Except it's not disengenuous to say that at all. We can see that by the candidates each party has supported. Biden is considered a pretty centrist democrat by pretty much any metric. Trump, however, can't be considered a moderate. He's enabled fascist White nationalist supporters. Biden hasn't done the same.

Also, for the record, BLM and SJWs aren't equivalent extremist left compared to literal Nazis - the left wing extremist equivalent is Communism and the position to kill and eat the rich. That is the level of extremism that Trump has facilitated in office. If Biden also enabled people who explicitly call to overthrow the US government, I'd say you have a fairer point.

But I can't help but think this is a very asymmetrical horseshoe where the right side extends much further then the left side ever did. The problem is not even necessarily the particular ideology but rather that the right side is willing to be far more extreme in their views. That in itself is exceptionally dangerous no matter what the views are because it implies a very, very unpleasant life for those who don't share them.

It's the reason why today the US is so divided, there's no more overlap, the 2 sides each sit in their corner. The only possible response to increasing extremism on one side is increasing extremism on the other side until one has enough power to quash the other.

I think this statement is wrong. There are a lot of other possibilities. For example: "A minority that is agressively vocal for extremism in one aspect could be cushioned by a strong general consensus for a political culture of reasonable cooperation and discussion."

There are extremists on the right, Trump disavowed them publicly.

Nevertheless, media commentators on either side try to portrait these candidates as if they supported, or at least "enabled" extremists.

Can you be more specific on how either of these candidates "enable" or "do not enable" extremism? How would you falsify an accusation of "enabling" something?

This is probably a bad thing.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/02/trump-has-condemned-white-...

https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54381500

> I've seen him refuse to denounce white supremacy in the first debate...

That was clearly a missed opportunity to clear things up, but the counter-question "Who do you want me to condemn?" is a fair one. It's easy for Trump to condemn the KKK, not so easy to condemn militia groups in general. Similarly, it's easy for Biden to condemn rioters, not so easy to condemn Antifa in general. Effectively, both candidates dodged that question.

> ... I haven't seen him denounce anyone who might vote for him.

That's moving the goalpost a bit too far for my taste. Trump has condemned white supremacists, that at least is on the record.

I can indeed do this, but the question itself seems to be asked in bad faith. How on earth do you need me to report to you on Trump's behavior and words even into the final debate?

Let's focus on the falsifiability: What would a candidate have to do in order to disprove the accusation?

If there isn't a clear answer to that question, then how is this tactic materially different from name-calling?

Except they're not. Your country has drifted so far right, every opposing voice may look like "extreme left", but it's not. Nowhere close.

If you want to argue about the actual extreme left, go right ahead. I'm as left-leaning as they are, but I'll probably agree with you. There's some idiots.

But the extreme left isn't really that vocal at all in the US right now. It's the moderate leftists trying to restore some sense of normalcy.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/20/trump-says-coronavirus-masks...

Wearing a mask is just a simple precaution that everyone should take. Using pictures of you wearing a mask rather than not, is just leading by example.

Other famous leftists wearing masks:

https://img.etimg.com/thumb/msid-75093913,width-480,height-3...

Narendra Modi

https://s.abcnews.com/images/International/WireAP_3c4b927864...

Silvio Berlusconi

https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/b201141e75ee4d...

Viktor Orban

Etc.

Not a mod, but I'll take an educated guess that this is what ires someone:

> What is called far right in USA is the same thing we call neo-fascism anywhere else

The rest of your post is spot on IMO but I hesitate to upvote because of that part, and not because there isn't a point but because it is a whole lot more nuanced:

Yes: a number of wackos exist on the "far right" (I hate that term as it frames conservatives with totalitarian ones.)

But there has also been a tendency by media to abuse the term as a rubber stamp for "anything conservative we don't like". It's either that or a large number of facists are the ones to defend the jews this year, and despite 2020 being odd I don't think that will ever happen.

(I collected a fair number of downvotes myself last election season, seemingly from both sides, which is why I feel somewhat qualified to explain ;-)

It was a simple question, I had the last 6-7 post immediately downvoted at zero points upon submission.

Seconds later.

Unless someone is tracking me , which would be rather incredible, I wanted to know if I triggered something.

Have you ever heard of people shadow banned without warnings?

A post among many to explain what I mean

It's ok if the moderators do their job the way they are told to, it's more of a problem if you don't know why and especially if it happened to you

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681860

To be honest I don't care if someone is ired or not, being ired is a choice and usually doesn't depend to what other people do, but how we react to them

I haven't been here for a few years (green account again, yay), but at least back then, moderators weren't know for f...ng with anyone like that. Warning, maybe another warning, shadow ban and good bye.

At any rate, posting "@moderators" in the middle of a 4000 comment thread will get you nowhere. There is a contact email at the bottom if you want to ask for investigation.

It has been admitted I think that one is aware of certain bots (not affiliated with YC) that vote in certain directions.

I think I have even seen one popular HNer admit that he thought there was a bot who would upvote all his answer irregardless of who low quality they were.

Maybe someone has something like that and have pointed it at you.

More likely though you annoyed someone and they went in to your profile and looked at your other answers.

Edit: I looked into your comments and here are two notes.

1. Your comments are a mixed bag. Saying Trump brought war to American soil for example isn't anywhere near true and also inflammatory.

2. Some of them are insightful but ires one side without delighting the other. The result is you get a downvote from those who are annoyed and no support from the other side.

I've been hit by this a lot. Don't care to much.

I believe that he was quoting the New Yorker there

He posted the link as well

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-trump-brou...

Anyway: Chicago, June 2020, 18 people killed in 24 hours

Worst event in 60 years

Los Angeles is gonna exceed 300 homicides in a year

Last time it happened was 20 years ago

These are war numbers to me, as Italian

Rome is the same size of Chicago and had 11 homicide in a year

Italy has 60 million citizens and there were "only" 276 homicides in a year, Los Angeles is a 5 million people city

The US far-right includes camps that don't exactly fit that definition (though there is plenty of overlap), like christian dominionists, corporatist right-libertarians, and the misogynistic PUA/incell/MRA crowd (which is more of a feeder system than a political philosophy per se).

It's a rather Big Tent™.

I would like to add that the Critical Race Theory (where DEI originates from) is only recently starting to get traction in for example The Netherlands, traditionally an already pretty left-leaning country.

[1] https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/20...

No, it hasn't, meaningfully.

> The last 10 years the extreme left in the US has shifted left, passing even the European left

Whether or not it's true, the “extreme left” in the US that may or may not have shifted that way is politically irrelevant.

Meanwhile, of the major parties the Democratic Party has been stable for decades while the Republican Party has shot to the extremes, a process that has continued at a rapid pace over the last decade.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/31/the-repu...

Biden can't pronounce the word "free healthcare" for fear of losing votes.

That's what I was contesting: far right is right at the centre of the political scene side by side with Trump, far left is not because it has no direct representation in the political system.

Unless you consider someone like Sanders a far left extremists, which is not.

Far left movements are mostly extra-parliamentary

Hacker News tends to be pretty good about people not just downvoting posts because they disagree with them. However, that goes out the window when the discussion gets political.

I'd be really interested in seeing the numbers for upvotes and downvotes on political topics vs other topics. I wouldn't be surprised if you could train a classifier to spot political articles based on this distribution.