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Comment by humanrebar | Hacker News Reader

> Giving up on the administration is not a political win, it is damage control.

I gave up on Trump in the winter of 2015/2016. I'm way ahead of you there.

I'm just saying people have valid thoughts (polarization in general leads to t his) that might be considered premature. But if we're going to be evenhanded, angry left-wing people need to honor a cool off period for a while.

Keep in mind that moderates who dislike Trump from the start can fairly blame left-wing shenanigans, at least partly, for the rise of Trump. Lumping them in with racists and downvoting them isn't healthy dialogue.

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If you gave up on Trump then that means that you at some point held him closer than you do today. I always thought he was a blow-hard and I'm terribly disappointed that someone like him can be elevated to any position of power. I really hoped that America was wiser than this.

> Keep in mind that moderates who dislike Trump from the start can fairly blame left-wing shenanigans, at least partly, for the rise of Trump.

Yes, but it would be a fig-leaf. A large number of them are pretty much on the record as being pissed off that a black guy became president. America really has a race problem even if on paper it is all pretty good. Especially the heartland. Denying this is allowing it room to grow.

> Lumping them in with racists and downvoting them isn't healthy dialogue.

Well, if you purposefully skew the weighting of the responses of the various parties to the point where you feel the violence on the 'left' is the equal of the violence on the 'right' then you're part of the problem. It becomes an 'us versus them' thing and staking out a position in such a polarized environment is something that you should do with great care. I'm not aware of any left leaning politician that has tacitly or openly condoned any violence on the left and some (definitely not all, for instance the Scalise shooting) was a direct response to other violence.

To toss that all onto the same heap is disingenuous at best.

If you want 'healthy dialogue' you're going to have to come to terms with inherent biases first. But that's hard to do.

I moved from "everyone deserves to be heard out" to "this guy is a bully and a bad person in many other ways". It was clear when he made fun of a man's disability and just grew from there.

To be fair to the GOP, Trump basically did a hostile takeover with a plurality of the vote on the right against a very fractured field.

I'm not advocating for a pissing contest over who is more violent. I'm advocating for people to treat each other decently even if they disagree. I'm advocating for rational dialogue.

I think this isn't the moment to win points for the left. Partly because I think the case isn't strong, but also because I don't see it solving the real problem of divisive American politics. The left can't "win" enough to forever banish Trumps from power. It only causes escalation, at least so far.

> I moved from "everyone deserves to be heard out" to "this guy is a bully and a bad person in many other ways". It was clear when he made fun of a man's disability and just grew from there.

Ok, I thought it was rather very visible earlier on, such as before he even decided to run for president.

> To be fair to the GOP, Trump basically did a hostile takeover with a plurality of the vote on the right against a very fractured field.

They did not have to nominate him.

> I'm not advocating for a pissing contest over who is more violent.

> I'm advocating for people to treat each other decently even if they disagree. I'm advocating for rational dialogue.

It's pretty hard to have a rational dialogue when one side of the dialogue discards all facts as 'fake', brings their own 'alternative facts' to the table, tacitly and openly supports violence against their opposition and in general does whatever possible to polarize the society they are nominally supposed to lead.

> I think this isn't the moment to win points for the left.

This stopped being about 'points' long ago, this is about the future of a country.

> Partly because I think the case isn't strong, but also because I don't see it solving the real problem of divisive American politics.

Agreed, that problem starts at the top and it will take a serious amount of soul searching for the GOP to decide how far they will let this slide before they will put a stop to it. Chances are that it is already past the point where it can be arrested anyway but maybe there is still an outside chance the problem can be contained before it spills over.

> The left can't "win" enough to forever banish Trumps from power. It only causes escalation, at least so far.

This is not about left versus right, if that's your frame of reference today then you really should wake up and start paying attention, the damage to the United States as an institution both at home and abroad is immense.

> Ok, I thought it was rather very visible earlier on, such as before he even decided to run for president.

Being sued for racial discrimination in 1973 was a pretty big clue. But the birther nonsense should really have tipped everyone off about what was going on.

Good point. I knew he was unqualified well before. I forgot about the birth nonsense when I wrote that lost. I guess I upgraded him from fool to dangerous fool.

Now you're going to have to figure out how to position BLM versus the Neo Nazis.

For me the one is a response to structural unequal treatment by law enforcement, the other is the vilest element in society seeking a platform and a way to spread their hateful ideology.

> Now you're going to have to figure out how to position BLM versus the Neo Nazis.

Do I? I just know people are outgrouping and arguing through violence and I'm opposed to that regardless or what policy changes they feel are appropriate.

I don't feel the need to judge that political violence is worse in one case than in another case.

So you're equating a response to violence of one group to another to a group that actively advocates reducing a whole swathe of humanity to sub-human status or to kill them outright. That's a bit of a stretch for me but if you are going to see these two as equal because they chose to resort to violence themselves then I can see your point. But that's an extremist pacifist position, the kind that says that if you are going to be attacked by someone that you should not defend yourself. As it is probably obvious by now I do not subscribe to that extreme level of pacifism, I recognize that there are times when violence can be justified.

That doesn't mean you should be happy about it, it should be a means of last resort and it should be practiced only when all other avenues have not born fruit.

I've moved from "he's a total idiot who is unwilling to distance himself from the most backwards views of some of his supporters" to "he's a total idiot who's actually causing even deeper polarization since people on the Left aren't able to acknowledge that there are moderates that see him or the 'context' differently to them without implicating themselves as Nazis, and nobody on the Right wants to admit that he's creating an even more unhealthy political situation which is going to hurt everybody".

  > [...] then you're part of the problem. [...] 
  > If you want 'healthy dialogue' you're going to have
  > to come to terms with inherent biases first.

I honestly do not think you are having a healthy dialogue or coming to terms with your own inherent biases yourself.

You just said that somebody was 'purposefully skewing' as if they did not really believe what they said. This is textbook bad faith arguing. You could do with reading what everybody is saying and imagining that they actually honestly believe these things and then go from there.

My own two-cents are that left-wing violence and anger is partly to blame for both his rise and the deeper polarisation we are now seeing since it enabled the alt-right to play the victim and fight a war of optics [0]. However, it's not the only cause: a large component of what we're seeing is that Trump coming to power has emboldened the worst of the Right [1].

[0] Look at how they manage their image with propaganda, and their attempts to use the Left against itself: https://mobile.twitter.com/sebinsua/status/89716402244070195...

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/bswud/status/747790921190744064

Left wing violence? Such as?

Reminds me of the time someone cited the Rodney King riots as examples of left-wing hate speech.

Or when the protestors at the WTO summit had to physically prevent some testosterone filled teenage agitators from Oregon, self-described "anarchists", from breaking crap because the police wouldn't act.

(Almost as if allowing some violence to make the evening news served their purpose. Hmmmm.)

Anarchists in Oregon are as left wing as racists in Charlotte are right wing. The standard there would be how they (probably) vote, right? Or are there other criteria you would prefer?

Have you read Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism? Did you like it? Agree? Disagree?

I ask because I'm hoping someone can explain the mental gymnastics required to believe such nonsense.

> I honestly do not think you are having a healthy dialogue or coming to terms with your own inherent biases yourself.

Since you so clearly perceive those would you mind exposing them?

> My own two-cents are that left-wing violence and anger is partly to blame for both his rise and the deeper polarisation we are now seeing since it enabled the alt-right to play the victim and fight a war of optics [0].

That does not mesh with my reading of the facts as presently available at all.

> However, it's not the only cause: a large component of what we're seeing is that Trump coming to power has emboldened the worst of the Right [1].

That we can agree on, and this is in large part due to the use of various 'dog whistles'.

And frankly, I have a hard time coming to terms with people self describing as 'moderates' who voted for Trump, that is some kind of cognitive dissonance. Trump is about as far away from moderate as it gets.

  > frankly, I have a hard time coming to terms with
  > people self describing as 'moderates' who voted
  > for Trump, that is some kind of cognitive dissonance.
  > Trump is about as far away from moderate as it gets.

That's not what I'm arguing so I don't expect you to come to terms with that. You cannot be moderate and vote for Trump.

I do think you can be moderate and point out that there are certain tactics used by the Left which have been weaponised against them, and that this has been a key driver in support for the alt-right.

  > That does not mesh with my reading of the facts
  > as presently available at all.

I do not agree that the same set of facts are presently available to all. Even if they were, I believe that most people filter them out due to not wanting to look at the alt-right parts of Twitter.

In any case I did link you to a tweet referencing two instances as an attempt to substantiate what I said. The first demonstrates that alt-right supporters from /pol/ are trying to "get normies onto [their] side" by trying to appear 'peaceful' and 'good' in comparison to their attackers ("and if antifa attack the white families, they're going to look like monsters"). The second demonstrates a time in which @SwiftOnSecurity received a message from a white nationalist trying to incite an offended quote-tweet as a way of maximising the audience of one of their memes.

I can't source it because it was a long while back, but during the election and immediately after it, I also saw various accounts attempting to use instances of left-wing violence at protests to persuade others that they were unfairly threatened or attacked for their beliefs and to try to present antifa as violent thugs. I saw stories about families of Trump supporters trapped at protests and 'fearing for the lives of their children'. I saw photos of Trump supporters violently wounded. Frequently I see the photo of Richard Spencer being punched doubled against a tweet by some out-there radleft implying that anybody righter than them is a Nazi.

I think it's really important to realise that anything you do or say can be turned into propaganda against you.

Edit: The term "concern troll" could be used against me here, so all I ask is for people to evaluate what I've pointed out and decide for themselves whether it's useful or not. My opinion of course is that the alt-right substantially grew in popularity through the techniques I described and that if you care about this you should avoid being part of it.

I refuse to be squelched because some Neo Nazi could use my words against me. In fact, I wish them good luck with that, I sincerely doubt you could do that and get away with it without some pretty extreme mental contortions.

The instances you quote have nothing whatsoever to do with debating this in a facts and reason based way on an internet forum.

If people are concerned with their kids getting wounded when attending mass rallies of whatever plumage then it is time to spread the word that whenever you assemble a mob, whether it is the 'good guys' or the 'bad guys' does not matter, the mob is its own enemy when panicked and when two mobs encounter each other violence is the predictable outcome.

That idiots then use this to incite further violence is an obvious conclusion without much weight in practice.

Each side will do what they can to victimize themselves and lay blame with their opposition, it has been so since the first man picked up a stick to wage war on his neighbors.

  > I refuse to be squelched because some
  > Neo Nazi could use my words against me.

You misunderstand again. I said that violent or smearing actions done for sound moral reasons can and are used to publicise and win support for the alt-right cause.

While you might not care about your own personal risk, as a citizen of the world you should care about having your actions used to create political material that radicalises people towards the alt-right cause as this threatens people other than you.

It doesn't matter whether they are idiots or not, it matters whether bad players have an easy or hard time making their case and recruiting supporters. Make it difficult, not easy!

  > The instances you quote have nothing
  > whatsoever to do with debating this
  > in a facts and reason based way on an internet forum.

I fundamentally disagree. They demonstrate the mechanism by which the alt-right grew their support so quickly. This is important to the argument at hand and since you can't seem to see this and I don't have any more source material to counter your very strong opinions with, I don't think there's any point in arguing around it any further.

>To toss that all onto the same heap is disingenuous at best.

I feel like what people who behave as you are miss is that it could just be ignorance. Ignorance can be cured but not with aggression. Did you see the story where a black man befriended a bunch of KKK and they all ended up leaving the organization at the end? He didn't get that result with righteous indignation even if he had every right to be righteously indignant.

You'd be hard pressed to attribute any aggression to me.

I don't mean physical aggression, I mean verbal bullying. And I may be projecting other "similar feeling" posts to yours too much.

But the kind of behavior I'm seeing now is a bit saddening. I remember when HN guidelines said something to the effect of "Instead of saying 'C++ was created after C, idiot' you can shorten it to 'C++ was created after C'". But I see posts in the tone of yours which say something like "The left has isolated incidents of violence by deranged people, blasted by leaders on the left while the right has much more dangerous and common events which seem to be supported by the leadership. To put these two together is disingenuous and could only be done by a fascist.", where that last sentence could just be left off.

The issue is assuming the absolute worst of everyone you talk to online that doesn't hold your opinion. Maybe the poster just has ignorant friends/family and really doesn't know any better. Maybe they have opinions right now that they're going to be really embarrassed about in 10-20 years. But if you immediately group them together with people like Hitler (didn't this used to kill the thread?) then you give up any hope of educating them (or, more importantly, other people on the fence who are reading the exchange). So I have to wonder what is even the utility of such posts except to signal to others which camp you're in.

You use quotes to show that I said something but I did no such thing.

> Maybe the poster just has ignorant friends/family and really doesn't know any better.

That's quite possibly true. But regardless, at least they don't stoop to putting words in my mouth that I never used in that particular order and with that particular goal.

> Maybe they have opinions right now that they're going to be really embarrassed about in 10-20 years.

Let's hope not, it would be painful for all involved.

> But if you immediately group them together with people like Hitler

Well, when Neo Nazis walk the land waving flags and re-living the past as much as they can invoking Hitler is fair game.

Mind you: The pre World War II Nazis of old (and their sympathizers) to some extent could be forgiven because they could claim they had no idea what it all would lead to.

But the present day Nazis and their sympathizers have no such excuse.

> So I have to wonder what is even the utility of such posts except to signal to others which camp you're in.

To try to convince someone to see things in a slightly different light. And if you had been reading this thread with a bit more attention you could see some of that at work. It's not going to be a large change but speaking out about this stuff is the least that we can do.

>You use quotes to show that I said something but I did no such thing.

No, I explicitly stated that I was grouping your posts in with others that seem similar to me (and acknowledged that I could be in error on that).

>But regardless, at least they don't stoop to putting words in my mouth that I never used in that particular order and with that particular goal.

You're a software developer, right? So think a bit more abstract. I suspect my point fits to things you've written in this thread.

>Let's hope not, it would be painful for all involved.

Why? Thinking stupid things is part of growing up. The much more important bit is eventually correcting as many of those things as possible.

>But the present day Nazis and their sympathizers have no such excuse.

Here we're in agreement. If someone identifies as a Nazi then the game changes. But I just see a lot of e.g. Trump supporters right now that I can't shake the feeling that they're not being evil they're just ignorant on a lot of things the rest of us aren't.

>It's not going to be a large change but speaking out about this stuff is the least that we can do.

Please don't take my replies as trying to shut you down. My point is entirely about tone. Nothing else.

> moderates who dislike Trump from the start can fairly blame left-wing shenanigans, at least partly, for the rise of Trump

What? The rise of Trump was entirely down to the GOP - for years - stoking both racial and anti-liberal resentment with only one goal - to dismantle anything Obama touched.

Which of those people I listed stoked racial resentment? Can you provide citations?

And I think you're ignoring a lot of things the left has been up to. The IRS scandal was a big deal, for example.

> And I think you're ignoring a lot of things the left has been up to. The IRS scandal was a big deal, for example.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

> The Republican majority on the House Oversight Committee issued a report, which concluded that although some liberal groups were selected for additional review, the scrutiny that these groups received did not amount to targeting when compared to the greater scrutiny received by conservative groups. The report was criticized by the committee's Democratic minority, which said that the report ignored evidence that the IRS used keywords to identify both liberal and conservative groups.

> In January 2014, the FBI told Fox News that its investigation had found no evidence so far warranting the filing of federal criminal charges in connection with the controversy, as it had not found any evidence of "enemy hunting", and that the investigation continued. On October 23, 2015, the Justice Department declared that no criminal charges would be filed.

Meanwhile: http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346544-dreamhost-cla...

Classic misguided whataboutism. Fox News did it again.

There are plenty other examples. I just picked one. The Damore and Eich cases. The professor at the University of Missouri. The assault of Charles Murray.

The Damore who denied interviews with internationally renowned news organisations to go on Youtube with alt-right crazy Stefan Molyneux?

The Damore who sourced real science in an effort to try to legitimize his own non-sequitor opinions in a memo?

The Damore who made a t-shirt comparing a company with snack bars, lego corners, project choice and hundreds of thousands of dollar salaries with communist forced labor camps?

I don't disagree with you on Eich. I think supporting prop 8 is abhorrent, but likewise was the online shaming campaign. I'd support anyone boycotting Mozilla if they chose too, and those who resigned when he was promoted to CEO, but he also wasn't fired, he resigned.

Damore was fired by left-wing people for his beliefs. I don't think that's controversial. I think if there's not room to discuss issues with someone like Damore (and, sure, show him to be a fool if warranted) or to work in a professional capacity with Eich (likewise), the left has an extremism problem.

You mean the issues Damore made up, as opposed to arguing in good faith from the sources he provided, and not taking artistic liberty in his conclusions?

The researcher Damore cites:

> It is unclear to me that this sex difference would play a role in success within the Google workplace (in particular, not being able to handle stresses of leadership in the workplace. That’s a huge stretch to me),” writes Schmitt.

And Eichs belief that gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry, meaning they should have less rights than straight people?

It is neither a left problem, extremism problem, or even a problem.

If you discriminate, you should get fired. The fact that this can even be claimed as a political/partisan issue is frightening. And if it somehow is partisan, the left isn't the issue.

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