My suspicion is that his grey-tribeism is genuine, but the red-tribe content is what pays the bills at substack.
I've been sober all my life, I was a teetotaller until 2016 when I developed a 4-drinks-a-day habit which persists to this day. I've been clearly sober dor most of my life though.
TDS was never a real thing amongst the left. It was and is generally a thing amongst liberal Dems and some Repubs. The Lincoln Project is a propaganda PAC attacking TDS and is a great example. It’s by establishment Republicans who have close to the same policies as Trump but want control of the GOP back. A lot of liberal and/or moderate Democrats approve of the Lincoln Project. Too many times have friends been gleeful over their propaganda.
The left did not and is not going to be part of any TDS BS. I consider myself far left and have far more Trump apologetics to say than TDS is overblown.
> the left has had far more saying in what's allowed on social media than the right, so if you have any integrity you'd stand on the side of the right to create some equality/justice
If I may, this is a centrist point of view. Since the left isn’t in the picture, it’s moderates vs the right. How can a call for integrity be to stand with the right when it isn’t binary?
Why not stand with the left? Or even just left leaning American politics like Bernie and the squad. Who are Democratic Socialists. Not even on the left economically. They believe in the Nordic capitalist system. This is one option to stand with and we still haven’t gotten to the left yet. Any one could also stand with the left in these circumstances. Right off the bat we have four options to choose from. With those options, in my humble opinion 99% of the time it takes no integrity to side with the right if youre a left leaning.
How so? In my eyes this is a case for a corrupt businessman that uses political ties for his gains. That’s pretty right wing isn’t it. At the very least there is no critique of capitalism, quite the contrary.
I also find it interesting that freedom of speech has seemingly become a right-wing talking point.
Because hate speech and misinformation is part of the right wing platform...
This is ignoring voter manipulation which was a big part of the 2016 election (as proven by the Cambridge Analytica leaks among other) tilting the voter to the right (see also e.g. brexit’s leave campaign illegal campaign financing and other dodgy behavior).
Compared to these—often flat out illegal—actions by the right, moderating hate speech is nothing.
Stop demonizing.
On the one hand, the leading Presidential candidate on the right has within the last 24 hours said he wants to suspend the Constitution and be reinstated President by dictate on social media. On the other hand, some people were constantly posting he was saying mean things, and some executives at a social media company tried to handle some things.
Totally gotta stand on the side of balance!
Are you talking about the theory of Russian interference? If so, that is not the same as denying the results, that is questioning the integrity. The difference is huge. The later calls into question bad actors and asks for reforms going forward, the former calls into action the removal of the elected president in favor of the looser.
Now as for the conspiracy of meddling with the election. I thought that was pretty well documented fact. We have stuff like the Cambridge Analytica leaks that show actual manipulation of voters.
Maybe you should look into how the US meddles in foreign elections. It is something countries do to each other. Russia has always done that and so have we. There was nothing special about 2016. These complaints about CA are the left's equivalent of when the right says there is mass voter fraud because of one or two minor instances of election fraud.
I don’t understand, do you think we should have blind trust in election, that there shouldn’t be partisan and independent observers, that security measures shouldn’t be scrutinized? And if we find a fault, we shouldn’t call for reforms. We should just “trust” the system?
No, this is not the same as denying the results without evidence. There is no equivalence here.
But he’s not so tribal that he pushes fabrications and half-truths.
If you think a left-wing person who says “whoa, Trump is terrible but lying about him only makes the left look bad” means someone is no longer left wing, we have some serious problems.
Yes…just like the comic Elon tweeted describing his views.
He’s still left, I still disagree with him but at least he’s intellectually honest (which appears to be the problem you have with him).
Taibbi and Greenwald haven't moved right on policy, they're still left of center and arguably to the left of the liberals who criticize them.
They just love pointing out inconsistencies from people who fight the news cycle battle week-to-week. They're contrarians, not conservatives.
I don't know what this means. How many people are included in this? Are you on the left or right under this specifications? Is everyone? If someone is defending Hunter Biden and the Dems, are they on the left here? Why would the left be the status quo? What about someone on the left who believes Hunter is not good, nor his family, nor the Dem party^^. How can both of these examples be on the left?
> Taibbi and Greenwald haven't moved right on policy, they're still left of center and arguably to the left of the liberals who criticize them.
> They just love pointing out inconsistencies from people who fight the news cycle battle week-to-week. They're contrarians, not conservatives.
I find this hard to believe. Taibbi didn't need to begin the Twitter thread by writing the left then Dems in parenthesis. No need to muddy the waters by incorrectly using left when he knows what the left means and knows it does not mean the Dems. Meanwhile using that language is sure to stoke up the right.
> They just love pointing out inconsistencies from people who fight the news cycle battle week-to-week. They're contrarians, not conservatives.
There's actual people doing this. That are picking apart both Dem and Repub inconsistencies and showing both establishments are not good. This contrasts Taibbi and Greenwald. Greenwald specifically has clearly been moving more and more to the right. At least publicly. Who knows how much of a grift all of this is. I can always check Fox News (which is just as bad as regularly going on CNN) next week and see Greenwald on again
^^This could be considered being a contrarian.
You're highlighting them needling the democratic line on "news cycle of the week" type things, and I agree they do that.
Re: "the left" vs democrats, I think taibbi was writing for a general audience who doesn't make a distinction there.
They aren’t politicians. They don’t have policies. Right wing agitprop can be done by non policy journos.
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1414595359368691712
You can’t love libsoftiktok and not be on the right.
—
I’m highlighting them being some level of propaganda mouth pieces (probably for their own fatter check sizes) for the right. Highlighting Dem stuff repeatedly makes that clear. Mixing the left and Dems makes it even worse. They know what they are talking about. They know blurring the left and Dems helps the right. That’s one of the main right wing GOP cornerstones. Pretend Biden or Harris are on the left. That moves the Overton window to the right or doesn’t let it budge.
This is also another conservative policy. Policy being —- make liberals, Dem voters/politicians, and the left into one bogeyman. Which provides multiple benefits to the right.
You seem to view it as a zero-sum, with us or against us thing. And there may be some validity to that with the realities of politics. But if someone had never once said "I like conservatives" or supported a single conservative policy plank, it's wrong to call them conservative.
You could call them insufficiently loyal and I think they'd agree with that. But on stuff that matters for longer than a 24h news cycle they're consistently liberal.
Taibbi, for example, wrote an entire book about Eric Garner's killing, documenting a ton of NYPD corruption in the process.. and has also spent a bunch of time making fun of embarrassing weepy SJWs on Twitter.
Who is us? I was never on the same side as either of these people. Even 5 or 10 years ago.
> wrong to call them conservative
Libsoftiktok is literally a right wing HATE account/community. Greenwald loves it.
> insufficiently loyal
Loyal to what? I don’t like Democrats…they don’t either.
(Unless you voted green)
Can we agree on the far more important issue of libsoftiktok being a right wing conservative account that is loved by Greenwald? Spreading bigotry and hatred. Smh.
The thing that Bernie understood and most libs don't is that we can be united on class issues or divided on culture war issues. We lose with the latter.
I've never seen libsoftiktok and I don't read a lot of Greenwald lately. I like Taibbi and subscribe to him.
I’m sure you’ll figure out some way to contest things. Once I nailed down Greenwald down you hand waved it away. I wouldn’t remain friends or defensive of someone who publicly supports a hate account/community. That says enough to me about Taibbi and how he sees Greenwald.
Maybe none of us are good enough for you and you'll have to be content with green party candidates
Your responses remind me of Joe Rogan saying people like Ron DeSantis are good people trying to give people freedom because that’s what Desantis told Joe to his face.
You’ve shown your true colors wrt libsoftiktok. This is one of countless examples of the hate libsoftiktok spews. It’s not hard to come by: https://god.dailydot.com/libsoftiktok-facebook-account-banne.... I should not have kept holding out hope you came in good faith.
I’ll let my transgender friends know they shouldn’t worry about the hate that comes their way because it isn’t real.
I suspect the people who have had death threats and such thrown at them because of the account don’t feel the same way you do.
You can question if its ethically appropriate to re-post these stuff as it frequently seems to be from people with severe mental problems. The claim however that people get death threats because of that account is silly. If something causes people to send death threats then if more people see it it would result in more death threats but that is not the fault of whoever made it visible. If this is the hill you want to die on then you should advocate for total censorship of everything since everything could trigger some unstable or evil person to send out death threats.
So then then question here is why do you write comments on HN? It's dangerous! Your posts and the posts you help push could increase the number of death threats being send. I'm sure you dont care about that at all. You write and post whatever you want and feel zero responsibility for other peoples irrational (re)actions. Obviously that is how it should be.
> if this is the hill you want to do die on…
> So then then question here is why do you write comments…
To make it clear. People have gotten threats because of the way libsoftiktok has editorialized stories. The moral bankruptcy is squarely on the account.
The pseudo-intellectual attacks you’re doing are weird. Changing the argument to pretend I’m upset that any one can be triggered by anything is weird. Pretending libsoftiktok is not an anti-lgbtq hate account is weird. Supporting hatred is weird.
I can simply go look what that account posts and I did exactly that and it is in fact re-posts of stupid tiktoks form deranged people. No one questions that they have a bias or push a narrative by selecting what they re-post. That is literally what every person on the internet does. Yet they are not in any way responsible legally or ethically for any threats someone else sends out "because" of them. Just like if someone would send a threats to libsoftiktok because of what you wrote here. Clearly you would not be responsible for that.
>Pretending libsoftiktok is not an anti-lgbtq hate account is weird. Supporting hatred is weird.
I never said any of that. You seem so emotional bout it you make up stuff.
I could not care less what they are anti about. My whole point was that they are not responsible for the action of others. There is no incitement for such actions. I dont support hatred I support logic. Blaming someone for the action of others is illogical and probably a result of your emotional involvement rather than rational thought. You can only blame that account for what that account actually did. I highly doubt it is sending out threats because then it would have been deleted.
> Clearly you would not be responsible for that.
Because I am not an influential propaganda mouth piece. Also I did not direct any one toward any one else nor am I saying some wild accusation like saying any one is a groomer. I also am in no way directing any one to have libsoftiktok or any one else “cancelled”.
> You seem so emotional bout it you make up stuff.
Yes, this is such a good faith reading of my comments…
>Also I did not direct any one toward any one else nor am I saying some wild accusation like saying any one is a groomer. I also am in no way directing any one to have libsoftiktok or any one else “cancelled”.
Sure you didn't but neither did libsoftiktok. You write this as if this separates you from what that account did and thus indirectly accuse them of doing these things. But where is the proof? Why cant you just link to the "offense". Why is here not a single tweet that encourages people do do any kind of harmful action to anyone?
>Yes, this is such a good faith reading of my comments…
You aren't replying in good faith if you make stuff up. I'm calling you out and obviously this is not a good faith argument and its not meant to be one. Its meant to give you an opportunity to self-reflect instead of doubling down on accusation that you can not provide any evidence for.
It seems reasonable to assume the accusation originated in emotional coping because that is how it reads like. If you have a different reason why you made these accusations then feel free to tell me but I'd much rather had evidence for the claims than debate about why you lie to me, fully aware that I can and did look into what the account posts and its none of the things you accuse them of. You just dislike them which is fine. I dislike what FlatEarthZone posts on twitter. But I'm not gonna accuse them of hurting people trough the extended hypothetical harmful action of their followers, that would be silly.
Libsoftiktok was put on hidden black list[1] by twitter because they where unable to ban the account as it did not break the twitter rules. (The rules obviously include the stuff you accuse them of.)
They repeatedly temporary suspended the account[2] and accused them of "hateful conduct"[3] similar to your accusation. Then later the highest "authority" on twitter internal confirmed "[they have] not directly engaged in behavior violative of the Hateful Conduct policy."[4]
The suspensions where then justified by a variation of your bogus accusations for "encouraging harassment"[5] while if that would have been the case they would have simply terminated the account.
And while not relevant to the content the account posted its still quite interesting that when Libsoftiktok got doxed, which is actually against twitter rules, they did nothing.[6]
[1] https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1601018810495995904#m [2] https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1601019593606107136#m [3] https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1601019900071288833#m [4] https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1601020845224128512#m [5] https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1601021201815457793#m [6] https://nitter.net/bariweiss/status/1601022887556571136#m
It’s a set of rules selectively applied depending on whether or not your political allies or opponents are on the receiving end.
Taibbi leans left and I don’t but I like reading his articles (despite premises I may not agree with) because he’s at least honest in his arguments and doesn’t try to bury or twist inconvenient facts.