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Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by briandear on Saturday November 19, 2016 @05:13AM (#12992782)
Do you think the "alt-right" is the only major problem? Try tweeting something against a Hillary or Obama policy during the election or challenge a 'liberal' person -- the responses can be no less harassing and vitriolic.

This idea that the 'right' is a problem is in itself part of the problem.

There is plenty of harassment from those that claim they are more tolerant than the rest of us.

I do agree with your echo chamber point though -- one needs only to spend a few minutes on Mother Jones's comment section to read all manner of hate against those who have different opinions from their own.

You are exactly correct -- the public sphere ought to welcome all viewpoints as sunlight is ultimately the best disinfectant.

One of the reasons Hillary lost the election is that her campaign seemed to be in a bubble -- holding valid concerns of many groups in contempt while surrounding itself with voices that spent more time self congratulating or feeling intellectually superior whilst many Americans (such as in the Rust Belt) found themselves marginalized. The Obama campaign by contrast actually reached out to the so-called deplorables.

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by jessedhillon on Saturday November 19, 2016 @06:13AM (#12992939)
Yes, a left wing bubble exists. However, without any qualifications of scope and scale, it sounds like you're suggesting that the vitriol approaches a comparable level to that of the alt-right. That's just a plainly false equivalency.
Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by tnone on Saturday November 19, 2016 @06:51AM (#12993061)
You say that, when the alt right is an artificial internet meme, while leftist dogma rules over universities and continues to go after people's jobs for wrongthink.

Vitriol is clearly a bad measure when subjective interpretation rules are becoming official policy. Even Twitter now has special treatment for particular groups enshrined in its policy. You can be as vitriolic as you want, as long as it's against the "correct" group.

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by someguydave on Saturday November 19, 2016 @08:52AM (#12993476)
Hear hear. Equality before the law is the true egalitarian ideal.
Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by hga on Saturday November 19, 2016 @10:27AM (#12993850)
One problem is that, to the extent the inchoate Alt Right has decided upon this (and I think it has), we explicitly reject egalitarianism AKA equalitarianism (they're cognate, right?). In Vox Day's first cut 16 point formulation, Point 7 is:

The Alt Right is anti-equalitarian. It rejects the idea of equality for the same reason it rejects the ideas of unicorns and leprechauns, noting that human equality does not exist in any observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual form.

From http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/08/what-alt-right-is.html

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by nickpsecurity on Saturday November 19, 2016 @11:08AM (#12994046)
Well, I appreciate you sharing a clear statement on what it is. I haven't seen one before this. Although plenty is debatable here, No 14 and 15 look immediately contradictory as one leads to laws with a preference for whites or discrimination against blacks while other implies a pure meritocracy. I don't have to guess about this, though, given I live in the South whose history shows how it plays out. ;)

Good that there's a number of items on the list I agree with. Some common ground.

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by hga on Saturday November 19, 2016 @11:29AM (#12994147)
Note that #14 is simply a version of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words Besides being cute in making it #14, I suspect he felt it needs to be explicitly stated since its inverse is an explicit goal of our enemies. Although Vox Day himself isn't "white", and I'll note as a matter of taxonomy divides the Alt Right into the Alt West and Alt White, the latter a very small subset.

The general answer to the apparent contradiction is generally found in the other points and implied in #15: complete separation, e.g. #11 "The Alt Right understands that diversity + proximity = war." No proximity, no war of that sort e.g. embedded in those laws you refer to, and therefore no problems with #14 of those sorts.

Also, I should make clear this is Vox Day's first cut of a statement of what the Alt Right is, but he thinks it's solid enough to get it translated into quite a few languages now. But the Alt Right is still seriously inchoate.

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by nickpsecurity on Saturday November 19, 2016 @11:45AM (#12994216)
Interesting. I do understand the concept of having an inverse. A person in West Tennessee explained to me why she discouraged whites and blacks marrying. Seems like pure hatefulness at the start. No, her concern was that they rarely have white kids. Enough of it happening would eliminate the white race. Other races also work hard to preserve their ethnic history, especially cosmetic stuff. I don't see it as any different so long as laws aren't passed for banning it or people hated on for not following the preference. That is, I don't like it but I understand it's similar to what other groups do.

"#11 "The Alt Right understands that diversity + proximity = war."

That needs some explanation. What does that mean exactly?

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by hga on Saturday November 19, 2016 @12:04PM (#12994312)
#11 "The Alt Right understands that diversity + proximity = war."

It means if you put enough people of different identities in close proximity, the inevitable result is "war". Maybe not Yugoslavia type war, but warfare of one type or another, including "simple" economic warfare, which was one of the causes of The War Between the States, and had been a frequent problem for the young Republic prior to that, but it also happens on very small scales, see for example the various non-native merchant classes in so many countries, and that doesn't require large numbers on both sides.

There's a social scientist who's research said much the same thing, who published his data early but otherwise sat on his results for more than a decade, Robert Putnam. As Wikipedia puts it, "His conclusion based on over 40 cases and 30,000 people within the United States is that, other things being equal, more diversity in a community is associated with less trust both between and within ethnic groups." (emphasis in original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and...).

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by samudrin on Saturday November 19, 2016 @01:34PM (#12994829)
There's so much wrong with this voxday manifest I don't know where to start.

"The Alt Right believes Western civilization is the pinnacle of human achievement and supports its three foundational pillars: Christianity, the European nations, and the Graeco-Roman legacy."

Smacks of racism... But we all need our selective foundation myths.

"5. ...It supports all nationalisms and the right of all nations to exist, homogeneous and unadulterated by foreign invasion and immigration."

So does the Alt-Right support the right of self-determination and national autonomy for the Palestinians in Israeli-Occupied Territories?

Does the Alt-Right aspire to the German National-Socialists of the 20's-40's?

"7. The Alt Right is anti-equalitarian. It rejects the idea of equality..."

So not all people should be equal before the law?

"scientodific" - is that even a word?

"10. The Alt Right is opposed to the rule or domination of any native ethnic group by another, particularly in the sovereign homelands of the dominated peoples."

I think Native Americans would agree with you here.

"14. The Alt Right believes we must secure the existence of white people and a future for white children."

And then the overt racism.

"15. ...human sub-species..." I didn't realize there was such a thing. Last I checked DNA is DNA and sperm fertilizes egg.

This whole things is racist. It is small-minded, backwards thinking, isolationist, static and reactionary.

These ideas are further an affront to the Enlightenment ideals that are one of the true cornerstone of western civilization, whose roots go deeper than Greece and Rome, and the progress that we all benefit from - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

Get outta Dodge yo.

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by hga on Saturday November 19, 2016 @02:08PM (#12995038)
So does the Alt-Right support the right of self-determination and national autonomy for the Palestinians in Israeli-Occupied Territories?

Yes, but there has to be physical separation. So one way or another, the "occupied" has to go. That's explicitly covered in #10, and #15 says at the end "Every race, nation, people, and human sub-species ... possesses the sovereign right to dwell unmolested in the native culture it prefers."

Does the Alt-Right aspire to the German National-Socialists of the 20's-40's?

No, if for no other reason than that they lost ^_^! The Alt Right is about winning, and the NASDP weren't winners, from the individual level (see how many biographies, granted, biased, say pretty early on "a failed X", starting with Hitler), all the way to the international level.

So not all people should be equal before the law?

That's pretty clear from many of the other points. E.g. a person from "race, nation, people, [or] human sub-species" who's not in one of their nations would not have the same rights as natives of the nation.

"scientodific" - is that even a word?

It's a supremely infelicitous neologism coined by Vox Day that I don't see anyone else picking up because it's so bad. But it's defined in the next sentence of the point, so, eh.

I think Native Americans would agree with you here.

Which just so happen to include Vox Day ^_^ (long suspected by he and his siblings, then recently confirmed by genetic testing; he's also of Mexican descent. No doubt part of why he's part of the Alt West, not the Alt White, although there's also mere details like Christianity differentiating the two subsets of the Alt Right as he's defined their taxonomy, as noted by many including Hitler, Jesus was a Jew after all).

I think the "human sub-species" being referred to in #15 pertains to the recent discoveries WRT to Neanderthal intermixing and the like, but this is not an topic I follow. Ah, per Wikipedia, and this is following earlier research first published in 2010 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal):

"In 2016, research indicated that modern humans had three distinct interbreeding events with Neanderthals: the first encounter involved the ancestors of all non-African modern humans, probably soon after leaving Africa; the second, after the ancestral Melanesian group had branched off (and subsequently had a unique breeding event with Denisovans); and the third, involving the ancestors of East Asians only.

In short, only members of the Negroid race are pure homo sapiens ^_^.

Last I checked DNA is DNA and sperm fertilizes egg.

When it comes to defining species and sub-species, not exactly; per Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subspecies):

A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which two individuals are capable of reproducing fertile offspring, typically using sexual reproduction.

A common way to decide is that organisms belonging to different subspecies of the same species are capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring, but they do not usually interbreed in nature due to geographic isolation, sexual selection, or other factors.

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by jessedhillon on Saturday November 19, 2016 @04:05PM (#12995669)
This is like someone claiming why a literal pile of steaming bullshit cannot be the truth, by pointing out that it is bullshit. Then, another person attempts to rebut it by pointing out that the particular species which shat this out is actually some kind of buffalo, of the female gender in fact.
Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by hga on Thursday November 24, 2016 @09:23AM (#13030428)
Someone came up with a very simplified version, BTW, http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/11/alt-right-what-it-is.html short enough to quote in full:

1. Alt Right is right-wing. No lefties!

2. Alt Right so edge, not lame. Cucks and cons so lame.

3. Alt Right gonna win. Not gonna lose.

4. Europe good, church good, white people good. History good too.

5. Freedom for everybody!

6. Stay home and don't touch the foreign poop.

7. Equality bad, equality isn't even.

8. Science good. Made-up shit bad.

9. Everybody votes they boys.

10. Small crew can't tell big crowd what to do. Not for long, anyhow.

11. MS-13 and Latin Kings gonna kill Crips and Bloods. And vice-versa. Keep them apart.

12. Alt Right don't give no fucks.

13. Free trade bad. No jobs, no money!

14. White people good.

15. Leave all them Red, Yellow, Brown, and Black people alone.

16. War bad, genocide bad too.

TL;DR: Everyone should be left by they own damn selves

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by agotasaidwhat on Saturday November 19, 2016 @08:01AM (#12993292)
I don't see how extreme left with it's blatant racism and sexism is that much better than alt-right? #killallmen #killallwhites
Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by TheOtherHobbes on Saturday November 19, 2016 @08:33AM (#12993399)
I think the alt-right is a major problem because alt-right ideas are supported by a network of sites that create and propagate outright lies. The lies are then propagated further through Twitter accounts and FB groups to create a movement that literally wouldn't exist without its popular untruths.

The UK's Brexit vote was swung by the fact that some of our newspapers have lied about the EU for decades. The list of lies is breathtaking. They literally just make shit up to further their cause.

The Left doesn't lie and manipulate on an industrial scale like this. The Left sometimes gets facts wrong, but there is no industrial fake-news network supporting left-leaning ideas. (And no - the mainstream media are not that network. The MSM are primarily pro-corporate and pro-establishment, not left-leaning.)

Once you start lying and manipulating professionally and commercially, notions of free speech no longer apply. Industrial dishonesty is toxic to democracy. It's also an easy and cheap tool of influence for hostile nation states who want to undermine shared values.

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by aaron-lebo on Saturday November 19, 2016 @08:43AM (#12993448)
> Industrial dishonesty is toxic to democracy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Drn0Lg5gIRc

That's one of numerous examples of selective editing by CNN.

> The Left doesn't lie and manipulate on an industrial scale like this. The Left sometimes gets facts wrong, but there is no industrial fake-news network supporting left-leaning ideas. (And no - the mainstream media are not that network. The MSM are primarily pro-corporate and pro-establishment, not left-leaning.)

Even if that is true now (and it's a very dubious claim), you don't have to go back very far in history to see the left bending over backwards to justify the socialist utopia Stalin was building in the USSR.

If you believe in truth, if you believe in honesty, stop making excuses when the liars are on your side. Stop using the no true Scotsman fallacy to excuse liars. Dishonesty is used by human beings of all classes and political stripes. It always has and it always will be.

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by grzm on Saturday November 19, 2016 @08:54AM (#12993492)
I agree that the news situation is terrible. I don't know if it's useful to make it a partisan issue. From what I've seen on HN, people of all political persuasions aren't happy about it.

Let's call it out when we see it, leaving partisanship out if it as much as we can. This could be an issue that unites us, rather than splits us.

Something that makes this increasingly difficult is that we're having difficulty agreeing on shared truth. I think it's right to increase scrutiny on sources that are proving themselves untrustworthy, but we need to start trusting (and verifying) somewhere.

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by hga on Saturday November 19, 2016 @10:10AM (#12993778)
Unhappy about the lies?

One things that separates the Alt Right from in the US the moribund and dying movement conservatives and libertarians is that we're willing to use any weapon the Left uses. That is, one thing that distinguishes us is that we refuse to play the game by the rules set for us by the other side, rules that ensure we lose.

So while we may find lies in the context of public discourse distasteful, they're certainly on the menu of tactics, although they're frankly weak sauce and hardly needed, like every other one of the Left's. The latter being a legitimate reason for the Left to be totally freaking out right now.

As for "unites or splits us", you're living in the past, we're split, ever increasingly during my entire lifetime (and I turn 56 RSN), can you honestly say there's any potential for this trend to not continue?

Put yourself in the shoes of the Right; what is the Left offering that would move us back "together" in some sense?

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by Chris2048 on Saturday November 19, 2016 @09:29AM (#12993611)
> The Left doesn't lie and manipulate on an industrial scale like this

I think you are wrong about that. There's also the issue of the underdog not having the institutional control (media, fact-source institutions) to really build an effective counter PR scheme.

Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by douche on Saturday November 19, 2016 @06:56AM (#12993076)
You really shouldn't be getting downvoted for a simple statement of fact like this. The only real difference between extremists on the left and extremists on the right is that the leftists wrap themselves in the armor of holier-than-thou self-righteousness.
Re:An experiment in fighting racism on Twitter by nickpsecurity on Saturday November 19, 2016 @11:12AM (#12994074)
The fact that this entire sub-thread about censorship or attacks by leftists is greyed out supports the claim. They pretend to be righteous folks that have civilized discussions, weigh the evidence, support equality, etc. Then, they're trying to disappear the comments, jobs, or whatever of those that voice dissenting opinions. They're no different except the what and how of their preferences and attacks.