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Comment by lynx97 | Hacker News Reader

I would love if the public discourse would allow for more diversity of opinions. Unfortunately, where I come from, the left has simplified the rhetoric to "If you are of a different opinion then we are, you are either badly educated (read, stupid) or a nazi." Unfortunately, this elitist attitude has only contributed to the divide of the people.

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I don't know what to tell you, I'm never going to be happy about people voting against my rights or about secret police disappearing people and ignoring the court system

You seem to be completely ignoring lynx97's actual point.

If you're not happy about those things, stop telling everyone who disagree with you how stupid they are and how they're literal Nazis. Then at least some of those who disagree with you on some issues will be less driven to vote for the people whose positions appall you.

Thanks for rewording my point. You pretty much nailed what I was trying to say.

Decades of name calling and refusing to compromise from the right and it’s the left with the bad attitude that’s dividing people?

people have absorbed so much american "the left is always evil and the right can do no wrong" propaganda they dont even realize it.

Yes. If you pretend to be the better person, you better make sure you act like it. If you give up and fall back to name calling, people will judge you based on your actions. "But I used to be the good guy" doesn't count at all.

If people judged name callers based on their actions then how did we get here?

> If you are of a different opinion then we are, you are either badly educated (read, stupid) or a nazi

Depending on where you are from, this could absolutely be true, as "elitist" and insulting as it might be. Well, fascist is more appropriate than Nazi because Nazi is superset of fascism with a heavy anti-semitic element, and I'm not aware of many rabidly anti-semitic parties in the mainstream in many countries.

Minor quibble but wouldn’t it be a subset?

> Well, fascist is more appropriate than Nazi because Nazi is superset of fascism with a heavy anti-semitic element, and I'm not aware of many rabidly anti-semitic parties in the mainstream in many countries.

Scratch a little deeper on the things popular Republican politicians and members of the current administration have been saying and promoting for the last few years.

Conspiratorial movements almost always end up at "it's The Jews", and so do theirs.

If you see talk about their opponents engaging in dark "rituals" involving child murder or abuse, you can be 100% sure you've found one that'll get you there. It's just blood libel, keeping reading and listening and you'll see that they're fully at that point before you've had to do much work. It's tedious.

True, but other than the "Jewish space lasers" brain worm lady, the others aren't outwardly anti-semitic. Unlike the Nazis who were very very much so.

So for now, I'm billing them as fascist.

No. Just because a conservative is not willing to support a liberal position, that doesn't make them automatically a fascist. In fact, thats the core of my criticism. Political views are a spectrum, and you can't just push someone to the far right just because you disagree with them. This black-and-white thinking is doing far more harm then you might imagine.

> Just because a conservative is not willing to support a liberal position, that doesn't make them automatically a fascist

Their methods and their positions make them fascist, not their support or lack thereof for opposing positions.

Say, a coup attempt. Or someone in power talking about ignoring term limits. Or getting bribes and favouritism for corporations (corporatism is a heavy component of fascism). Or silencing opposition with brutal and illegal methods (such as kidnapping in the middle of the night by unmarked and masked men). Those all scream fascism, regardless of the fact that e.g. the person in charge of healthcare is an antivaxxer.

sure this sounds bad, but we also currently have, in the USA, and administration who deports student protestors and does Nazi salutes. Ive been hearing about how "oh, the left just calls us Nazis for any opinion that differs from them" and now they are in power doing Nazi salutes. They were Nazis the whole time. No one is getting called Nazi for their opinions on tax rebates.

I agree, it's a huge trap. The right exploits leftists who insult normal people as dumb. It worked when they insulted George W Bush, who people identified with and found likeable, and was probably coached to bungle sentences despite likely not talking that way at Yale and Harvard; and when they insult Trump and his ideas, though he's perceptive and effective.

Many say it works because liberals now represent the professional-managerial class, who often come across to workers/poor as infuriatingly patronizing, slick and humiliating. Whereas many don't know who owns their big corporation, so they don't inspire such visceral feelings.

While some may argue that liberals aren't leftists (but are rather good-cop), nevertheless many leftists do this too. The dynamics are explained in Thomas Frank's book "Listen, Liberal", David Graeber's essay "Army of Altruists: On the alienated right to do good", and Participatory Economics's coverage of the coordinator class.

Army of Altruists, by David Graeber: https://harpers.org/archive/2007/01/army-of-altruists/

Thanks for the pointer, that was a very interesting read.

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