Nevertheless, /pol/ and r/the_donald were one of main factors why Donald Trump got elected. This crowdsurfing phenomenon holds tremendous amount of power.
Meanwhile we can prove that Republicans suppressed certain types of voters post VRA-repeal. We can prove that laws banning felons from voting impact some groups more than others (unfairly, I might add). We even have evidence (if not conclusive proof) that spearfishing attacks on US voting staff changed voter rolls.
It is part of /pol & the altright's rhetoric that they're a large and influential body. They certainly can grab media attention. But I don't think we really see them in particular exhibiting political power.
Trump ran a campaign blaming immigrants and Muslims while promising to bring back coal and renegotiating all trade agreements, a.k.a. "winning". The entire campaign was a big lie. Trump lies on a scale that is not comparable to what regular politicians do -- his salesmanship skills allow him to tune in to whatever people want to hear. When the connection between campaign promises and policy gets totally severed democracy dies.
White rural America has every right to be angry, but that doesn't excuse embracing a racist con artist like Trump.
1. Blaming outsourcing and illegal immigration is not racist. If American citizens need to compete against people who are willing to work very hard for less than minimum wage, that hurts the wages and quality of life of Americans. Our labor laws exist for a reason.
2. Many people were aware of how non-political Trump sounded during the election. People didn't vote for him because of his eloquence, but because he was the only major contender that acknowledged many issues that our country had. Like you said, rural America has every right to be angry, and Trump was the only Republican that tried to tap into that.
2. Voters didn't choose Trump just because "he acknowledged issues". This election was a referendum on race, and that's what got Trump in office. See for instance https://www.thenation.com/article/economic-anxiety-didnt-mak...
2. That site that you linked to is ridiculous. They measure racism by peoples' beliefs in self-determination and whether or not illegal immigrants take jobs. Which they do. If there are 10 million illegal immigrants in a country of 300 million doing lower class work, and those people aren't equally distributed across the country, you can bet there will be pockets of land where lower class wages are suppressed. And you can bet that, within those areas impacted, views towards illegal immigrants will be more negative.
> Corporations would be forced to do so if illegal immigration didn't keep wages down.
But no one is forcing corporations to hire undocumented immigrants over people authorized to work here; in fact, they're pressured not to. It's illegal!
That's why "illegal immigration" is cast as a racist issue: it's often a hand-wavey dog whistle blaming people of color for economic issues while absolving (generally white-owned) businesses of any responsibility.
If there were 12 million fewer people in the USA (the laughably low "official" number of illegals in the country), would demand for housing be less? Demand for doctors and related health care?
Even former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, in TV interviews, admitted that "Undoubtedly access to lower-wage foreign workers has a depressing effect [on wages]".
2. Quoting 1 article from a progressive magazine (which incidentally, endorsed Hillary Clinton) to "prove" the voting behavior of over 100 million people is kind of ridiculous.
As for the count, do you have some reasources that aren't secretly written by daily stormer folks?
The count has remained unchanged since the late 1990s/early 2000s. Yet there are many who have crossed over the southern border each year since then. Therefore ...
> re 1: so only the computer-related companies are smart enough to understand and then take advantage of such effects?
I think maybe you're misunderstanding me. Apple, Google, Oracle, and others have engaged in a wage fixing cartel that was exposed a few years ago. A big long summary was laid out here: https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage...
> The count has remained unchanged since the late 1990s/early 2000s. Yet there are many who have crossed over the southern border each year since then. Therefore ...
I'm not sure what you're referring to here or if you're suggesting I disagree with the amount of "illegal" immigration being on an uptick. I think it is, but data I've seen suggests an impression that it's a function of the country's total population, not a trend that rises out-of-proportion. Further, the rules for immigration (and the various visa quotas) have not fixed ("remained unchanged") since 1990. It's eye-rolling, incandescently hot cow pies ripped right off of a poorly sourced Breitbart article comment section to suggest they are.
Our economy has grown substantially as a result of business owners exploiting labor that has no legal recourse for mistreatment, cannot easily push back on unlivable wages, and does not receive health insurance. And it's outrageous.
Not really sure how to respond to the rest of your comment. I am stating that I do not believe the "there are 12 million illegals in the USA" statistic, because it has been repeated for about 15 years at this point, with no change. Yet areas that did not have illegals 15 years ago, now do; thus it seems the number of illegals has increased.
While outsourcing and illegal immigration are policy issues worth discussing, there were plenty of overtly racist issues that Donald Trump touched upon. There's nothing racist about "Lets shore up our border policy". Maybe even the wall isn't racist... at least, some aspects of the wall... as far as infrastructure spending, hampering the drug trade, etc. etc. We all can agree that MS-13 is crossing the border and trying to sell drugs in our country... right? That's just a fact. I don't think a lone wall helps, because MS-13 has catapults, drones, and submarines to bring the drugs over. But I'm perfectly willing to talk about the benefits of physical boarder security. A wall is just a part of the picture
However, there's something racist about calling a US Judge an unfair Mexican Hombre. Donald Trump is racist. Period. His supporters may or may not be, and his policy decisions aren't all racist. But without a doubt, Donald Trump himself is a racist who sees the world in black and white.
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As far as "not touching on rural America", there's a point about honesty. Trump HONESTLY can't do jack diddly crap about the situation. He just talked a big talk and is going to fail to deliver. He's blamed say... the Trans-Pacific Partnership and has eradicated it.
The TPP: Designed to encourage say, US Cotton Exports to Vietnam (Vietnam actually buys US Cotton to make T-Shirts and other textiles. So they were rewarded under TPP) would have improved the marketability of Rural US workers. Period.
Donald Trump destroyed the TPP however, and now China's RCEP has received major support in the region. The USA could have been the leader in Asian trade, but Donald Trump gave it up to appease his right-wind supporters. And without any US trade influence in the Asian region, our (current) Asian partners will inevitably join China's RCEP and the USA will LOSE.
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Rural America would have benefited from TPP, and China would have lost. Case in point: China wasn't even ON the TPP. A huge portion of the TPP was about securing exports for the USA (especially enticing our Asian partners to buy US material instead of Chinese material)
So yes, why don't we talk about trade and outsourcing. I am perfectly willing to have that discussion with you without resorting to calling people racist. There are plenty of actual issues to discuss here that would benefit Rural America if people figured them out.
But Donald Trump's racist talks drowns out the truth. That's a fact. He isn't helping.
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The worst part is how Donald Trump is selectively racist. He constantly beats the drum on "Radical Islam Terror", then visits Saudi Arabia FIRST. The home of Wahhabi Islam, the specific sect that raised Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attackers. Case in point: around 15 of the 9/11 attackers were Saudi Arabian.
Of course, Donald Trump gotta take care of his Saudi Arabian Hotels, so maybe that's not a surprise. Its clear Trump is in it for the money.
https://static.standard.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_mediu...
Guess what words Donald Trump forgot about during his trip to Saudi Arabia? He never once uttered the words "Radical Islamic Terrorism".
That's the worst part of it all. I think the conservatives maybe have a point about "Radical Islamic Terror". There are certain sects of Muslims that seem to be more violent and aligned to Al Quadea, AQAP, and ISIS. They're all Wahhabism / Salifi Jihadists... a minor sect that only constitutes 0.5% of all Muslims.
But it doesn't help if the President is a opportunistic coward, who is unable to say those words when its most necessary.
What's more, the intersection between the jobs that illegal immigration fills and what locals can legally work is low and has been shown to be low over and over.
2. Trump awknowledged and embraced fears the American religious extremists have been trying to seed w.r.t Muslims, a process conservatives are complicit in since it's such an easy fear to appeal to. Beyond that... He panned a health care law the Republicans have been sabotaging to tank it so they can say it would surely tank. And... What else?
Again, look at the data. A majority of Trump supporters don't vote around nationalist economics. Separate data had people pro-ACA (where it wasn't sabotaged, for example in Pence's watch) but anti-"Obamacare." You tell me what that suggests.
Fortunately, that situation doesn't describe us.
And actually, my dude, there are a ton of people studying this and the altright is by no means Trump's largest individual support block. There's quite large and very thoughtful investigations with raw data available.
Again, I repeat: if you actually crunch the numbers the altright is not only a minority of Trump's supporters, but a faction that's almost vanishingly small. This sort of shows up in practical measurements of their gatherings.
Now, unopposed I think they'll grow. That's what fascism is all about at this stage and really their principle message is that they want power and they'll fix white people problems by any means necessary.
But they weren't particularly effective this last election cycle compared to the more direct manipulations we see.
Something happened that has pushed much of the general internet and large swathes of the "geekier" parts of the net to the right, and it doesn't seem to be letting up. The media ran with the "Russian shills" thing for a while, but it seems to be running out of steam and people I've known for years who used to lean firmly left are now either fairly far right, or left leaning but absolutely hate the left establishment and support the right purely out of spite.
It was 8 years of a Democratic, fairly liberal president. People like to rebel against whatever is in fashion. The right wing is now "edgy" because it rails against the prevailing political power
The generation of kids who are now posting on 4chan grew up in a world defined by the Fox News anti-Obama 'liberalism is a disease!' rhetoric which has taken over our media in the past decade. Be prepared for a radical push back from Trumpism by the subsequent generations that grow up under the current political climate. I imagine the pendulum will swing back with a vengeance after this one.
You really need to prefix it with "social" or "economic".
Absolutely false, kids do not watch Fox News, and I'm not sure what you mean by 'taken over our media'. The generation of kids now posting on 4chan actually group up watching shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which took one sentence sound bites from people, put labels (you might know which ones) on them and made them into a huge spectacle.
It's two sides of the same extreme, both of which have driven people to the far right (Trumpism) and left (Antifa) respectively. Stewart is a perfect example of this childish false dichotomy created by the media to set people against one another. There's clearly a lot of money in tribalism.
As far as 'taking over our media', what I meant is the rise of far right talk radio and things like Alex Jones being taken legitimately. These things have made it impossible for a normal person to filter out the nonsense these days.
I'm 33. From my perspective, the GOP has been steadily gaining power my entire adult life. Obama's election in 2012 seemed mostly a result of the GOP choosing a fairly lame candidate and Obama's own personal charisma.
I'm not sure it makes sense to "rebel against" the faction that has held the House for only 4 of the last 22 years.
The skewed, unequal recovery since the recession has tons of people extremely bitter about the state of the economy and our country. Theoretically our economy is doing much better than it was in the 80's, but only a few cities are experiencing growth. This general sense of stress and displeasure among many people amplifies bipartisanship, and our two-party political structure just makes that worse.
Right now, it is mostly seen as bad socially to hold non-PC viewpoints. With increased bipartisanship, it's only natural that the side with non-PC viewpoints would grow on an anonymous forum.
The internet has become a massive avenue for media. People are constantly bombarded with unfiltered, unedited information that shows that our economy isn't for us, the media isn't for us, our employers aren't for us, heck, even our police and neighbors aren't for us. It just amplifies any us-vs-them mentalities that people have.
Propaganda. State actors would aim for media that is both popular and anonymous. 4chan is a great avenue for that.
Liberals and media are running with the propaganda angle because it sounds sexy and starts a faux Cold War, but I really think the real issues are our economy and media. People need to feel safe. If they don't, instability occurs on both sides. Sanders was a huge upset too, and shows us that it's everyone who feels pressured, not just the right.
Edit: I suppose I could note, some of the Youtube personalities who (I have heard) supported the movement are currently staunchly anti-feminist. I'm not certain how central they were to the movement at the time, but they may be relevant to the comments others have made involving the impact of the group.
But I'd say related to the itle is overly PC people highly vocal aka SJW as people say. It's the left equivalent of far right.
The other thing I think is US style politics as a Canadian it amazes me that is is so absolute you're Democrat or Republican. Most western countries have multiple political parties covering many shades politics.
People in the USA from my viewpoint seem to have become convinced they can only be one or the other. And it seems there is a huge gap between the two parties more than I can recall seeing.
The other thing is the US president is treated like a king he's just a politician. In western countries with prime ministers he can be thrown out easily and most people don't care who the person is.
Age also seems to be a big part maybe it's a Millenia/Boomer thing big groups with opposing views.
And of course there seems to be a huge lack of trust about what to believe. The tackiness most paranoid websites which years ago were called trashy tabloids are now seen as actual journalism. A person claiming to be a conspiracy theorist acts as if it is a badge of pride.
Overall I don't know lack of education, no mentors, lack of direction, lack of a moral guide.
This may be true in general but isn't true of alt-right communities who coined the "cuckservative" meme. They were no fans of the GOP.
You are conflating message with actual sentiment. Using racist language is simply a subset of inflammatory language and trolling. Calling people a retard or a faggot fulfills similar goals. It does not really tell you much whether the anonymous poster actually discriminates based on those attributes or just uses the language to maintain a vulgar atmosphere. Slur words will always exist, attempting to ban them will just make the political correctness treadmill spin faster.
> which was the first time a lot of 4chan users experienced politics having an effect on something central to their culture.
Not quite. cartoon child porn has always been seen as a canary in the coalmine. If they go after that, which other deviant thing will next be branded as a thought crime?
4chan is radically free speech. Any political movement that restricts free speech in any way at all will have that as a black mark on them. The philosophy is that only deeds matter, words are free. If you post on /b/ that you'll shoot up a school tomorrow nobody will give a fuck. If you then continue to actually shoot up a school tomorrow then a) that's the actual crime b) great lulz will be had.
Yeah, thats a fair point.
>cartoon child porn
I think you're misunderstanding what i'm saying here. Gamergate was a massive controversy that played out over the course of many months, was covered on national news networks and ruined many careers. It was a galvanizing event that brought people together in defense of their hobby. Cartoon child porn is a symbol of the belief system that you've described, but I don't think its possible to say that defending it galvanized the 4chan user base like gamergate.
Really? "Great lulz will be head(sic)"?
I can't fathom what kind of person sees stuff like this and thinks to himself: "Yeah cool man! Exactly the type of community I want to be a part of!"
Like, are these all just bored kids? Adults who never developed empathy and have nothing else to do with their life?
Whether or not people who act like racists are actually racist doesn't matter at the end of the day, they have the same effect.
The way I see it, it is easier to express liberal sentiments than to actually walk the talk. Kind of like how it's easier to profess feminism when it doesn't require any effort from your side than when you are married and have kids and are expected to equally share household responsibilities.
I was a straight-up supporter of Occupy Wall Street. I know a lot of people who were. We all changed.
When he failed to achieve his promises - certainly due to republican blockades to some extent - he was seen as a disappointment and trump became THE spanner in the works of washington.
Another important polarizing issue is the vocal social justice movement in colleges, on tumblr, in the media etc. Since it is seen as infringing on free speech where it matters to 4chan (games, porn, unfiltered non-PC conversation, trolling) they are seen as a threat. If the left does not radically defend free speech, even when it is unpleasant or could be considered as hateful while the right promises small government and has crazy libertarian subcurrents then this is actually more value-aligned, at least on the surface, with 4chan interests.
I don't think a timeline where bernie had been the 4chan favorite would be inconceivable.
That was 4chan's "Ron Paul for President" and "Jews did 9/11" phase.
4chan was never liberal.
Pro Donald sites had much bigger influence in election than most of people will ever realize. Trump himself acknowledges them and his team follows them because news get there fastest.