to express his issues was the problem; they just didn't care, so they just threw me out. Fortunately, I did finally get my act together and get through college... but I sincerely hope that what I experienced doesn't become common-place just because school administrators would rather "throw out the trash" than deal with the root of the problem.
• cyphunk 7y ago
  The comments in this thread indicate clearly, I think, why we should never listen to engineers on social topics and questions.
• maynman 7y ago
  I'm glad she was able to help her son disengage from the alt-right movement. Reasonable folks on all sides of the political spectrum ought to be condemning them. As an aside, I think we need to do a better job of defining what the alt-right is. The term seems to be used increasingly often these days as a club for smacking around anybody right of center. Obviously, racist and anti-Semitic views would put one in the alt-right category, but there was one section of the article in particular that gave me pause: They insisted that the wage gap is a fallacy, that feminazis are destroying families, that people need guns to protect themselves from government incursions onto private property. There are plenty of intelligent and virtuous folks that believe gender wage disparities cannot be attributed entirely (or even mostly) to discrimination, that more traditional families will have a positive impact on society, and that the purpose of the 2nd amendment is to allow individuals to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. Admittedly, I've worded these views in a more nuanced way than they were described in that section of the article. However, if the more nuanced version of these views is now considered "alt-right", then I see little hope for unification and healthy debate between people of opposing views. In that case both sides ought to just retreat to their echo chambers and assume the worst about each other.