Extremist rhetoric on Trump threads

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

hullaballoo

It's difficult, in the face of what he says and now does, to stop the wave of strong and emotional backlash.

The best one I saw about him was "GET ****ED, WOTSIT HITLER."

Havockk

What is your agenda Permabear? You are already in another thread supporting the absurd suggestion that the term 'fascist' should be banned.

The loudest and most vocal voices on this site at this very moment are the extreme-right, and some of the idiocy that I have seen posted is barely believable.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Havockk

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Honestly, I don't believe you and I have reservations about your motivations, judging by your participation in the feedback threads I've read.

dudara

Speaking as a regular poster here, not as an Admin (because frankly I'll need to think about this a bit)

The Trump debate is the tip of an iceberg towards which the good ship Boards has been steaming for quite a while. To me, someone who been active on Boards for years, I can say that I see less and less healthy discussion, and more and more oneup-manship and extreme rhetoric. People are literally building walls around their viewpoints and refusing to budge from their fortresses. It's depressing.

There's a whole swathe of people out there who don't understand healthy debate. People who don't understand why it's actually good to have and respect opposite viewpoints.

I don't think Boards is done yet. We haven't hit the iceberg and there's a lot of good discussion still going on. IMO Boards reflects society, so I think this is a bigger problem.

The question for me is "What can Boards do to remain a place where a good discussion is possible?" in the face of a wider societal issue.

Memnoch

Havockk wrote: »

Honestly, I don't believe you and I have reservations about your motivations, judging by your participation in the feedback threads I've read.

I agree. I believe that Permabear has little interest in rational and civil discourse and that his real agenda is to dampen down and censor criticism of Trump, his administration and his supporters.

Let's just revisit Donald Trump for a moment.

This is a man who believes that it is okay to exploit positions of power to sexually assault women. He has derided women who have dared to stand up to him in public for their physical appearance and tried to attribute criticism to menstrual cycles in public debates. He has consistently hurled abuse at his political opponents and detractors. He has generalised mexicans as rapists. He has mocked a disabled reporter. He has called for and implemented bans on people on the grounds of their religion, including refugees. He has called for the murder of the families of terrorists. And just recently, he has authorised a raid in which an 8 year old American girl was shot dead by US special forces. He advocates torture.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/01/yemen-strike-eight-year-old-american-girl-killed-al-awlaki

So let's just be clear.

Trump is a fascist in the making. He is a misogynist. He is a bigot. He is a racist. He is a narcissist. He is an egomaniac. He is a liar and a conman.

He is an utterly vile and reprehensible human being.

None of what I have said is extremist rhetoric. It is Trump's behaviour and words that are such, and these are therefore accurate terms to describe him, his actions and his language.

What he is doing and plans to do is extremist and must be pointed out and criticised in the strongest possible terms for what it is.

If his supporters feel uncomfortable at their association with such a man, all the better. Perhaps they should reconsider their support rather than trying to censor people from pointing out the truth of Donald Trump.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

ancapailldorcha

Firstly, I'd note that Trump supporters here are more than capable of giving their fair share of abuse.

Secondly, it's getting harder and harder to maintain a safe space, for want of a better term for civil and constructive discussion. If I sanction a Trump supporter, I'm a biased leftist. If I do it to one of the anti-Trump supporters, I'm a GOP-loving bigot.

Civil discussion is very much on the decline online as far as I can see. I plan to do my best to keep Politics open to proper discussion but my hopes aren't high.

Kitsunegari

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Firstly, I'd note that Trump supporters here are more than capable of giving their fair share of abuse.

Secondly, it's getting harder and harder to maintain a safe space, for want of a better term for civil and constructive discussion. If I sanction a Trump supporter, I'm a biased leftist. If I do it to one of the anti-Trump supporters, I'm a GOP-loving bigot.

Civil discussion is very much on the decline online as far as I can see. I plan to do my best to keep Politics open to proper discussion but my hopes aren't high.

I think that's the problem in general. There are hundreds of posts that just are abusive of Trump and the administration and nothing is done about it. It's happening in lots of threads because it's 'cool' to be anti-Trump. Anyone arguing against the Anti-Trump camp is a Nazi, a racist, a mysognist and a fascist.

The_Valeyard

Havockk wrote: »

The loudest and most vocal voices on this site at this very moment are the extreme-right, and some of the idiocy that I have seen posted is barely believable.

Ah well, it's a nice change from the usual extreme left viewpoints.

ancapailldorcha

Kitsunegari wrote: »

I think that's the problem in general. There are hundreds of posts that just are abusive of Trump and the administration and nothing is done about it. It's happening in lots of threads because it's 'cool' to be anti-Trump. Anyone arguing against the Anti-Trump camp is a Nazi, a racist, a mysognist and a fascist.

For one thing, they're rarely if ever reported. It's a hot topic. You can check that by looking at either of the Politics fora.

Robineen

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

If there's been a noticeable increase of the above, it might be best to step back and ask why that is happening.

Kitsunegari

Robineen wrote: »

If there's been a noticeable increase of the above, it might be best to step back and ask why that is happening.

Fake news, faux outrage and the Democrats and their supporters picking and choosing which humanitarian issues to care about are laregly the reasons why this is happening. The people moaning about immigration from Yemen didn't and don't give two hoots about Obama, and now Trump, bombing Yemen.

The world has gone mad. You'll find more posts on Boards.ie complaining about Trump banning immigrants than you will about Obama or Trump killing innocent civilians in the very countries Trump has banned. You literally couldn't make it up and if you question their line of thought your a Nazi or a racist.

There has been more scrutiny of Trump in less than two weeks than Obama faced in two years. I think people are right to question what are the motives of these people who blindly supported Obama but have come out in their droves to try and stop Trump. There are a number of posters who are continually getting away with OTT criticism.

Havockk

The post above this one epitomises the problem that boards.ie faces in general. It's a problem the media has to come to terms with, but they are paid staff and I just don't know how boards can combat such post-truth nonsense, being that the mods are all volunteers. It's a tricky situation which is compounded by the fact that recently, not even reason or logic is effective against it.

Flint Fredstone

In my experience here and in general I suppose, the further left a person is the more likely they are to be intolerant of other opinions. It comes across as a mission to take away the voice of the other side at times.

I wouldn't have had much interest in a thread about Donald Trump until I seen the way some people were carrying on.

KyussBeeshop

I don't read any of the Trump debates on Boards - I've roundly found all discussion of Trump and the recent election, on most of the Internet, is utterly worthless and of almost no substance.

The signal-to-noise ratio is so low, that the only thing useful for me to do is isolate myself from such discussions, keep an eye on sources that don't fall into the tribalism, and just watch and see what Trump actually does, and judge by actions - not by hysterical reactions to his actions.

I'd also be a person who can agree with Trump on some issues, e.g. globalization/trade-treaties, immigration without enough jobs (not the same as agreeing with his nationality ban) - despite considering myself 'left'.

The tone of such debates on Boards is set by the widescale propaganda surrounding Trump/Hillary and the recent election. People largely don't even realize how severely they have and are being affected by such propaganda, in how the tone of such debates are set not just on Boards but throughout all forms of media.

So yea it's really more a 'sign of the times' for lack of a better way to put it - the hysteria is everywhere - Boards is going to have a hard time fitting that in consistently with the site rules, and will probably find that the enforcement of the rules will change along with the politically 'acceptable' narrative of the day.

kneemos

Basically telling people what's acceptable to think if you start banning certain opinions,not beyond the wit of Boards though I'd imagine.
Dunno how the OP's view is more valid than any other,assuming it is a view and not an agenda.

dfx-

whatever about boards.ie specifically, this is the campaign Trump drove and wanted. He is carrying it on into his Presidency so yes it's going to be like this for four years and certainly until the midterm elections so 2018 at the earliest.

He has himself painted a very dark, grim, end-is-nigh picture of his country in particular where people are out to get you and destroy your country (or country as you see it) so what do you expect the temperature of the discussions to be?

jackofalltrades

When Brexit happened the level of emotions in debates jumped by a big margin.
Before the results you could have some kind of rational discussion.
After threads just seem to descend into an outpouring of anger.

Which I thought was bad at the time until Donald Trump was elected.
Then the proverbial **** really hit the fan.

It's depressing that it seems to be getting to the stage where rational discussion is less and less likely on this and other sites.
And we're only at the start of his Presidential term.
And that's before we even start to look at the possible results in several elections that are happening in Europe this year.

Arghus

I had to laugh after reading the title of the thread and then realising that the OP was making the absurd assertion that it's actually the leftist rheotric that seems to constitute, for him, the more extremist and insulting part of poltical debate on the site. Honestly, really?

drunkmonkey

Time for an American politics sub

Everything and I mean everything that relates to US politics gets put in there whether the thread was started in AH or LGBT form (there was Hitler comparisons there).

A thunderdome for democrats and republicans that's very lightly modded or don't even bother modding it, let them burn themselves out.

Needs to happen. Cobsider it a social experiment.

Wibbs

KyussBeeshop wrote: »

The tone of such debates on Boards is set by the widescale propaganda surrounding Trump/Hillary and the recent election. People largely don't even realize how severely they have and are being affected by such propaganda, in how the tone of such debates are set not just on Boards but throughout all forms of media.

This. So much this. Even in the imported terms used.

gallag

Memnoch wrote: »

I agree. I believe that Permabear has little interest in rational and civil discourse and that his real agenda is to dampen down and censor criticism of Trump, his administration and his supporters.

Let's just revisit Donald Trump for a moment.

This is a man who believes that it is okay to exploit positions of power to sexually assault women. He has derided women who have dared to stand up to him in public for their physical appearance and tried to attribute criticism to menstrual cycles in public debates. He has consistently hurled abuse at his political opponents and detractors. He has generalised mexicans as rapists. He has mocked a disabled reporter. He has called for and implemented bans on people on the grounds of their religion, including refugees. He has called for the murder of the families of terrorists. And just recently, he has authorised a raid in which an 8 year old American girl

This is an example of it, and it goes unchanged, for years it's been known women throw themselves at rich and powerful men, Trump says when you are rich and famous women will *LET* you do anything to them, even let you grab them by the pussy. Suddenly this is brand new shocking information and a confession of sexual assault.

He made a joke about a woman's anger and her menstrual cycle, crass? Yes, end of the world or as bad as say a leading politician pulling a woman onto his lap after a few in the dail bar, no. Also the simple fact people are so entrenched there is no point even showing you the video that proves he made hand gestures the same as the "mocking the disabled reporter" ones about 12 times before that incident, you've already seen it but your mind is made up!

He also never said all mexicans are rapists and has put a temporary travel ban on 7 countries (not muslims, even what left of the Christians and jews are also affected) highlighted by the Obama administration as the most dangerous. Guardian article is just unsupported claims and guesswork.

K-9

Unfortunately I haven't been able to give as much time to nodding as I'd like over the last month so response times maybe slower than usual.

Agree with the points made in the Op and on the thread. Time for a zero tolerance clampdown methinks. If that means a quieter forum, sobeit!

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

dudara

@Memnoch, gallag (and all posters) - we are not discussing Trump himself, this feedback thread is about extreme rhetoric on Trump threads (and possibly other threads also).

I do not want the Trump debates that are flaring everywhere on Boards overflowing into this thread.

dudara

Havockk

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

This all sounds very civil and moderate of course and I cannot speak for the other poster but I am calling you out because I believe you are being dishonest.

It's very well to say that 'I don't support Trump', but you have expended more effort from what I have seen in certain threads attacking the *left* as if it is some sort of defined entity. Look at your threads in feedback, it's all in regards to the rhetoric of the left. I have yet to see you say anything other than the benign *I do not support Trump* in your attacks on the right. When the truth is that there is a broad coalition aligned against Trump from the Left to the Center to the moderate and conservative Right.

So yes I believe you are being dishonest and intellectually corrupt in what you are trying to achieve here.

gallag

dudara wrote: »

@gallag - we are not discussing Trump himself, this feedback thread is about extreme rhetoric on Trump threads (and possibly other threads also).

I do not want the Trump debates that are flaring everywhere on Boards overflowing into this thread.

dudara

WOW, so the post I was replying to point for point, you know, the one that says "let's examine trump" is fine, my reply to it = mod warning, I hope as this is a feedback thread you won't get to grumpy at me pointing out the rank hypocrisy that is on topic to the thread.

Wibbs

K-9 wrote: »

I haven't been able to give as much time to nodding as I'd like over the last month so response times maybe slower than usual.

Asleep on the job eh?

Flint Fredstone

Havockk wrote: »

This all sounds very civil and moderate of course and I cannot speak for the other poster but I am calling you out because I believe you are being dishonest.

It's very well to say that 'I don't support Trump', but you have expended more effort from what I have seen in certain threads attacking the *left* as if it is some sort of defined entity. Look at your threads in feedback, it's all in regards to the rhetoric of the left. I have yet to see you say anything other than the benign *I do not support Trump* in your attacks on the right. When the truth is that there is a broad coalition aligned against Trump from the Left to the Center to the moderate and conservative Right.

So yes I believe you are being dishonest and intellectually corrupt in what you are trying to achieve here.

Like myself, he's probably sick to the teeth of the agenda being pushed by the left. You only have to look at the threads in here about Trump. The amount of hearsay, twisting of words, anonymous sources and hysteria is really grating.

The further left you go the less tolerant they become to anybody with a differing opinion, the less respect for democracy there is and it's plain to see throughout the various fora here.