5 ms·

The last 5 years made me as distrustful of the left as the 2010-2015 alt-right years made me distrustful of the right. And like with the alt-right the media an

The last 5 years made me as distrustful of the left as the 2010-2015 alt-right years made me distrustful of the right. And like with the alt-right the media and culture moves at a glacial pace, taking years before even acknowledging the issue. I used to be exclusively scared of my friends falling for far right ideas from imageboards and I'm now feeling that same fear with my friends repeating the most illiberal irrational stuff straight from twitter.

mock-possum 3y ago
What’s a good example of that illiberal irrational stuff?
- hotdogscout 3y ago
  Whites deserve violent retribution for slavery discourse. Cultural appropriation. Denial of bad things done under socialist governments or those useful for the left. Race traitor discourse (if you're a racial minority but don't subscribe to radicalism). Discourse of whites being genetically inferior. Apology and support for racially motivated terrorism against white people. Virulent antisemitism.
  - 303uru 3y ago
    Where are you getting any of this? This is the alt-rights idea of the left, I see essentially none of this in my hard left circles and when some idiot shows up spewing any of it they're ostracized quickly. Meanwhile, I keep close tabs on the mutterings of the right and this is word for word the things we're supposedly saying.
    - archagon 3y ago
      Yep, OP should point to a single prominent Democrat who says things like this. In the meantime, the right is electing a repugnant criminal who wants to pardon himself, become dictator, and enact retribution on his enemies.
      - hotdogscout 3y ago
        Most recent one I could find: School board member claims on twitter whites are more dangerous than animals and is hailed by some as "an agent of change". https://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/2023/01/whiteness-remarks-by-jackson-school-board-member-defended-criticized-during-tense-meeting.html https://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/2023/01/whiteness-remarks... I've been a part of leftist circles since 2012, I envy that you can go by without seeing this stuff. Again, on mainstream social media.
        archagon 3y ago
        Some random school board member says some dumb stuff: who really cares? There’s always been oddballs on the local level, but all my congressional “leftist” representatives seem like reasonable people. Meanwhile, we’re nearly 50-50 on the next president actually upending democracy in the US. If you prioritize anti-wokeness above that, you will soon wake up in a country you no longer recognize. FWIW, I don’t like the rhetoric you cite, but I find that it ultimately has little impact on politics. And what the hell even is this “virulent antisemitism”? Is this your way of framing Israel/Palestine? That is just insane. I guess Bernie is a virulent antisemite in your eyes as well?
        hotdogscout 3y ago
        I care because it's been increasingly impossible to say these "oddballs" are being extremely shitty people and should stop. The message they get and the message they have been getting is they are "agents of change". There has been a few terrorist events with this kind of radicalism (Audrey Hale being the worst case) but the left is still allergic to criticizing this. Just how bad do things need to get? I agree the republican party is worse than democrats. I'm not American, I don't live in a first world country but I would vote for them. I think electing Trump was horrible. I don't think Bernie is an antisemite, I think the people on the left who hate Bernie for having empathy for kidnapped, tortured Israelis are, of which there are many. Gamergate and the alt right were fringe until Trump. The media and culture moved at a glacial pace before it started seeing them as a problem. Will we see the same thing happen on the left? A president that supports terrorism and violence against the "opressor" race and talks of guillotines? I think that's an improbable nightmare scenario but so was Trump at gamergate times. Again you went from "this never happens" to "of course it sometimes happens, but it doesn't matter". All Ivy League representatives in congress calling defending the eradication of Jews not hate speech? No instance of antisemitism on the left at all? This is why I'm suspicious of oddballs not mattering. They don't matter until they do and when they do they're correct and me and others are being insane. This boundary pushing of violence and bigotry is exactly how we got Trump and I really wish there was only one group of stupid violent demogogues running around to deal with, not two.
MilStdJunkie 3y ago
Ideally, anything that advocates sectarianism a priori should automatically be suspect, if not rejected out of hand. Creating internal conflict was probably the first job of the first spy in human history, and today it's a lower-risk gambit than ever before. No matter what your nutty uncle on Facebook says, no matter how "traditional" or "woke" you think you are, you have infinitely more in common with a BLM protester than you do with anyone from Eastern Europe or China. We're Americans first, and someone who insists otherwise should be super sus. Complication: there's so many bad faith communicators that it's increasingly hard to justify giving everyone an open channel. Thus we ignore some voices before they open their mouths, violating the above paragraph. I suppose you could rely on some meta to see if the individual voice has history of bad faith communications, make a sliding scale based on that. Somewhat humorously, the NL-generating so-called "AI" systems are more or less perfect machines for generating bad faith communications, and you can burn each ID with every message. I wish I had a solution for this, but I don't, I don't even see a way out of it. Perhaps platforms similar to Ground are trying to address this, so that consumers can see the history of the person who is communicating. But that won't help you on X/Twitter/Facebook/UnclePulltab/AuntPurplehair. Maybe the best advice for a literate citizenry is the age-old internet advice: "Don't read the comments". That's kinda funny given the venue I am writing in right now.
- hotdogscout 3y ago
  I'm not American or live in a western country. I wish I did. I don't agree I have more in common with a BLM protesters than someone from China or Eastern Europe. That's probably true for most people on these samples but surely not all. I despise the Chinese government. I despise most Eastern European governments, I don't know them all by heart. A lot of people under their governments do too. I agree with your ideals, those should be the rule, but they aren't. It's been quite some time since Obama's "when they go low we go high". I agree talking on the internet is mostly a mistake.

mock-possum 3y ago

What’s a good example of that illiberal irrational stuff?

hotdogscout 3y ago
Whites deserve violent retribution for slavery discourse. Cultural appropriation. Denial of bad things done under socialist governments or those useful for the left. Race traitor discourse (if you're a racial minority but don't subscribe to radicalism). Discourse of whites being genetically inferior. Apology and support for racially motivated terrorism against white people. Virulent antisemitism.
- 303uru 3y ago
  Where are you getting any of this? This is the alt-rights idea of the left, I see essentially none of this in my hard left circles and when some idiot shows up spewing any of it they're ostracized quickly. Meanwhile, I keep close tabs on the mutterings of the right and this is word for word the things we're supposedly saying.
  - archagon 3y ago
    Yep, OP should point to a single prominent Democrat who says things like this. In the meantime, the right is electing a repugnant criminal who wants to pardon himself, become dictator, and enact retribution on his enemies.
    - hotdogscout 3y ago
      Most recent one I could find: School board member claims on twitter whites are more dangerous than animals and is hailed by some as "an agent of change". https://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/2023/01/whiteness-remarks-by-jackson-school-board-member-defended-criticized-during-tense-meeting.html https://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/2023/01/whiteness-remarks... I've been a part of leftist circles since 2012, I envy that you can go by without seeing this stuff. Again, on mainstream social media.
      - archagon 3y ago
        Some random school board member says some dumb stuff: who really cares? There’s always been oddballs on the local level, but all my congressional “leftist” representatives seem like reasonable people. Meanwhile, we’re nearly 50-50 on the next president actually upending democracy in the US. If you prioritize anti-wokeness above that, you will soon wake up in a country you no longer recognize. FWIW, I don’t like the rhetoric you cite, but I find that it ultimately has little impact on politics. And what the hell even is this “virulent antisemitism”? Is this your way of framing Israel/Palestine? That is just insane. I guess Bernie is a virulent antisemite in your eyes as well?
        hotdogscout 3y ago
        I care because it's been increasingly impossible to say these "oddballs" are being extremely shitty people and should stop. The message they get and the message they have been getting is they are "agents of change". There has been a few terrorist events with this kind of radicalism (Audrey Hale being the worst case) but the left is still allergic to criticizing this. Just how bad do things need to get? I agree the republican party is worse than democrats. I'm not American, I don't live in a first world country but I would vote for them. I think electing Trump was horrible. I don't think Bernie is an antisemite, I think the people on the left who hate Bernie for having empathy for kidnapped, tortured Israelis are, of which there are many. Gamergate and the alt right were fringe until Trump. The media and culture moved at a glacial pace before it started seeing them as a problem. Will we see the same thing happen on the left? A president that supports terrorism and violence against the "opressor" race and talks of guillotines? I think that's an improbable nightmare scenario but so was Trump at gamergate times. Again you went from "this never happens" to "of course it sometimes happens, but it doesn't matter". All Ivy League representatives in congress calling defending the eradication of Jews not hate speech? No instance of antisemitism on the left at all? This is why I'm suspicious of oddballs not mattering. They don't matter until they do and when they do they're correct and me and others are being insane. This boundary pushing of violence and bigotry is exactly how we got Trump and I really wish there was only one group of stupid violent demogogues running around to deal with, not two.

MilStdJunkie 3y ago

Ideally, anything that advocates sectarianism a priori should automatically be suspect, if not rejected out of hand. Creating internal conflict was probably the first job of the first spy in human history, and today it's a lower-risk gambit than ever before. No matter what your nutty uncle on Facebook says, no matter how "traditional" or "woke" you think you are, you have infinitely more in common with a BLM protester than you do with anyone from Eastern Europe or China. We're Americans first, and someone who insists otherwise should be super sus. Complication: there's so many bad faith communicators that it's increasingly hard to justify giving everyone an open channel. Thus we ignore some voices before they open their mouths, violating the above paragraph. I suppose you could rely on some meta to see if the individual voice has history of bad faith communications, make a sliding scale based on that. Somewhat humorously, the NL-generating so-called "AI" systems are more or less perfect machines for generating bad faith communications, and you can burn each ID with every message. I wish I had a solution for this, but I don't, I don't even see a way out of it. Perhaps platforms similar to Ground are trying to address this, so that consumers can see the history of the person who is communicating. But that won't help you on X/Twitter/Facebook/UnclePulltab/AuntPurplehair. Maybe the best advice for a literate citizenry is the age-old internet advice: "Don't read the comments". That's kinda funny given the venue I am writing in right now.

hotdogscout 3y ago
I'm not American or live in a western country. I wish I did. I don't agree I have more in common with a BLM protesters than someone from China or Eastern Europe. That's probably true for most people on these samples but surely not all. I despise the Chinese government. I despise most Eastern European governments, I don't know them all by heart. A lot of people under their governments do too. I agree with your ideals, those should be the rule, but they aren't. It's been quite some time since Obama's "when they go low we go high". I agree talking on the internet is mostly a mistake.