The alt right - Mod Warning in OP

midnight city

Lets imagine for a moment that a new group formed recently. They believed that women should should cover themselves head to toe in black robes, that gays should be killed, that people should have limbs cut off if they break the law, that anyone who left the group should be killed, that anyone who criticized the group should be killed. That anyone who brought shame on their family should be killed. And their leader married a 9 year old. How would that group be received?

midnight city

midnight city wrote: »

Lets imagine for a moment that a new group formed recently. They believed that women should should cover themselves head to toe in black robes, that gays should be killed, that people should have limbs cut off if they break the law, that anyone who left the group should be killed, that anyone who criticized the group should be killed. That anyone who brought shame on their family should be killed. And their leader married a 9 year old. How would that group be received?

ISIS?

I'd say they haven't been received well at all.

midnight city

Plenty of the above is being preached on European soil. Many of the young members believe in exactly as i mentioned above.

That's how things are in places like Saudi Arabia too.

midnight city

midnight city wrote: »

Plenty of the above is being preached on European soil. Many of the young members believe in exactly as i mentioned above.

That's how things are in places like Saudi Arabia too.

What one believes, and how one acts are quite different things.

As far as I know, Orwell's thought police haven't actually been setup just yet.

Brian?

midnight city wrote: »

Lets imagine for a moment that a new group formed recently. They believed that women should should cover themselves head to toe in black robes, that gays should be killed, that people should have limbs cut off if they break the law, that anyone who left the group should be killed, that anyone who criticized the group should be killed. That anyone who brought shame on their family should be killed. And their leader married a 9 year old. How would that group be received?

Very poorly, as it is now.

What's your point? What has this to do with the alt right?

midnight city

Deleted User wrote: »

Orwell's thought police haven't actually been setup just yet.

We are getting there.

midnight city

midnight city wrote: »

We are getting there.

Please continue...

alastair

midnight city wrote: »

Lets imagine for a moment that a new group formed recently. They believed that women should should cover themselves head to toe in black robes, that gays should be killed, that people should have limbs cut off if they break the law, that anyone who left the group should be killed, that anyone who criticized the group should be killed. That anyone who brought shame on their family should be killed. And their leader married a 9 year old. How would that group be received?

About as well as a new group that advocated for the same rules that the Christian testaments impose.

Yourself isit

oscarBravo wrote: »

It might help if they could demonstrate this oppression and disenfranchisement, but they seem to be too busy deriding "cucks" and "SJWs" to get around to actually making any cogent arguments.

The oppression is presumably class oppression, something the left used to believe in.

Brian?

Yourself isit wrote: »

The oppression is presumably class oppression, something the left used to believe in.

We still do.

Yourself isit

Brian? wrote: »

We still do.

I dont take your middle class (not very well understood even by faux socialist standards) libertarian socialism seriously. In practice it wouldnt be any different from anarcho-capitalism.

70% of American white high school only grads voted for Trump. They are worried about jobs, immigration and globalisation and the export of American factories.

Professor Moriarty

Yourself isit wrote: »

I dont take your middle class (not very well understood even by faux socialist standards) libertarian socialism seriously. In practice it wouldnt be any different from anarcho-capitalism.

70% of American white high school only grads voted for Trump. They are worried about jobs, immigration and globalisation and the export of American factories.

No doubt a rich kid billionaire feels their pain.

Brian?

Yourself isit wrote: »

I dont take your middle class (not very well understood even by faux socialist standards) libertarian socialism seriously. In practice it wouldnt be any different from anarcho-capitalism.

I'm cut to the quick. How do you know I'm middle class? My penchant for fine claret and membership of a gentleman's club?

I'm not going to digress into a socialist v capitalist libertarian debate here. It's off topic.

70% of American white high school only grads voted for Trump. They are worried about jobs, immigration and globalisation and the export of American factories.

If that's why they voted Trump, they've locked the stable door after the horse has bolted. The factories are gone and never coming back.

Yourself isit

I'm cut to the quick. How do you know I'm middle class? My penchant for fine claret and membership of a gentleman's club?

Expensive bikes and wagu beef. And your belief in Open borders. Nobody who is poor would support that.

If that's why they voted Trump, they've locked the stable door after the horse has bolted. The factories are gone and never coming back.

It probably is why they voted for Trump in the rust belts. After all places that voted for Obama later voted for Trump.

And factories can move.

TheOven

midnight city wrote: »

Lets imagine for a moment that a new group formed recently. They believed that women should should cover themselves head to toe in black robes, that gays should be killed, that people should have limbs cut off if they break the law, that anyone who left the group should be killed, that anyone who criticized the group should be killed. That anyone who brought shame on their family should be killed. And their leader married a 9 year old. How would that group be received?

Can't they just join the alt right instead of creating a new group?

Lt Dan

Deleted User wrote: »

What one believes, and how one acts are quite different things.

As far as I know, Orwell's thought police haven't actually been setup just yet.

Really? Not sure about that chief. Una Mullaley is already strong arming everyone for a seat on the Council

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Muhammed_1

Boards is biased towards liberals and against conservatives, as is the media and the government.

Things will get worse before they get better.

Perhaps Trump, or the second amendment folks, can do something.

oscarBravo

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I'd be very interested in finding out why that is, and entirely in favour of making sure that any structural inequities that caused it were being addressed.

But you're not going to get anything accomplished about a problem like this by deriding SJWs on the Internet -- and that's where the "alt right" movement seems to be furiously spinning its wheels.

You're not wrong. Case in point:

Muhammed_1 wrote: »

Boards is biased towards liberals and against conservatives, as is the media and the government.

Things will get worse before they get better.

Perhaps Trump, or the second amendment folks, can do something.

I'm at a loss as to what this actually contributes to the sum total of human knowledge.

Chips Lovell

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

We must be reading different newspapers, because I've seen plenty highlighting concerns that boys are falling behind girls at second level.

Zubeneschamali

Muhammed_1 wrote: »

Boards is biased towards liberals and against conservatives, as is the media and the government.

Things will get worse before they get better.

Perhaps Trump, or the second amendment folks, can do something.

Perhaps Trump will order a well regulated militia to invade boards.ie and change the moderation policy?

That's what I'm getting from your post, anyhow.

Rjd2

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Yep you make a good point, and I can understand how people especially if you are struggling in life can find it infuriating to be ignored or to hear taunts like "check your privilege straight white man" constantly, but ultimately the very worse of those people are still much more tolerable and less harmful than the alt right movement which is absolute poison.

Ultimately the alt right are the social justice warriors of the right turned up to 11 with an extra dose of fascism for maximum repulsion factor.:(

Brian?

Yourself isit wrote: »

Expensive bikes and wagu beef. And your belief in Open borders. Nobody who is poor would support that.

Did you put all that effort into checking my posting history? Kudos. FYI my bike I expensive by road bike standards.

It probably is why they voted for Trump in the rust belts. After all places that voted for Obama later voted for Trump.

And factories can move.

Factories can move. They won't be moving back.

ancapailldorcha

Brian? wrote: »

Factories can move. They won't be moving back.

And this is something that's being continuously overlooked. The only way manufacturing is going to regress to its previous state is by jacking up the prices of goods to the point where noone can afford them. Free trade makes goods and services cheaper but even if it were abolished, technology has made many low skilled jobs redundant and thankfully so.

super_furry

Muhammed_1 wrote: »

Boards is biased towards liberals and against conservatives, as is the media and the government.

Things will get worse before they get better.

Perhaps Trump, or the second amendment folks, can do something.

Can't really seeing Trump and the NRA leading a charge into Boards HQ, can you?

Yourself isit

Brian? wrote: »

Did you put all that effort into checking my posting history? Kudos. FYI my bike I expensive by road bike standards.

Well that and your open borders extremism. Not a belief the unskilled can afford.

Factories can move. They won't be moving back.

They can move in either direction.

Yourself isit

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

And this is something that's being continuously overlooked. The only way manufacturing is going to regress to its previous state is by jacking up the prices of goods to the point where noone can afford them. Free trade makes goods and services cheaper but even if it were abolished, technology has made many low skilled jobs redundant and thankfully so.

You're wrong about prices. But what's to be thankful about the loss of permanent pensionable unionised employment?

Gbear

On why I think the alt-right has become a thing -
While there has been a shift in opinions on some matters, as one would expect as society progresses, I don't think people have changed much fundamentally.
People have become more tolerant of certain beliefs but they haven't become more tolerant in general.
People talk about tolerance as if it's the dispelling of the concept of in-groups, tribalism and that sort of thing, but really, I think the in-group has just shifted to a different set of beliefs.

I'm not a complete misanthrope but a large % of society didn't move away from the authoritarian mechanisms of fascism and communism and into a new age of liberalism.
People are still perfectly happy to run roughshod over others' rights if it means they get what they want or their values are propegated.

There's a large degree of results-oriented rather than process oriented thinking that goes on in society - the drug war, gender/racial quotas, etc, and in my mind this is one thing that leads to authoritariansm.
By fixating on getting to the goal straight away rather than fixing mechanisms that create the issues they have a problem with, I think it creates a climate where people can justify compromising on their morals more easily.

The point of all this is that I don't think we've made as great strides as we'd like to think about engendering debate in society.
Laws are in place to protect us and it's obviously a better situation with those in place than living in genuine police states, but in a truly tolerant society you wouldn't even need such things to prevent the stifling of speech - it would simply be an emergent property of that society.
There's clearly still plenty of appetite to stifle what others say, and despite it being enshrined in law, there's a constant battle to reduce those freedoms, which wouldn't be possible if there was no mandate given to government to do such a thing.

So, what I think develops from this is that, just the same as ever, an in-group oppresses (don't get your knickers in a twist, I'll qualify that in a second) an out-group.
In this case, it's the new in-group of the socially progressive, vs the out-group of people who aren't.

To be clear, the oppression is in part a victim complex, and the places it manifests itself is more in the form of peer-pressure stifling debate, but there is an element of laziness and belligerence among progressives in debating that leads towards more polarisation IMO.
Moral outrage at opinions has an awful effect on people's capacity to have reasoned debate but, in line with the results-oriented form of thinking that I think is still endemic in society, so long as they can create enough grief for those they oppose - racists, homophobes or whatever, it seems that some on the left feel happy enough that they're getting the job done.

If you call anti-choice people women-hating scum and that energises your crowd enough to get an abortion referendum to pass, who cares that you're arguing dishonestly?

Even ignoring the moral argument that you should argue in good faith and do yourself justice even if you feel the people you're arguing with have atrocious beliefs, I don't think that the job is getting done.
I think echo chambers have become too seductive and the internet has given ample room for them to develop and from this environment the alt-right has sprung up.

Society hasn't done enough to engender debate and I think that given that it's the left that have the momentum (most Brexit or Trump voters are still vastly more progressive than anyone in the 1950's), the onus is on them to hold themselves to the required standard. They're the ones trying to create a progressive society and I think they're fighting the battle to do so in the wrong way and it's creating situations like we see today.

With that said, this is a marginal event in social change in my mind.
I think the influence of the alt-right is overblown.
I think they're actually less influential than their counterparts on the left, because the left-wingers are in some way connected to the in-group of generally sensible progressive people and have more and more capacity to influence society, whereas the alt-right are part of the dwindling elements of the right wing - the religious, socially conservative, etc.

the_donald posters aren't representative of people who voted for Trump. Neo-nazis aren't representative of people who voted for Trump.
Mostly it seems to be working -> lower middle-class Americans fallen on hard times and the core of traditional conservatives who always vote Republican but aren't part of any kind of new wave of right-wingedness, or part of the extreme right.
Young people talk a lot of ****e on the internet but, IIRC, the demographics of the polls show that young people generally voted for Clinton, even among white males who're painted as some ravening horde come to destroy progressivism.

TL;DR - I think the left should hold themselves to higher standard if they want to pretend they're better people, but, the situation with the alt-right isn't as relevant as it seems on the internet and I don't believe they're really that influential.

oscarBravo

Yourself isit wrote: »

They can move in either direction.

Sure - when the cost of manufacturing is lower in the target country, factories will move there.

Do you think Trump will be able to lower the cost of manufacturing in the US to compete with China? If so, how? - and will the people who voted for him want the resulting jobs?

ancapailldorcha

Yourself isit wrote: »

You're wrong about prices. But what's to be thankful about the loss of permanent pensionable unionised employment?

Not sure where the latter part of your claim came from. As to the former, can you disprove my statement? Here's a link supporting my claim.