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>If extremists start using a symbol, non-extremists have to accept that they might be associated with those extremists by continuing to use it. This is exactly

by collyw 7y ago

>If extremists start using a symbol, non-extremists have to accept that they might be associated with those extremists by continuing to use it. This is exactly what these people want. There are campaigns to make the pride rainbow a hate symbol, the communist flag a hate symbol and no doubt numerous others. You have fallen for it and they are laughing at you for that.

krapp 7y ago
>You have fallen for it and they are laughing at you for that. What have I fallen for, exactly? What's the trick? Some people already consider the pride rainbow and communist flags to be hate symbols. White supremacists do use coded language and shibboleths online. My comment was simply a statement of fact - the meaning of symbols can be affected by cultural and political influence and can change over time. That some fools have tried to turn that fact into a meme, or that the media can easily be baited into a moral panic, doesn't make it any less true.
- salawat 7y ago
  The trick is that by taking every symbol that had positive influence and making it a hate symbol, it's showing that you're a fool for naively associating Symbol A with hate, and are merely acting as a knee jerk reactionary without understanding the underlying context. If you did understand it, you'd realize trying to stomp out or prevent what is going on is a fool's errand. You can't extinguish the idea; because on each success on your part, a metamorphosis will happen elsewhere, utilizing some other innocuous symbol. You need to get to the root of the matter; which is apparently a marginalized segment of your population being squeezed to the point violence and hate seems the only way forward. Which is a rather ugly state of affairs, as it means society as a whole has already lost. It is infrequent that a population pushed to the brink of violence becomes anything more than a bloody footnote in the history books in need of some form of whitewashing for the future.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    a marginalized segment of your population being squeezed to the point violence and hate seems the only way forward There's a name for ascribing responsibility for one's own emotional states to other people. NEETs aren't inherently right wing, and if this were really a phenomenon involving an oppressed minority, where is the prosocial behavior aiming to evoke solidarity from other minorities? Deciding that the Nazis were right after all and the last 80 years of western history (or 160 for Confederacy LARPers) constitute an elaborate plot to make one group of people worse off is getting into delusional territory.
    - salawat 7y ago
      Even the "wehraboo's" and "Confederate LARPers" aren't what they are on the surface. A sibling poster mentioned 2016'ish being some sort of seminal formation date for them; it isn't hard to realize that in the current day and Age, the net allows for the reach of those with sabotage or ideological undermining to be even wider than ever before. Undercurrents existed at one point, yet the flames were fanned by the increasing utilization of online media to increase visibility. One will absolutely not stop that. Furthermore, the phenomena of placing blame on others for current emotional states isn't necessarily that far off. Mental/memetic contagion is a well known phenomena; it seems to be fundamental to how information transfer works. The issue regarding contagion though, is that there is a model which currently exists with regard to thought and behavior that largely downplays the pliability of individuals and vulnerability to external influences on their reasoning. We see this philosophy in our justice system espoused time after time. X is a bad apple. X can never change. X should be removed from society. Preaching of this model weakens our most vulnerable populations. They end up never developing any sort of memetic immune system, or framework to guard against entirely rhetorical or emotional form of attack or influence. Of course, that all assumes that there was a solid foothold gained in the first place development wise.
      - anigbrowl 7y ago
        Astute. Although I spend a great deal of tiem railing against certain extremists the underlying problem is our poor understanding of the dynamics of social contagion even as it is being avidly weaponized. Cross platform transference is particularly understudied and hard to study due to the competitive nature of the industry and other factors. Feel free to drop me a line if you're interested in conversing further.
anigbrowl 7y ago
You have fallen for it and they are laughing at you for that. They? You are the one asserting other HN posters making a reasonable observation have 'fallen for it'.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

by collyw 7y ago

krapp 7y ago

>You have fallen for it and they are laughing at you for that. What have I fallen for, exactly? What's the trick? Some people already consider the pride rainbow and communist flags to be hate symbols. White supremacists do use coded language and shibboleths online. My comment was simply a statement of fact - the meaning of symbols can be affected by cultural and political influence and can change over time. That some fools have tried to turn that fact into a meme, or that the media can easily be baited into a moral panic, doesn't make it any less true.

salawat 7y ago
The trick is that by taking every symbol that had positive influence and making it a hate symbol, it's showing that you're a fool for naively associating Symbol A with hate, and are merely acting as a knee jerk reactionary without understanding the underlying context. If you did understand it, you'd realize trying to stomp out or prevent what is going on is a fool's errand. You can't extinguish the idea; because on each success on your part, a metamorphosis will happen elsewhere, utilizing some other innocuous symbol. You need to get to the root of the matter; which is apparently a marginalized segment of your population being squeezed to the point violence and hate seems the only way forward. Which is a rather ugly state of affairs, as it means society as a whole has already lost. It is infrequent that a population pushed to the brink of violence becomes anything more than a bloody footnote in the history books in need of some form of whitewashing for the future.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  a marginalized segment of your population being squeezed to the point violence and hate seems the only way forward There's a name for ascribing responsibility for one's own emotional states to other people. NEETs aren't inherently right wing, and if this were really a phenomenon involving an oppressed minority, where is the prosocial behavior aiming to evoke solidarity from other minorities? Deciding that the Nazis were right after all and the last 80 years of western history (or 160 for Confederacy LARPers) constitute an elaborate plot to make one group of people worse off is getting into delusional territory.
  - salawat 7y ago
    Even the "wehraboo's" and "Confederate LARPers" aren't what they are on the surface. A sibling poster mentioned 2016'ish being some sort of seminal formation date for them; it isn't hard to realize that in the current day and Age, the net allows for the reach of those with sabotage or ideological undermining to be even wider than ever before. Undercurrents existed at one point, yet the flames were fanned by the increasing utilization of online media to increase visibility. One will absolutely not stop that. Furthermore, the phenomena of placing blame on others for current emotional states isn't necessarily that far off. Mental/memetic contagion is a well known phenomena; it seems to be fundamental to how information transfer works. The issue regarding contagion though, is that there is a model which currently exists with regard to thought and behavior that largely downplays the pliability of individuals and vulnerability to external influences on their reasoning. We see this philosophy in our justice system espoused time after time. X is a bad apple. X can never change. X should be removed from society. Preaching of this model weakens our most vulnerable populations. They end up never developing any sort of memetic immune system, or framework to guard against entirely rhetorical or emotional form of attack or influence. Of course, that all assumes that there was a solid foothold gained in the first place development wise.
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      Astute. Although I spend a great deal of tiem railing against certain extremists the underlying problem is our poor understanding of the dynamics of social contagion even as it is being avidly weaponized. Cross platform transference is particularly understudied and hard to study due to the competitive nature of the industry and other factors. Feel free to drop me a line if you're interested in conversing further.

anigbrowl 7y ago

You have fallen for it and they are laughing at you for that. They? You are the one asserting other HN posters making a reasonable observation have 'fallen for it'.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]