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posted by martyb on Thursday January 03 2019, @04:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @05:02PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @05:02PM (#781549)

    > 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.

    First it's something like the Daily Stormer, maybe a few right-wing black metal labels, but then it's more harmless right-wing wingnuts like Alex Jones, then it starts moving closer to the center for the likes of Sargon of Akkad.... It's a good thing until the day the deplatforming juggernaut comes for you or someone you care for. But you say the right things, they'd NEVER put you in the gulag! They only put bad people in there!

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 03 2019, @06:46PM (8 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday January 03 2019, @06:46PM (#781606) Journal

    I didn't realize that being kicked off Twitter by the invisible hand of the Free Market was the exact same thing as being worked to death in a Gulag.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:22PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:22PM (#781630)

      My favorite part is how this persecution of the alt-right brings all the self-righteous outrage from a certain segment of SN users. However, some alt-right turd murders people with his vehicle and gets appropriately sentenced and these DEPLORABLE fucks defend him by saying he was threatened and all the cops shooting unarmed black people is somehow their fault for looking like "thugs".

      Fuck off you racists shits, your bullshit is going the way of slavery and you should be THANKFUL the rest of the US is NOT fascist otherwise you would be getting put into camps based on your twatter and gab feeds. Instead we choose freedom even though that means letting you fucks advocate anti-freedom, so you're welcome!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 05 2019, @05:32PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 05 2019, @05:32PM (#782559)

        It's only dumb ass white people who think racism is going away while they help racists destroy their own. You are a brainwashed race traitor.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:25PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:25PM (#781635)

      What free market? Those deplatformed fugures had a lot of verified followers, the closest analog to customers.
      Deplatforming them was anti-free market by unilateral political action.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @12:13AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @12:13AM (#781791)

        Wedding cake bakers are deplatforming gays!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @02:30AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @02:30AM (#781858)

          I honestly now appreciate that whole baking debacle, the discrimination against one gay couple has totally paid off in the amount of obvious hypocrisy.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:34PM (2 children)

      by fustakrakich (6150) on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:34PM (#781640) Journal

      Only *bad* people get kicked off Twitter, but nice diversion, again

      --
      La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 03 2019, @09:21PM (1 child)

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday January 03 2019, @09:21PM (#781702) Journal

        They didn't get kicked off because they were bad or good. They got kicked off because they're UNPROFITABLE.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @01:15AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @01:15AM (#781824)

          No, because advertisers were pressured. Twitter can just as easily flag the accounts as objectionable content and refuse to serve ads. Many on the left openly call for violence but there's rarely censorship there.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by meustrus on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:39PM

    by meustrus (4961) on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:39PM (#781641)

    Oh no. Republicans are being screwed by corporations that have grown too big to be accountable. If only there were some bigger source of power we could use to put them back in their place.

    Let me get out the world's smallest violin and play them a sad, sad song.

    --
    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?