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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, @05:48PM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @05:48PM (#781577)

    That depends on which part of the message you consider important. If you think intolerance is the important part, they won...not perfectly, but society has been a lot less tolerant of a lot of things since then.

    Yes, but WHAT things?

    We're less tolerant of people in power raping, assaulting, and harassing women. Check.
    We're less tolerant of racists being racist against our fellow citizens of color. Check.
    We're less tolerant of false equivalencies so often touted by the right. Check.
    We're less tolerant of false dichotomies, also so often touted by the right. Check.
    We're less tolerant of billionaires buying our government and then fucking us over (usually, but not exclusively, through the auspices of the Republican Party). Check.
    We're less tolerant of retrograde republicans trying to force us back into the dark ages of pre-Roe-v-Wade and pre-civili rights laws. Check.

    All of which lead for a far more tolerant society for everyone except ... oh, yeah, the poor, poor racists. Whatever will they do, when the rest of us won't let them bully our fellow neighbors?

    Tolerating this shit is what got us into this mess. While not tolerating it won't be enough to get us out, it's a damn fine first step, and good inoculation against further assaults against our civil society in the future. The racists belong in the closet, long may they rot there.

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  • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @06:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @06:09PM (#781591)

    We're less tolerant of people in power raping, assaulting, and harassing women. Check. [vox.com]
    We're less tolerant of racists being racist against our fellow citizens of color. Check. [dailywire.com]
    We're less tolerant of false equivalencies so often touted by the right. Check. [wgbh.org]
    We're less tolerant of false dichotomies, also so often touted by the right. Check. [themoderatevoice.com]
    We're less tolerant of billionaires buying our government and then fucking us over (usually, but not exclusively, through the auspices of the Republican Party). Check. [capitalresearch.org]
    We're less tolerant of retrograde republicans trying to force us back into the dark ages of pre-Roe-v-Wade and pre-civili rights laws. Check. [cnn.com]

    What are you?

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:24PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @07:24PM (#781634)

    We're less tolerant of billionaires buying our government and then fucking us over (usually, but not exclusively, through the auspices of the Republican Party). Check

    Yeah, well we are less tolerant of your obvious partisan (equally tribal) bullshit and projection. As far as the deceitful democrats go, the old cliche applies perfectly: With friends like them, who needs enemies? Wittingly or not, the democrats handed the presidency over to this man. I find it very disappointing to see people still support them. Their little billionaires club is no better than the republicans, an fact they are the very same people. So please, save your breath, you're only making it easier for the people and ideas you claim to oppose.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @08:25PM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @08:25PM (#781663)

      Their little billionaires club is no better than the republicans, an fact they are the very same people.

      No, they're not. The Murdochs, DeVosses, the Kochs, the Wynnes, and the rest of the current scum who have taken over our executive branch, and for whom Trump is currently playing bitch, are quite different from the Buffets, Gates, and Soroses.

      Yes, there are billionaires who play both sides (read: "bribe" both sides with campaign contributions), but they're a far cry from the likes of the Kochs et al. Equating the two is another in a plethora of examples of right-wing false equivalencies.

      ,you're only making it easier for the people and ideas you claim to oppose.

      You seem to be doing that job just fine.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by bobmorning on Friday January 04 2019, @12:51AM (4 children)

        by bobmorning (6045) on Friday January 04 2019, @12:51AM (#781808)

        She lost, get over it.

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @02:02AM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @02:02AM (#781844)

          Alternatively: they are the good cop bad cop routine of the uniparty, get over it.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @05:23AM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @05:23AM (#781915)

            Exactly! This is what the dumbass liberals that support democrats don't want to understand. Tell them they're being taken for a ride, and they only dig in. Ol' Bernie Sanders fished 'em in real good.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @06:41PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @06:41PM (#782164)

              I'd take Sanders in a heartbeat over being suckered by Trump :P

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 05 2019, @09:14AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 05 2019, @09:14AM (#782448)

                Eh, whatever, everything changes once they get the power. They always find a way to disappoint or enrage. That's how you keep the pendulum swinging. Over and over we repeat the same old bullshit expecting different results.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @05:31AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @05:31AM (#781918)

        This is the expected boilerplate response from not so smart, so-called "liberals" that believe what's in front of the camera is real. They've never been on a set before. They don't know the directors and producers and their minions, only the actors, and only when they're acting.

        My billionaires will kick your billionaires' ass! Nyah!

        Dude, please...

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @08:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @08:32PM (#781666)

    You tolerate censorship.
    You tolerate prejudice.
    You tolerate collective responsibility.
    You tolerate discrimination.

    If you dunno what I am talking about, it is grave. If you know what behaviors I might be referring to and dismiss it, it is worse.

    Now, don't get me wrong, I think you are just one of the two barking dogs used to keep sheep in check, the other side is indeed as bad as yours. But at least they tend to admit more openly that might makes right, while your hypocrisy shows every time you deny that the right is totalitarian as you are, but with a national granularity instead of an international one.

  • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @01:46AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @01:46AM (#781835)

    > We're less tolerant of racists being racist against our fellow citizens of color. Check.

    And your words ooze with all that you've been brainwashed by. Neomarxist racism against Whites. Only Whites are your enemy. You are the next generation of Nazis. How much truth has to slap you in the face before you see the evil you are part of?

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 05 2019, @04:57PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 05 2019, @04:57PM (#782541)

      the truth is always a "troll"...

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Sulla on Friday January 04 2019, @06:08PM

    by Sulla (5173) on Friday January 04 2019, @06:08PM (#782146) Journal

    We're less tolerant of retrograde republicans trying to force us back into the dark ages of pre-Roe-v-Wade and pre-civili rights laws. Check.

    Yeah but we only got there by being more tolerant at defining limits of what makes a human being, ie a person with less than 6 months of development

    We're less tolerant of billionaires buying our government and then fucking us over (usually, but not exclusively, through the auspices of the Republican Party). Check.

    You are blind to the injustices of both sides. The ACA was a huge bailout for the medical corporations who paid billions to Dem politicians. All sides are corrupt here, one side just pretends not to be. So in reality you are more tolerant to corruption as long as its on your side.

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam