Reddit Bans Far-Right Groups Altright and Alternativeright (theguardian.com) 899
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Social media site Reddit has banned two of the largest far-right "subreddits" groups it hosts, altright and alternativeright. The subreddits have been used in the organization of America's resurgent neofascist movement but the final straw for Reddit was the two groups' participation in what is known as "doxing": sharing private personal information without permission as a form of online harassment. The subreddits were specifically banned for breaking Reddit's content policy, according to a message posted by the site admins, "specifically, the proliferation of personal and confidential information." Reddit did not make it explicit which content infringed its rules, but it is believed to be attempts to dox the protestor who punched a white nationalist during a TV interview at Donald Trump's inauguration. Speaking to the Daily Beast, one Reddit moderator claimed that the ban was instead a result of its "record monthly traffic" (Reddit moderators, like the creators of individual subreddits, are all volunteers with no official relationship to the site's staff). "It's clear that Reddit banned us because we were becoming very popular and spreading inconvenient truths about who's ruining our country and robbing our children of a future," the moderator said.
LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think that "alt right" means "far right", you have no idea what kind of shitstorm the left is busily trying to summon by calling for assassination, coup, and terror.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
"Alt right" doesn't mean "far right", it means increasingly-blatant racism coupled with delusions of importance, while you metaphorically fellate a bunch of billionaire fascists who manipulate your dumb ass.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
White nationalist Richard Spencer coined the term in 2010 to define a movement centered on white nationalism.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Further there are people that lump Libertarians in as Alt-Right (as in they're not establishment conservatives).
So the phrase Alt-Right is not a simple == White Nationalists.
Milo, whether you like him or not, wrote an excellent article on what Alt-Right means.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope.
The only thing that matters is the perception held by outsiders. Outsiders aren't going to interview the thousands or millions of members who identify as being part of your group, just to see where they all individually stand. No one is sifting through members of the KKK to see if there are members with views towards blacks, jews, etc that are different than the perceived views of the group as a whole.
It doesn't matter if you're not a White Nationalist, if you claim to be alt-right at this point in time, you are going to be labeled as a racist (among other things, like xenophobic, homophobic, anti-intellectual, etc). Just like you'd be labeled as a racist, anti-Semitic if you joined the KKK but only wanted blacks removed from civil society. No one is going to ask you about your position on Jews. You'd be a member of the KKK, an anti-Semitic group. Therefore, you are also anti-Semitic, from the public's perspective.
No one gives two shits about your personal interpretation. You can fabricate whatever reality you want, but you can't control how others perceive you.
Re: LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty simple: those people don't want to be called term X because they don't perceive themselves as being part of that group (whether it's "homosexual" or "intersex" or "transgender" or whatever), so they pick some other more obscure group they identify with (like "genderqueer", whatever that is), or make up something new I guess.
With this alt-right stuff, it's exactly the opposite. We see here people claiming to be "alt-right", but then they try to claim they're not racist or whatever other label that outsiders perceive them as.
If you're going to stand up and claim to be part of a group that has voluntary membership, then it's your own fault when you're criticized for traits that outsiders generally associate with that group. If you don't like it, and don't agree with the assessment, stop claiming to be part of that group.
It's just like the OP said: you can't go around calling yourself a "proud KKK member" and then claim that you think Jews are great. It doesn't work that way, as the KKK is still known to be anti-Jewish (among many other things), and that's one of their big issues, not just some minor one with a lot of internal disagreement. If you take offense at being lumped in with them, then stop claiming to be part of that group. Make up your own group if you have to. Similarly, don't go around calling yourself a "communist" and then claim that you're against state or collective ownership of industry and you think private ownership and free markets are the way to go.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"genderqueer", whatever that is
"Genderqueer" just means "doesn't fit neatly into any other gender categories", "queer" being in the older sense of "weird".
Re:LOL (Score:4, Informative)
"Most of the left are stupid enough to call a ban on 7 countries that doesn't affect 87% of the muslims in the world a "muslim ban"
Trump, Conway & Spicer started off calling it a ban
Re: (Score:3)
It's not a muslim ban because all muslim's are affected it's a muslim ban because it is clearly targetted at muslims with no real justification.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, let's kill this one here.
During his campaign, Trump promised a Muslim ban. When elected, he enacted the most practical kind of Muslim ban he could, given that there is no easy way to determine if someone is a Muslim or not.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Interesting)
Milo, whether you like him or not, wrote an excellent article on what Alt-Right means.
Both you and AniMoJo are right (I can't believe I just said AniMoJo was right about something. Hell freezing over when...?). Spencer's "alt right" was just rebranded white nationalism. Then the term got popular among other toy ideologies, like neo-reaction and monarchism and things like that for people who oppose the left, but recognize that the mainstream GOP leadership is just a bunch of sell outs who play fight with the democrats and lose, so you don't really want to call yourself "right wing" because people just assume that means Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. Then the Trump revolution attracted a lot of other people who also don't agree with the mainstream GOP establishment, but really opposed either the left's identity politics/SJW moonbattery (like libertarians) or liked Trump's economic nationalist message (paleconservatives like Pat Buchanan who were opposed to free trade, mass immigration and empire). Oh look, here's a convenient term for people who have little in common except they oppose the left and the neocons, and that's what Milo (who could best be described as a social libertarian and professional troll) wrote about. It was also in this context that Steve Bannon said Bretbart was a platform for the alt right. NOT in the context of white nationalism but in the context of everyone who opposes the left and the neocon traitors. Then immediately after the election there's a video of Spencer saying "hail Trump" and by the left and media's one drop rule of Nazism if there's one Nazi under a label THEN EVERYTHING IS NAZIS.
There's no point using the term anymore by anyone who isn't a white nationalist, but I'm glad it's around, because it's useful schmuck bait for the left to attack. I'm a paleoconservative, and while I would have therefore been described by Milo's article, I have never self-identified as "alt right." Why would I? I was campaigning for Pat Buchanan in the 90s and don't need a new label. Let the left go screaming at the "alt right" which is basically Spencer's 300 people who showed up to his stupid NPI meeting. We paleocons, libertarians, and workers will be cheering on Trump's new Republican party as they run the government.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So you campaigned for a bigot? At this point you should just embrace your white nationalism.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Informative)
Pat Buchanan was one of the peoplethe GOP's âoeSouthern Strategyâoe, which is to this day subtle racism:
In American politics, southern strategy refers to methods the Republican Party used to gain political support in the South by appealing to the racism against African Americans harbored by many southern white voters.[
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
So yes, you did support a bigot. How could you not know? As for the Cheeto in Chief, he basically re-used Buchanan's strategy.
Re: (Score:3)
Further there are people that lump Libertarians in as Alt-Right (as in they're not establishment conservatives).
Yes, but we libertarians are usually pretty offended by it. And the truth is that the beliefs and focuses are very different [fee.org].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. But people self-label and not all people who label themselves as Alt-Right are White Nationalists.
I'm so sick of hearing shit like this. "I identify as Alt-Right but i'm not a racist, I support Richard Spencer but that doesn't make me a racists, I voted for Trump but I don't support racism, I believe white people are smarter than other people but really I'm not a racist".
I understand why you want to avoid being called a racist, it's a negative word with connotations, however rebranding the word does not change the sentiment. If you identify as alt right, in the very least you admit that the feeling o
Re: (Score:3)
Libertarians are about as socially liberal as you can get falling just short of anarchy. I hardly qualify that as "conservative".
Re:LOL (Score:4, Informative)
Fiscally we're small-market mainly for the reason that the more power one gives to the state to "do good", to help "solve a problem" the more it can be used against you. (See sig) Secondly because government meddling, while it may do some good at some times, ultimately devolves into a cabal who uses the power of the purse and the police to enhance their own position.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Interesting)
So. Many, many people, both on the left and right, do not consider Alt-Right to be simply White Nationalism
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LOL (Score:4, Informative)
It was originally used as shortcut the the full term "alternative right" and described various groups that were did not want to be associated with the main right group. white nationalist groups did start applying it themselves afterwards.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Trusting wikipedia on anything is dodgy these days. Trusting it on anything political or contentious is downright fucking naive.
Reddit NAZIs? I HATE Reddit NAZIs! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
For leftist liberals, you have Barack Obama who kindly waited for hecklers during his speech, Michele Obama and her "when they go low, we go high" and Hillary Clinton, who maybe smiled too much but did not creep up behind Trump in a threatening/stalking manner during the Town Hall debate. This has led to, for example, the Women's March with about 4 arrests among 3 million marchers (around one part per million) across the country.
So yes, in short, I don't have trouble believing that the alt.right users were doxing liberals. And yes, I'm posting this anonymously.
Re: (Score:3)
Could you please tell me what the "Woman's March on Washington" was actually about. Because every time I get someone to admit it was about that "one thing", i point out the hypocrisy of that from within the "Woman's March on Washington" own agenda/speakers and participants.
So far, I have identified several items that it was both about an not about.So far, about ALL I officially have for it is meaningless muddy messaging.
Yes, you got a bunch of women marching .Yay for women.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean like,
"By the way, and if she gets to pick --if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know. " - Aug. 9, 2016, Donald Trump
I don't believe in that BS about "left" and "right" or "liberal" and "conservatives." To me, they are often just meaningless labels applied without proper context. Meaningless sound bits meant for the mindless consumers who outsourced their thinking to the same media elites they dislike so much.
Trump has turned the White House into a reality TV set. Eerily similar to that of his shirtless horse riding buddy's own reality kleptocratic TV show.
Welcome to Amerika.
Re: (Score:3)
I agree that any public figure, in any fields, needs to be held accountable for their public comments. Modonna's comment was inappropriate.
However, let's not equivocate the actions of a popular singer with worldwide following with that of a major party candidate running for the presidency of the United States, who now has the power to affect lives worldwide.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
Does this really look like a call to blow up the White House to you?
If so, you must be a hyper-partisan idiot.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference is that the "alt-right" is not actually a political ideology.
It largely consists of 4chan anons and Twitter eggs saying outrageous things they do not necessarily fully believe in order to intentionally get a rise out of people because "fuck political correctness and fuck SJWs".
It springs from the fact that you are not allowed to question any part of the doctrines of politically correct ideology (e.g., third-wave feminism, the trans-acceptance movement) without being called a bigot by "hashtag activists" online, who may go so far as to target your real-life job just for questioning or criticizing their views. Even if you do so politely.
So if you're not even allowed to question politely, then let's just be as offensive and outrageous as we possibly can. Even if that means grossly exaggerating what we actually believe.
At its core, that's what the "alt-right" is. There are of course real bigots who have joined the movement, and there are also people who have attached their real-life names to the movement in order to make money (e.g., Milo). But at its core, the alt-right is simply a bunch of people talking shit trying to get you upset.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Informative)
The difference is that the "alt-right" is not actually a political ideology.
It largely consists of 4chan anons and Twitter eggs saying outrageous things they do not necessarily fully believe in order to intentionally get a rise out of people because "fuck political correctness and fuck SJWs".
The Alt-Right is a white nationalism movement, coined by Richard Spenser (the guy who got punched in a street interview recently) in 2010. He's been promoting it ever since. It certainly has roots in 4chan and 8chan, though it's always hard there to tell what is trolling and what is sincere, but it wasn't until the presidential election that the alt-right got much exposure with the selection of Steve Bannon last August to Trump's team. Bannon claims Breitbart is "the platform of the alt-right," and it's hard to dispute him on that.
Let's Play Six degrees of "You're a Nazi" ! (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't a conspiracy theory. A *attributed* quote from Assata Shakur is on their homepage [blacklivesmatter.com] and if you head over to Youtube, you can hear this very line being chanted in unison at dozens of different BLM protests. The women in question are widely considered to be the founders and coordinators of BLM and have given countless interviews and speeches on the subject, including one at TED (not even TEDx, but straight TED.)
But guess what? I don't assume that the majority of people who support Black Lives Matter are pro-terrorism. It's a tiny fraction. It's a tiny fraction that happens to be running the show, but a tiny fraction nonetheless.
And the same goes with the alt-right and actual racists and actual Nazis. Trash the founders all you want, but it's going to end very, very badly if the left continues to treat the entire movement and label as a monolith.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The alt-right came up with their own name, actually. It's a useful label to apply to conservative people who believe in alt-facts.
Or, as Colbert put it, "Imagine what's right. Now imagine the alternative to that."
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
The "narrative"? There's a video where she says that some demonstrably false claims are not falsehoods, they are alternative facts. I mean, she was actually recorded saying that. I'm sure she knew that too, because it was on TV and everything. They even broadcast it. What exactly is "the narrative"? Are you trying to suggest that she didn't say that at all, like Trump would do when someone asks him about something he was recorded saying, or are you trying to suggest that she wasn't referring to the "falsehoods" that they were discussing when she used that term? Which narrative are you referring to that isn't true?
She was referring to specific claims made by Spicer, which were not true, and instead of admitting that they were not true (because, like everyone else around Trump, you never admit when you're wrong about something) she came up with the term "alternative facts" to describe the things said by Spicer. She specifically used the phrase "alternative facts" to describe this information, and it should not be necessary to point that facts do not have alternatives that are also facts. The alternatives to facts are false, they're not facts.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Informative)
Here, let me help you out with the research, scanning the first page of Google results can be difficult:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a... [thedailybeast.com]
Here's one:
We know that from the platform from where the President was sworn in to 4th Street holds about 250,000 people. From 4th Street to the media tent is about another 220,000. And from the media tent to the Washington Monument another 250,000 people. All of this space was full when the President took the oath of office.
That's not true.
Here, here's another one:
Spicer said 420,000 used the D.C. Metro public transit on Jan. 20, 2017, compared with 317,000 for President Obama’s 2012 inaugural.
Not only is that not true, but both of those numbers are wrong.
Here's another one:
It was the “first time” that floor coverings were used to protect the grass on the National Mall, which had highlighted empty spots in the inaugural crowd, an effect not experienced in past inaugurations, he said.
That's not true either.
You asked for one, but there's three things he said which are demonstrably untrue. But instead of just admit that, she had to double-down and claim that they were alternative facts. If you want to re-watch that video where Conway and Todd discuss those specific statements made by Spicer then let me know so I can look that up for you too.
Re: (Score:3)
Trump didn't claim just "total audience". He specified "in person" and "on tv" (as well as "total"), and because it's a proxy for "people in town for the inauguration", he claimed "metro riders". "In person" was absolutely a lie. As was "on tv" and "metro riders". As for the idea that the streaming audience made up for that... well, there's no basis for that you've put forward.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Informative)
He claimed the audience (total number of people watching) was greater. And this was, according to Akami, the largest live streamed event ever. So Spicer was correct: the audience for Trump was bigger.
That is PART of what he claimed. Here's his actual quote:
This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in-person and around the globe
And if you look at the transcript of what he actually said, that sentence was prefaced by several other sentences going into detail about the IN PERSON CROWD.** He did NOT say anything else about internet streaming or whatever other than hinting at it in "around the globe" in that sentence there. So, claiming that he was entirely or even primarily talking about internet audience is simply wrong. Yes, it may be true that more people streamed this inauguration online than ever before, but more streaming devices are also available to people than ever before in history. On the other side of things, maybe crowd numbers were muted a bit due to the rain forecast. There are all sorts of things that could have played into the numbers here.
But two things are certain: Spicer was primarily making claims about the in-person crowd in his press conference, and the in-person crowd WAS NOT the largest ever at an inauguration.
"Alternative facts" are the things the media leaves out of their reports so they can lie by omission to create a false narrative ("lol no one likes Trump") instead of a true narrative ("Trump's audience was fine and he is supported by many people.")
This is truly ironic, because you are doing precisely what you're accusing the media of here. I could just as easily say: Alternative facts are the things meta-monkey leaves out of his posts so he can lie by omission to create a false narrative ("lol Spicer was right") instead of a true narrative ("Spicer was actually wrong about the in-person crowd, but he mentioned the global audience in passing and might have been correct in terms of streaming, even if that wasn't his point at all.")
Remember, the mission of the media is to persuade with propaganda, not to inform with facts.
Remember, the mission of internet posts is to win an argument, not to inform with facts.
--- ** P.S. In case you are going to claim Spicer was talking about something else, here's an extended quotation in context of what he said, which was later defended by Conway for the "alternative facts."
Secondly, photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall. This was the first time in our nation's history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall. That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual. This was also the first time that fencing and magnetometers went as far back on the Mall, preventing hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the Mall as quickly as they had in inaugurations past.
Inaccurate numbers involving crowd size were also tweeted. No one had numbers, because the National Park Service, which controls the National Mall, does not put any out. By the way, this applies to any attempts to try to count the number of protestors today in the same fashion.
We do know a few things, so let's go through the facts. We know that from the platform where the President was sworn in, to 4th Street, it holds about 250,000 people. From 4th Street to the media tent is about another 220,000. And from the media tent to the Washington Monument, another 250,000 people. All of this space was full when the President took the Oath of Office. We know that 420,000 people used the D.C. Metro public transit yesterday, which actually c
Re:LOL (Score:4, Interesting)
"Who gives a fuck?"
Trump does, many, many fucks.
The stupid asshole went in front of the CIA, stood with his back to their wall of nameless but honored dead and whined about how nobody believed how big, beautiful, fantastic & historic his inauguration audience was.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
Marx wanted to end history - he wanted to end differences between people so that there would be no conflict. To that end, he devised an economic system that would grind people down to a uniform miserable paste. Naturally the people who ran with it wanted to be the grinders, and not the paste.
After the Russian revolution set the example, they expected the west to follow along. We didn't. A group calling itself the Frankfurt School got together to figure out why the west didn't jump in, and what they could do about it. They identified our cultural institutions as our defense against Marxism and started working on ways to weaken us. Gramsci is notable here. Search ESR's blog for "Gramscian damage".
If you look at the current left in America, you will see that the one and only one unifying factor among the factions is a desire to destroy western traditions and institutions. What else do homosexuals and femenists have in common with Islamists who kill homosexuals and mutilate women? Why else would BLM unite with pro-immigration activists to invite in millions of central Americans who hate blacks?
The left in America is chasing after Marxist objectives in order to bring about a Marxist endpoint. Now that they are emboldened, they are even using the same violent Marxist street tactics from 100 years ago. The only difference is the strategy - today the institutions are targeted for destruction as an intermediate goal, instead of the economy.
So, yeah, I'm going to keep calling them Marxists.
Globalism just isn't a valid axis in America. Sanders campaigned as an anti-Globalist Marxist, and almost all of the Republicans candidates were pro-Globalism. In the long run, that distinction may grow to become the most important and the spectrum the parties align on, but it is not today.
When institutions stop doing what they were created for, they need to go away. The rarely do so willingly, so sometimes we need to break out the torches. I'll take your word for it that the current unions were created to fight against globalism, but they certainly are not doing so today.
They'll Go Underground (Score:4, Interesting)
If they think these people will go away, they're mistaken. Perhaps they feel they don't want to enable them by using Reddit's resources to organize, but, really, they were doing a huge service to the rest of society by keeping these posts out in the open where everybody can see them.
You can drive them all to locked sites on .onion services, but that is not in the public interest.
Re:They'll Go Underground (Score:5, Insightful)
Propaganda doesn't work well shared in secret.
Re:They'll Go Underground (Score:5, Insightful)
That's fine. Let them go to Stormfront. You have a right to your views and to discuss them with likeminded people. Major online portals have no obligation to help you.
If the White Supremacists are pushed back to their web forums which the rest of the world doesn't have to view, that's fine by me. I don't want to shut Stormfront down, I just don't want the sites I visit turning into Stormfront colonies.
Make it fair (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, "White Supremacists" can be blocked from Reddit, but what about the leftist nutjobs who believe that you should destroy other people's property and physically assault people with a different political viewpoint? I don't look at reddit as a rule, but I'd be willing to bet that extremist left wing groups exist on reddit and will not receive the same treatment as the "alt-right". That is true with Facebook and Twitter, so I assume it true on Reddit. Feel free to prove me wrong on that, I'll be happy to read about Reddit banning left wing nut jobs.
Frankly, if I had to look at who is worse right now I'd say it's the extremist progressive leftists who see no issues using violence against people simply because they have a different political view. In the last couple years, I have seen no valid reports of white supremacists out beating people. We have seen dozens of faked claims, and many of those have resulted in charges, but the "Right" has not been rioting and beating anyone. I have seen countless instances of leftists doing just that, and worse. Last night you have a young lady being interviewed on ABC punched in the face and pepper sprayed by one of these "oppressed" liberals. You have another pulled out of a car and beaten for no reason.
When you have a Government not prosecuting, or even arresting people, who are terrorizing people and preventing their free speech you will end up with a whole lot of violence from the other side. Hence you have a Trump supporter shooting an agitator at a separate rally after protesters started throwing bricks and rocks at people supporting the speaker showed up to counter protest.
People need to pay close attention to the rhetoric being used by the left right now. Sadly, the useful idiots really can't see the irony and hypocrisy in shutting down other people's free speech by committing physical violence while carrying signs and chanting slogans claiming the other side is fascist. They are claiming that words are violence, and a teacher who is an advocate for violent protests claimed that words from someone raped her. I wish I was joking, but both of those are factual. The claims that words are somehow causing physical harm is being used to justify violence against anyone not agreeing with (or bending over for) the leftists.
Trying times we are in right now, and in places like California I envision it getting worse before it gets better.
Re:Make it fair (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, "White Supremacists" can be blocked from Reddit, but what about the leftist nutjobs who believe that you should destroy other people's property and physically assault people with a different political viewpoint?
I've seen crazies, but attributing them to any political affiliation (except for those espousing actual violence) is pretty damn stupid, don't you think? This is the same type of thinking that groups all Muslims into suicide bombing America hating crazies. Should I lump together all Christians as violent terrorist extremists because of Timothy McVeigh and all those whackos who bomb clinics and send death threats to doctors who perform abortions?
I don't look at reddit as a rule, but I'd be willing to bet that extremist left wing groups exist on reddit and will not receive the same treatment as the "alt-right". That is true with Facebook and Twitter, so I assume it true on Reddit. Feel free to prove me wrong on that, I'll be happy to read about Reddit banning left wing nut jobs.
No, the onus is on you to provide evidence that there are forums full of violent threats and doxing coming from supposed leftist groups. If YOU have evidence, then YOU can submit it and get them banned. Enough of the liberal media "legenpresse" conspiracy bullshit.
Frankly, if I had to look at who is worse right now I'd say it's the extremist progressive leftists who see no issues using violence against people simply because they have a different political view. In the last couple years, I have seen no valid reports of white supremacists out beating people.
What do watch? Fox news? Is Breitbart you man source of info? Hate crimes, including against African Americans, are quite regular fair. It's just not enough to make headlines. Well, that is, until someone dies or actually looks at the statistics.
We have seen dozens of faked claims, and many of those have resulted in charges, but the "Right" has not been rioting and beating anyone.
Alternative facts in an alternative reality.
I have seen countless instances of leftists doing just that, and worse. Last night you have a young lady being interviewed on ABC punched in the face and pepper sprayed by one of these "oppressed" liberals. You have another pulled out of a car and beaten for no reason.
You're right of course. Liberals are way to soft. They stop with just beatings and pepper spray. The alt-right just kills people. Much more efficient, and then you don't have to worry about them voting either. For example, like that old white guy that shot and killed a teenage African American kid. Or the alt-crazy who massacred a black church.
Crazy people are just that. Trying to attribute their behavior to a political motive is just stupid.
When you have a Government not prosecuting, or even arresting people, who are terrorizing people and preventing their free speech you will end up with a whole lot of violence from the other side. Hence you have a Trump supporter shooting an agitator at a separate rally after protesters started throwing bricks and rocks at people supporting the speaker showed up to counter protest.
Goebells would have loved you. Which political party just recently told the press to shut up and froze out a major news network? Which political party is trying to implement the Ministry of Truth to prevent information the administration doesn't like from reaching the public? Which administration has fostered conspiracy theories, exaggerations, threatened to lock up political rivals, and has flat out lied repeatedly to the public?
People need to pay close attention to the rhetoric being used by the left right now. Sadly, the useful idiots really can't see the irony and hypocrisy in shutting down other people's free speech by committing physical violence while carrying signs and chanting slogans claiming th
Re:Make it fair (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, you silly, mis-informed little boy. What planet do you live on?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/14/... [cnn.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Are you really upset that democracy has outcomes you don't like?? Good god man. Gorsuch said it best the night he was nominated: "if you are happy with every decision you make as a judge your are not a good judge.". Only tyrants get everything they want because they never give the opposition a chance. Obstruction is legal and is a part of our government because the government is built on compromise and if you can't compromise then you don't get your way. Why are you upset that people's elected representativ
What alternative facts? (Score:3)
Show me one statement I made which is not factual. When media cherry picks portions of a topic to fit an agenda, showing the rest of the topic is valid and correct. I'm not a Kelly Ann Conway fan, but that is exactly what her statement meant. Let me give you an easy example. The recent moratorium on immigration is touted as anti Muslim, racist, etc... ignores very basic facts.
Facts: The US does not run out and investigate people trying to enter the US. Like every other country in the world we rely on t
Re:They'll Go Underground (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
But Hugo Chavez is/was a hero and champion of the left. Populism is good if you're Chavez but bad if you're Trump because ... ????
Re:They'll Go Underground (Score:4, Insightful)
He's a hero to some elements of the Left. The Left, like the Right, isn't a singular, and there are a helluva lot of people in the more centrist progressive category (like myself) who find the Chavistas to either be complete fucking morons, or in the case of Chavez and Maduro, just out and out criminals. Further, the whole "Bolivaran Revolution" crapola Chavez spent years spouting was little more than reanimating Bolivar's corpse for personal ingratiation and political gain (to the point where they literally dug the poor bastard's body up in what has to be one of the most grotesque displays in recent memory).
You see, this is the problem with talking purely in terms of "Left" and "Right", as if these vast monolithic adjectives were actually ideologies in and of themselves, and they're not. The "Right" often includes everything from right-of-center moderates all the way to frothing-at-the-mouth white supremacists, and somehow Libertarians get chucked in there as well, whereas the "Left" is everyone from left-of-center moderates through to wingnut Communists, often with certain anarchist socialist types thrown in as well (despite these groups being more like Libertarians).
So to say "the Left supported Chavez" is about as accurate as saying "the Right supported Pinochet". Clearly in both cases, large numbers of these supposed groups did not support these people. The people who I associate most often with, who might be called "progressives" and "social democrats" found Chavista populism and the incredibly short-sighted economic policies that Chavez instituted to be somewhere between incompetent and malevolent. My personal view is that Chavez may certainly have started out, like all such men, believing he was helping the Venezuelans, but in a pattern that Latin American political movements have partaken of for a couple of centuries now, ended up helping himself and his buddies in the process, thus simply transferring the kleptocracy from a right wing regime to a left wing regime.
Re: (Score:3)
Basically at the moment, main stream media is purposefully trying to toxify any political environment that is not corporate establishment. Pay attention to the shenanigans, to those trying to distort socio-economic issues back into identity politics, it is not happening by accident, establishment PR agencies and stink tanks are behind it, in affect, false flag trolls and main stream media than jumps on it and blames the entire political movements and tarnishes them as nazis and communists and inevitably as
Re: (Score:3)
Re: voting: I'm 100% in favor of showing ID to vote.
We (you and I and other techies) need to come up with an open source voting mechanism in which we can see a list of hashes (a pseudo-anonymous list of voters) with their corresponding selection. You as an individual can confirm on a publicly available website that your vote was recorded, and recorded accurately. (You would have a receipt with your hash.)
Re: (Score:3)
There is only one thing I hate more than fascists (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't take me wrong, the ban is perfectly justified, but it's always right-wing fascists who get punished. This guy had no right to punch whoever it was in the face, and this is not an isolated case. Even moderate trump supporters get constantly beaten up with no consequences. A young college girl got pepper sprayed while giving an interview at UC, and several innocent bystanders were beaten up by the anti-fascist crowd, which was destroying everything b/c they didn't like a speaker the Republican student association had invited. These people are dividing the country, and creating a climate of tension and violence way more than the alt-right.
The media coverage is ridiculous, and focus instead on actual fake stories of people who are pretending to be assaulted by Trump supporters, a claim, as far as I know, always unfounded. End of rant. Good luck America.
Re:There is only one thing I hate more than fascis (Score:5, Insightful)
You are so concerned about some hateful shit of a girl getting pepper sprayed... where were you when peaceful protesters on college campuses were getting hosed down with pepper spray by an agent of the state for a simple sit in?
Some of us are appalled by both events. That's the problem here, and what people on "the left" keep missing: there are plenty of us out here who aren't racists, who aren't misogynist, who think Trump is a disaster-in-waiting, but who are frankly sick and tired of the political climate where we're called misogynist racists because we simply disagree with your "progressive" politics.
You lost the election because of people like us. Instead of taking the lesson to heart, you've doubled down on it.
Re: (Score:3)
Are you suggesting that people like you, who think that Trump is a disaster waiting to happen, voted for him because you were upset with an unrelated group?
Re: (Score:3)
You voted for a racist.
I did? That's news to me. I haven't voted for a two-party presidential candidate in over 15 years.
You are a racist, regardless of the rest of your politics.
Like I said: instead of listening to the message, you're doubling down.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How about the "Muslim scare", where anyone with brown skin is automatically assumed to be a dangerous terrorist, and that people who belong to a one-billion member religion that isn't even in and of itself homogeneous are all declared to be part of some "Muslim hoard" that's going to take over America and declare Sharia law (meanwhile, ironically, some Evangelical and Conservative Catholic hold positions that would be more compatible with Sharia).
Banned for Doxxing (Score:5, Informative)
The groups were banned for doxxing political opponents. That is, sharing personal information (name, phone number, home address, etc.) This behaviour is explicitly against the Reddit terms of service.
The political leanings of the groups are unrelated to the ban (unless you assume a correlation between "alt-right" mentality and disregard for the established rules of a privately owned website)
Banning for "inconvenient truths" is still OK. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever. You're still banned,and whining about secret 'persecutorial' motivations won't do anything to change that.
Stormfront will probably host you and not bat an eye. Why do you feel so deprived? If you wanted to stay on Reddit you could simply have stamped out the doxing problem and, you know, followed Reddit's 'pretextual' rules.
Re:Banning for "inconvenient truths" is still OK. (Score:4, Insightful)
Conspiracy theories are their bread and butter. Even when they win and get their guy into the White House, the are still conspiracies to get them off Reddit.
willful ignorance (Score:3)
Reddit and Twitter have little influence on Trump / right wing voters. This kind of move just deepens the ignorance of progressives. Good luck trying to win elections that way.
The answer to free speech you don't like is more free speech. And who knows, if you engage in a discussion, you might actually learn something and change your own mind.
Re:willful ignorance (Score:5, Interesting)
Inconvenient truths? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the real inconvenient truth: the people in power only have one thing in common and it's money.
And they're doing all they can so that you idiots fight amongst yourselves instead of seeing that the rich are the real problem.
Sub that bans dissent gets mad about being banned (Score:3)
So a subreddit that bans people for having dissenting views is bitching that a private company banned their subreddit, ostensibly for their dissenting views? I wouldn't have any sympathy for them even if they weren't a bunch of fucking nazis.
Someone, please come up with a rationalization for how the subreddit's banning of dissent doesn't count because it's different when reddit does it.
Here's a shocker ... (Score:3)
... people who are committed to reddit do not fully appreciate how insignificant they are to those of us outside of reddit.
Re:Rad Left (Score:5, Informative)
Doxing (Score:5, Informative)
It's the fact that the moderators failed to clamp down on it, and even encouraged posting personal data that really forced Reddit to ban the entire boards, rather than just individual users.
Re:Doxing (Score:5, Insightful)
Reddit tolerates all kinds of shit, they just don't tolerate doxxing (apparently, I'm not a user). There's plenty of weird stuff on there, the alt-right isn't necessarily any worse than a lot of the other stuff. So when they get banned but other things are still there, maybe that deserves a bit of quiet introspection rather than spouting off politically.
It's clear that Reddit banned us because we were becoming very popular and spreading inconvenient truths
They spelled "incorrect" wrong.
Re: Doxing (Score:4, Interesting)
The sad part about this is Reddit has admitted to changing posts to harass these guys before [bbc.co.uk]. It is just as likely that Reddit changed posts to look like these groups were doxxing and encouraging it just to take down them down over different ideology.
Re: Doxing (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't say it's "just as likely". What he did was wrote code to automatically change references to himself, to the moderator. Because everyone kept calling him a pedophile while they were discussing how it's likely that a child sex ring was being run out of a pizza parlor. Having code that trolls the users by changing things so that they're calling their own moderator a pedophile instead of the guy in charge of Reddit is completely different than fabricating an entire campaign of trying to dox some guy who hit some other guy in order to get an entire group of people banned. It's not "just as likely". That's a false equivalence if I've ever seen one. I realize that people like to try and call out "false flag" whenever something happens, but I don't think this is the flag you're looking for.
Re: Doxing (Score:4, Interesting)
So if that's the truth people are talking about I'll pass.
Re:Doxing (Score:4, Insightful)
The kind of 'common sense' that leads to violent riots at Berkley? Sorry, but I'm not overlooking human rights, decency, and free speech and I am not supporting fascism in any form, or from any political construct in the US.
As far as I am concerned, anyone who is partisan in America these days is a fool. Your "party" and your "ideology" are nothing more than focus-group-honed brain candy. The narratives they push are engineered to keep you emotionally off balance, stressed, and at the throats of your fellow Americans. Angry sheep are still sheep, no matter how "justified" and "right" you feel you are.
I swear to god its like watching 50 million Soros finger puppets fight 50 million Bannon finger puppets. Not a one of you have a single idea of your own. You just get the info pumped straight up your asses, completely bypassing your brain.
Re:Doxing (Score:5, Insightful)
All the riots do were draw attention to Milo and increase his books sale. They would have been smart to just ignore him... which is really what these narcissists fear more.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Doxing (Score:4, Insightful)
You call it a Muslim ban, yet:
- It doesn't encompass all Muslims but merely 7 countries.
- Those 7 countries are precisely the ones Obama listed as a risk to the USA.
- Obama banned travel from Iraq for 6 months to reconfigure the vetting and security system because overhauling a system requires a temporary stop,
while Trump extended Obama's own system on Obama's 7 listed countries and is doing the same presently.
Did you even know of these details? I'm guessing not.
Were you present to call it a "Muslim ban" and throw shit at Obama when he did this? I'm guessing not.
Do you go online and research and validate the words of people, instead of blindly believing them just because they sound righteous or emotionally good?
I'm guessing not, because if you did, you wouldn't be calling it a "Muslim" ban, and you certainly wouldn't spew so much hypocrisy in a post for validation points.
Re:Doxing (Score:4, Informative)
You call it a Muslim ban, yet: - It doesn't encompass all Muslims but merely 7 countries. - Those 7 countries are precisely the ones Obama listed as a risk to the USA. - Obama banned travel from Iraq for 6 months to reconfigure the vetting and security system because overhauling a system requires a temporary stop, while Trump extended Obama's own system on Obama's 7 listed countries and is doing the same presently.
Did you even know of these details? I'm guessing not. Were you present to call it a "Muslim ban" and throw shit at Obama when he did this? I'm guessing not. Do you go online and research and validate the words of people, instead of blindly believing them just because they sound righteous or emotionally good? I'm guessing not, because if you did, you wouldn't be calling it a "Muslim" ban, and you certainly wouldn't spew so much hypocrisy in a post for validation points.
Oooh, hoisted on your own petard!
http://www.snopes.com/president-obama-ban-muslims-2011/
President Obama slowed down the approval process for one type of visa from one country. He did not ban travel from Iraq for any amount of time. Kellyanne Conway is a bald faced liar. And you, sir, are misinformed.
Re:Doxing (Score:5, Informative)
"The government's taking "extreme action"? Who's been shot? "with total disregard for the law"? Really?"
at least eight women and seven children, ages 3 to 13, had been killed
https://theintercept.com/2017/... [theintercept.com]
Her father had been killed years ago. This was uncalled for by any stretch of the imagination. She , as well as her father were both American citizens. While I'm not saying he didn't need to be dealt with, (which should have been through a court of law) this was just uncalled for.
And before you call me a bleeding heart liberal, I'm retired usmc with 23 years and 3 combat deployments.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Rad Left (Score:5, Insightful)
If you start publishing personal details it is.
Stop being fucking stupid.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Like when the banned /r/LeftWithASharpEdge a few weeks ago?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I re-read your post a few times and couldn't figure out exactly what you're proposing as an alternative to banning them.
Re:Why yes, let's ban them (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, Reddit isn't government, your first amendment rights to pretend you can combat radicalization by shitposting on forums do not apply.
Re:Why yes, let's ban them (Score:5, Insightful)
Reddit is in it for the money. Hosting far right extremists isn't good for business.
Re: (Score:3)
> removing the possibility that their ideas could be challenged in an open forum.
You really believe that was what was happening there instead of it just being an echo chamber where dissenting opinion was downvoted to oblivion? You still believe in Santa too?
Re: (Score:3)
If you have to go to Stormfront to get your daily news stories, maybe its you.
If you give cretins like this a platform their idea's starts to become acceptable.
e.g maybe the holocaust was a necessary evil, argue you against that all you want and someones going to be nodding their head saying maybe it was.
See giving these idiots a platform legitimises them, maybe creationists are right maybe the earth is flat.
Ok cousin Bart believes all this bat shit insane stuff but he's a loon he is on storm front everyda
Re: (Score:3)
With Trump as president, within a few years those could be the exact same option.
Re:Censor all white-nationalist hate speech now (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean the guy who fabricated tweets about Leslie Jones to try to make her look like a racist. Yes, he doesn't care about skin color at all.
Re:Censor all white-nationalist hate speech now (Score:4, Funny)
I remember someone even trying to prove Milo wasn't a racist because he likes to sleep with black man. It was pointed out that that would have made meant many of the slave owners in the American South weren't racists.
Re: (Score:3)
So the chance that a guy might out a trans person is equal to smashing building windows, setting fires, and assaulting people?
I think the safety of the students was completely ignored when the police and local government let masked and armed mobs engage in violent insurrection specifically designed to curtail freedom of speech. That kind of attack is unacceptable in my opinion.
No need to argue. I understand that as long as you are getting your way you will support the means and you will find a way to just
Re:Nobody asked them to come to slashdot? (Score:4, Informative)
Nah, we're still here.
Re:Nobody asked them to come to slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Reddit = a bunch of cowardly idiots. (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh bullshit. If the white supremacists can't post on major websites, they don't get stronger. They get weaker, because the successes they've had in the last few years largely come from the fact that they've been able to hijack places like Twitter and Facebook. If they're stuck on their IP address accessed web forums or on places like Stormfront, they end up becoming what they were before, a circle jerk of racists.
Re: Reddit = a bunch of cowardly idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that people like Bannon and papers like Breitbart have been denounced as white supremacists and anti Semitic, it's obvious that the term has lost all meaning. Frankly, I don't care anymore whether people call me a racist or white supremacist; it's about as ridiculous as calling me a zoophile or cannibal.
Banning these people from Reddit only means that progressives will be even more out of touch with mainstream America than they already are. That kind of ignorance doesn't hurt Republicans, it hurts Democrats and progressives. You can't effectively advocate your point of view from a position of ignorance, or by demonizing the people you want to persuade.
Learn to listen, people, or keep losing.
Re: Reddit = a bunch of cowardly idiots. (Score:4, Interesting)
That kind of ignorance doesn't hurt Republicans, it hurts Democrats and progressives.
Identity politics is a cancer to destroy the economic left. The plebs were getting too uppity about all that income inequality stuff during Occupy Wall Street. Switch the focus from "income inequality" to "racial income inequality." Switch the issue of CEO vs worker pay to "gender pay gap." Now the leftists no longer want to smash the system, they just want to make sure enough people with approved skin color and genitalia have token positions of power, too. Think Hillary was going to "smash the patriarchy?" Of course not. She just wanted to run it.
Re: (Score:3)
Trump won because he listened to what the majority of America was concerned about.
Re:This is why I hate far left and far right (Score:4, Insightful)
From where I sit, external to the US but in a first world country. It doesn't look like it is foreigners that are trying to take advantage of you as an American. It looks like it is a small section of the American people that are taking advantage of the rest.
You have no safety net for your people. There is nothing that stops people falling so far that crime, even violent crime, becomes the best option. Your healthcare system lets people rot. Your regulatory system is crazy complex and yet at the same time appears totally ineffectual in so many ways. Things like guns, abortion, gay marriage are all still topics for conversations rather than just settled and not even thought about.
As a people you seem to hate your own government. The whole guns argument of needing to rise up against your government is just crazy from an outsiders perspective. You claim history, but America is far from alone in having had a war for independence. Your police force are terrified of the people they are meant to look after, so they themselves have become terrifying.
Sure there are countries out there that would like to see the US gone. Comes of being a super power and stomping around in other peoples countries. But the vast majority of the world would actually like to see the US grow, be stable and prosper. Because weirdly enough, when the US is doing well, the rest of the world does well as well. It's not a I win you lose situation.
Re:The Guardian goes full racist (Score:4, Informative)
The argument, and not an unreasonable one, is that African-Americans remain an economically disadvantaged group. Now we can certainly debate how much of that is due to intrinsic versus extrinsic factors, but if you're not willing to at least admit that many people in the inner cities, who primarily have been for decades poorer groups and often from minorities, live in poor economic conditions, then what you're fundamentally asserting is "black people are criminals who deserve to be shot."
Re:The Guardian goes full racist (Score:4, Insightful)
Statistically, if you don't want to be poor do 3 things:
1) graduate high school
2) get a full time job
3) get married before you have kids
Those may be necessary conditions but they are far from sufficient conditions. You can graduate high school, get a full time job, never have kids, and easily still be making barely over half the median wage, which itself is half again the mean wage, which is still barely enough to save enough in a lifetime not to die in the street when you're old.
Re:"Dox" (Score:4, Insightful)