SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Wired Magazine has an article that some might find interesting.
I was at what should have been a farmers’ market in Berkeley, California, last year when a throng of black-clad antifascists tried to scrap it out with far-right ralliers in the middle of a park named after Martin Luther King Jr. I watched scrawny college students get pummeled by hulking, be-swastika-ed ex-soldiers and ex-law enforcement officers in motorcycle gear. The antifascists’ one reprisal was setting off a homemade smoke bomb, which promptly blew back into their own faces, drawing raucous jeering from the white supremacists. It was as close to a war zone as I ever hope to be, and it was unequivocally a win for the racists.
But then,
It was easy to imagine the Bay Area becoming an extremist battleground—each weekend an opportunity for the next rally turned riot.
That vision has not come to pass. In the long arc of American racism, 2017 saw a sudden spike in visibility, but it was not the beginning of a new era in which people routinely walk the streets advertising their white supremacy. This year has brought the opposite trend: 2018 has been a year of pushing the alt-right and other white nationalist groups back underground, and punishing them for misdeeds committed during their brief moment in the sun. That’s a testament to the strength of the backlash against 2017’s naked racism, and evidence of how costly being openly racist has become—especially on the internet, where it has doomed entire social media platforms to obscurity. This must be counted as a good thing.
Goebbels said, allegedly, "Even if we lose we will win, because our enemies have adopted our methods." Looks like the alt-right is losing.
Regardless of what scaremonger reporters might espouse, the alt-right, as we have come to know it over the last two years, has failed—as extremism researchers always knew it would. But in its place has come something shadowier and far older: an underground white supremacist movement operating on society’s fringes, and a culture that disavows the racists while quietly mainstreaming their ideas.
So here's the point:
The issue, though, is that while there’s satisfaction and schadenfreude in watching these public flounderings, the alt-right doesn’t have to be visible to succeed. In fact, going underground is a return to the status quo for American white supremacy.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 03 2019, @04:39PM (26 children)
You could have had them out where you could keep track of them and openly mock their foolishness. What do you have now?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Thursday January 03 2019, @04:51PM (19 children)
Fewer people getting run over or murdered at their temple by radicalized psychos. Less publically disseminated talking points for Might Buzzard to waste our time by posting here.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:04PM (17 children)
You're right. Everything we hear must be filtered.
Why do people give the Chinese govt such a hard time? They are just trying to prevent disorder in their society. Common people need someone better than them to tell them what to think. Free speech is a menace to harmonious society.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:10PM (5 children)
No one in the US has had their freedom of speech infringed, if you don't like being a social outcast because people think you're a racist piece of shit then stop being a racist piece of shit or keep it hidden from society. Come back with your complaints when someone's free speech is actually violated.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:21PM (4 children)
The rightwing people you dislike so much would give you the same retort back in the day if you complained about abuses heaped on you.
Are you really such a blind zealot? Do you have no sense of history? Are you just too stupid to imagine what happens when you jettison being a country of laws?
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @09:11PM (2 children)
Hey clueless person, no laws are being broken and going unpunished as far as I have seen. Are you too stupid to understand that? Come back when you have a valid complaint about laws being jettisoned, until then you are just a nazi apologist and therefore a piece of shit. No one is stopping the alt-right from spewing racist garbage, and any violence to do so is already illegal.
You alt-right supporters and other adjacent positions are just so dumb. So so so dumb, and it is because you have a belief (racism) that simply does not mesh with reality so you end up being stupid stupid stupid trying to defend such beliefs.
At this point in time the best complaint you've got is getting deplatformed by Twitter and web hosting companies. Maybe go ask some minorities if they would trade in their daily experiences with racism for getting banned by Twitter. The answer may surprise you!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @11:05PM (1 child)
An excellent example of doublethink - the ability to hold true two opposing ideas at the same time.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @02:22AM
No dumbdumb that is the epitome of the conservative / libertarian "free market" ideal. Business will hurt if people associate their product/service with lite Nazis so they choose to not do business with the little racist jerks. I don't agree with that decision and think we need to roll back ISPs to being "dumb pipes" like you, but until that happens the racist fuckers are just gonna have to deal with the fact that no one wants to do business with them.
Nice attempt at pushing a logical fallacy that doesn't exist, you do realize that such accusations have to be true in order to have any value right?
(Score: 0, Troll) by jbruchon on Saturday January 05 2019, @05:47PM
How quickly people forget about McCarthyism.
I'm just here to listen to the latest song about butts.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:40PM (10 children)
No, see, it doesn't need to be filtered if we kill all the nazis. You're not thinking hard enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @10:06PM (5 children)
After we're done killing the nazis can we start on the communists too?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @10:39PM
You never get done killing the nazis. There's always more nazis. Always.
You say there are no more nazis? That's the kind of thing a nazi would say. Come to think of it, you kind of look like a nazi....
There are always more nazis.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by ikanreed on Thursday January 03 2019, @10:46PM (3 children)
You can't just kill people cause you disagree with them.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @12:41AM
Yes you can. Happens every day, just not on a large scale. People have killed over disagreeing who will get to split the wishbone at Thanksgiving.
It's not right to do so. It probably won't achieve whatever you think your actual goal is. But to say people can't kill people over a disagreement is silly.
Perhaps you meant they shouldn't?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @05:56PM
Funniest comment + moderation this year.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 04 2019, @06:19PM
As AC has already pointed out, you can actually kill people for any reason, or even for no reason. There may, or may not, be consequences, but you can kill all you like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVZtf1oJLK8 [youtube.com]
Dance hall girls were the evenin' treat
Empty cartridges and blood lined the gutters of the street
Men were shot down for the sake of fun
Or just to hear the noise of their forty-four guns
And there's fire on the mountain, lightnin' in the air
Gold in them hills and it's waitin' for me there
(Score: 4, Insightful) by crafoo on Thursday January 03 2019, @11:53PM (2 children)
Always one murder away from Utopia, eh?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @02:36AM
https://soylentnews.org/politics/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=29442&page=1&cid=781542#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] was a slightly trolling mostly serious comment from what I could see, the response was a trolling bunch of crap and ikanreed then rolled with the troll game.
So I guess this is the pinnacle of alt-right debate? Troll people into saying something stupid then pretend it was something they meant seriously?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Sulla on Friday January 04 2019, @06:14PM
https://www.theonion.com/report-suggests-stalin-was-just-one-great-purge-away-fr-1825691925 [theonion.com]
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @01:28PM
Exactly something a leftist extremist communist jew would say.
You are a jew. Amirite?
(Score: 0, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 03 2019, @08:46PM
Give it up. Even your head-up-your-ass vision can't be clouded enough to spout nonsense like that.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @08:03PM (1 child)
1) They're not nearly as dangerous.
2) They can't rope in new recruits with a bunch of toned down "race realist" moat and bailey bullshit
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday January 03 2019, @08:47PM
Correct, except that neither of those are actually true.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday January 04 2019, @06:19AM (3 children)
We'll always have Paris, Mighty Buzztard. You wore blue, the Germans wore gray. The fundamental things apply, as time goes by.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday January 04 2019, @11:09AM
I am shocked - shocked - to find that trolling is going on in here!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 04 2019, @06:22PM (1 child)
Uhhhh, the Union wore blue, and the Confederates wore gray. In Paris? I think we wore green. I'm pretty sure it was green. All my toy soldiers when I was a kid were green. And, the Germans were brown.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @08:37PM
Not Paris, Texas, Runaway, you idiot!
(pro-. . ., oh hell, clue to the clueless: ari was referencing Casablanca, just in case you missed it. Seems like Buzzy got it. Could be the start of a beautiful friendship.)