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Reddit Bans Far-Right Groups Altright and Alternativeright (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Social media site Reddit has banned two of the largest far-right "subreddits" groups it hosts, altright and alternativeright. The subreddits have been used in the organization of America's resurgent neofascist movement but the final straw for Reddit was the two groups' participation in what is known as "doxing": sharing private personal information without permission as a form of online harassment. The subreddits were specifically banned for breaking Reddit's content policy, according to a message posted by the site admins, "specifically, the proliferation of personal and confidential information." Reddit did not make it explicit which content infringed its rules, but it is believed to be attempts to dox the protestor who punched a white nationalist during a TV interview at Donald Trump's inauguration. Speaking to the Daily Beast, one Reddit moderator claimed that the ban was instead a result of its "record monthly traffic" (Reddit moderators, like the creators of individual subreddits, are all volunteers with no official relationship to the site's staff). "It's clear that Reddit banned us because we were becoming very popular and spreading inconvenient truths about who's ruining our country and robbing our children of a future," the moderator said.

55 of 899 comments (clear)

  1. LOL by Orgasmatron · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you think that "alt right" means "far right", you have no idea what kind of shitstorm the left is busily trying to summon by calling for assassination, coup, and terror.

    --
    See that "Preview" button?
    1. Re:LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Alt right" doesn't mean "far right", it means increasingly-blatant racism coupled with delusions of importance, while you metaphorically fellate a bunch of billionaire fascists who manipulate your dumb ass.

    2. Re:LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In my opinion, followers tend to shadow the tactics used by their leaders. For alt.right, this would be Bannon, Trump, Spicer as Trump's mouthpiece. Bullying, threatening, race-discriminating/profiling, and handcuffing a 5 year old for 4 hours is all OK. This has led followers, since the election, to increased targeting of minorities, Jews (and Jewish community centers), Muslims and others as chronicled by Southern Poverty Law Center and others.

      For leftist liberals, you have Barack Obama who kindly waited for hecklers during his speech, Michele Obama and her "when they go low, we go high" and Hillary Clinton, who maybe smiled too much but did not creep up behind Trump in a threatening/stalking manner during the Town Hall debate. This has led to, for example, the Women's March with about 4 arrests among 3 million marchers (around one part per million) across the country.

      So yes, in short, I don't have trouble believing that the alt.right users were doxing liberals. And yes, I'm posting this anonymously.

    3. Re:LOL by GLMDesigns · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes. But people self-label and not all people who label themselves as Alt-Right are White Nationalists.

      Further there are people that lump Libertarians in as Alt-Right (as in they're not establishment conservatives).

      So the phrase Alt-Right is not a simple == White Nationalists.

      Milo, whether you like him or not, wrote an excellent article on what Alt-Right means.

      --
      If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
      Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
    4. Re:LOL by butchersong · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's like trying to enforce a monopoly on "alt-country" or "alt-rock". You can't say that you're the only "alternative" to a mainstream movement.

    5. Re:LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nope.

      The only thing that matters is the perception held by outsiders. Outsiders aren't going to interview the thousands or millions of members who identify as being part of your group, just to see where they all individually stand. No one is sifting through members of the KKK to see if there are members with views towards blacks, jews, etc that are different than the perceived views of the group as a whole.

      It doesn't matter if you're not a White Nationalist, if you claim to be alt-right at this point in time, you are going to be labeled as a racist (among other things, like xenophobic, homophobic, anti-intellectual, etc). Just like you'd be labeled as a racist, anti-Semitic if you joined the KKK but only wanted blacks removed from civil society. No one is going to ask you about your position on Jews. You'd be a member of the KKK, an anti-Semitic group. Therefore, you are also anti-Semitic, from the public's perspective.

      No one gives two shits about your personal interpretation. You can fabricate whatever reality you want, but you can't control how others perceive you.

    6. Re:LOL by LostInTaiwan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You mean like,

      "By the way, and if she gets to pick --if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know. " - Aug. 9, 2016, Donald Trump

      I don't believe in that BS about "left" and "right" or "liberal" and "conservatives." To me, they are often just meaningless labels applied without proper context. Meaningless sound bits meant for the mindless consumers who outsourced their thinking to the same media elites they dislike so much.

      Trump has turned the White House into a reality TV set. Eerily similar to that of his shirtless horse riding buddy's own reality kleptocratic TV show.

      Welcome to Amerika.

    7. Re:LOL by amicusNYCL · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The alt-right came up with their own name, actually. It's a useful label to apply to conservative people who believe in alt-facts.

      Or, as Colbert put it, "Imagine what's right. Now imagine the alternative to that."

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    8. Re:LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes. But people self-label and not all people who label themselves as Alt-Right are White Nationalists.

      I'm so sick of hearing shit like this. "I identify as Alt-Right but i'm not a racist, I support Richard Spencer but that doesn't make me a racists, I voted for Trump but I don't support racism, I believe white people are smarter than other people but really I'm not a racist".

      I understand why you want to avoid being called a racist, it's a negative word with connotations, however rebranding the word does not change the sentiment. If you identify as alt right, in the very least you admit that the feeling of white supremacy is not a problem for you. If it is, define your own group which makes the distinction.

    9. Re:LOL by TrancePhreak · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What do we call people who get their "facts" from comedians?

      --

      -]Phreak Out[-
    10. Re:LOL by whoever57 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes. But people self-label and not all people who label themselves as Alt-Right will admit to themselves that they are White Nationalists.

      FTFY.

      You associate with white nationalists, you support the policies of white nationalists, yes somehow, dear snowflake, you don't think of yourself as a white nationalists.

      I use the word snowflake deliberately, because what I see all the time is that the alt-right, the Trump supporters cannot accept people calling them what they really are. They seem to believe that those of us who actually care about this country and all the people in it should not call them out on their bigotry.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    11. Re:LOL by bugs2squash · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Better informed than Donald Trump, who gets his "facts" from whoever is on Fox when he wakes up.

      --
      Nullius in verba
    12. Re:LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Like George Soros manipulating all the lemmings on the Left through funding of anarchy, protests, BLM and the sorts? Want to talk about being manipulated, let's talk about it.

    13. Re:LOL by whoever57 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I was campaigning for Pat Buchanan

      So you campaigned for a bigot? At this point you should just embrace your white nationalism.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    14. Re:LOL by amicusNYCL · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The "narrative"? There's a video where she says that some demonstrably false claims are not falsehoods, they are alternative facts. I mean, she was actually recorded saying that. I'm sure she knew that too, because it was on TV and everything. They even broadcast it. What exactly is "the narrative"? Are you trying to suggest that she didn't say that at all, like Trump would do when someone asks him about something he was recorded saying, or are you trying to suggest that she wasn't referring to the "falsehoods" that they were discussing when she used that term? Which narrative are you referring to that isn't true?

      She was referring to specific claims made by Spicer, which were not true, and instead of admitting that they were not true (because, like everyone else around Trump, you never admit when you're wrong about something) she came up with the term "alternative facts" to describe the things said by Spicer. She specifically used the phrase "alternative facts" to describe this information, and it should not be necessary to point that facts do not have alternatives that are also facts. The alternatives to facts are false, they're not facts.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    15. Re: LOL by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's pretty simple: those people don't want to be called term X because they don't perceive themselves as being part of that group (whether it's "homosexual" or "intersex" or "transgender" or whatever), so they pick some other more obscure group they identify with (like "genderqueer", whatever that is), or make up something new I guess.

      With this alt-right stuff, it's exactly the opposite. We see here people claiming to be "alt-right", but then they try to claim they're not racist or whatever other label that outsiders perceive them as.

      If you're going to stand up and claim to be part of a group that has voluntary membership, then it's your own fault when you're criticized for traits that outsiders generally associate with that group. If you don't like it, and don't agree with the assessment, stop claiming to be part of that group.

      It's just like the OP said: you can't go around calling yourself a "proud KKK member" and then claim that you think Jews are great. It doesn't work that way, as the KKK is still known to be anti-Jewish (among many other things), and that's one of their big issues, not just some minor one with a lot of internal disagreement. If you take offense at being lumped in with them, then stop claiming to be part of that group. Make up your own group if you have to. Similarly, don't go around calling yourself a "communist" and then claim that you're against state or collective ownership of industry and you think private ownership and free markets are the way to go.

    16. Re:LOL by tbannist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Does this really look like a call to blow up the White House to you?

      Yes, I'm angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot of blowing up the White House, but I know that this won't change anything. We cannot fall into despair. As the poet, W.H. Auden once wrote on the eve of World War II: We must love one another or die.

      "I choose love. Are you with me? Say this with me: We choose love. We choose love. We choose love."

      If so, you must be a hyper-partisan idiot.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    17. Re:LOL by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yep, let's kill this one here.

      During his campaign, Trump promised a Muslim ban. When elected, he enacted the most practical kind of Muslim ban he could, given that there is no easy way to determine if someone is a Muslim or not.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    18. Re: LOL by SeaFox · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "genderqueer", whatever that is

      "Genderqueer" just means "doesn't fit neatly into any other gender categories", "queer" being in the older sense of "weird".

      Sounds like a form of Special Snowflake Syndrome.

      Facebook now has over 50 ways of defining your gender. If a person feels that none of those groups fits them well enough for them to be comfortable identifying with it, I find it somewhat amusing their solution is to come up with a whole new term that doesn't have any qualifications. Here's a brilliant idea -- don't answer the question at all. Just like I choose "prefer not to answer" on customer service surveys that ask about my household income, you can choose not to discuss your gender (or lack thereof) at all if you don't want to be pigeonholed.

      Trying to label yourself as "unclassifiable" reeks the same level of stuck-up I get from hipster music groups that don't want to admit they're Folk Rock.

    19. Re:LOL by Cederic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Trusting wikipedia on anything is dodgy these days. Trusting it on anything political or contentious is downright fucking naive.

    20. Re:LOL by Orgasmatron · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Marx wanted to end history - he wanted to end differences between people so that there would be no conflict. To that end, he devised an economic system that would grind people down to a uniform miserable paste. Naturally the people who ran with it wanted to be the grinders, and not the paste.

      After the Russian revolution set the example, they expected the west to follow along. We didn't. A group calling itself the Frankfurt School got together to figure out why the west didn't jump in, and what they could do about it. They identified our cultural institutions as our defense against Marxism and started working on ways to weaken us. Gramsci is notable here. Search ESR's blog for "Gramscian damage".

      If you look at the current left in America, you will see that the one and only one unifying factor among the factions is a desire to destroy western traditions and institutions. What else do homosexuals and femenists have in common with Islamists who kill homosexuals and mutilate women? Why else would BLM unite with pro-immigration activists to invite in millions of central Americans who hate blacks?

      The left in America is chasing after Marxist objectives in order to bring about a Marxist endpoint. Now that they are emboldened, they are even using the same violent Marxist street tactics from 100 years ago. The only difference is the strategy - today the institutions are targeted for destruction as an intermediate goal, instead of the economy.

      So, yeah, I'm going to keep calling them Marxists.

      Globalism just isn't a valid axis in America. Sanders campaigned as an anti-Globalist Marxist, and almost all of the Republicans candidates were pro-Globalism. In the long run, that distinction may grow to become the most important and the spectrum the parties align on, but it is not today.

      When institutions stop doing what they were created for, they need to go away. The rarely do so willingly, so sometimes we need to break out the torches. I'll take your word for it that the current unions were created to fight against globalism, but they certainly are not doing so today.

      --
      See that "Preview" button?
  2. Why yes, let's ban them by DivineKnight · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Why yes, let's ban them, that'll show them. I'm sure they are disbanding as we speak.

    Or Reddit just drove them underground, removing the possibility that their ideas could be challenged in an open forum. That's real smart, *golf clap*; why don't you try running for President next? I'm sure the US government needs your assistance in its follies.

    1. Re:Why yes, let's ban them by dyeazel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I re-read your post a few times and couldn't figure out exactly what you're proposing as an alternative to banning them.

    2. Re:Why yes, let's ban them by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Reddit is in it for the money. Hosting far right extremists isn't good for business.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. "Not our fault, it's everyone else's" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    "It's clear that Reddit banned us because we were becoming very popular and spreading inconvenient truths about who's ruining our country and robbing our children of a future," the moderator said.

    The go-to response of the alt-right: we reject your reality and substitute our own.

  4. There is only one thing I hate more than fascists by lucaiaco · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And it is fascists anti-fascists. Because not only they are fascists, but they are also a semantic contradiction.

    Don't take me wrong, the ban is perfectly justified, but it's always right-wing fascists who get punished. This guy had no right to punch whoever it was in the face, and this is not an isolated case. Even moderate trump supporters get constantly beaten up with no consequences. A young college girl got pepper sprayed while giving an interview at UC, and several innocent bystanders were beaten up by the anti-fascist crowd, which was destroying everything b/c they didn't like a speaker the Republican student association had invited. These people are dividing the country, and creating a climate of tension and violence way more than the alt-right.

    The media coverage is ridiculous, and focus instead on actual fake stories of people who are pretending to be assaulted by Trump supporters, a claim, as far as I know, always unfounded. End of rant. Good luck America.

  5. Re:They'll Go Underground by Zaelath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Propaganda doesn't work well shared in secret.

  6. Re:Rad Left by Berkyjay · · Score: 1, Insightful

    We should just trust you on this right? No need to ask an AC for sources.

  7. Re:They'll Go Underground by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's fine. Let them go to Stormfront. You have a right to your views and to discuss them with likeminded people. Major online portals have no obligation to help you.

    If the White Supremacists are pushed back to their web forums which the rest of the world doesn't have to view, that's fine by me. I don't want to shut Stormfront down, I just don't want the sites I visit turning into Stormfront colonies.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  8. Re:Nobody asked them to come to slashdot? by Merk42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Also, much like your average Slashdot poster, they hate any change and pine for the halcyon days that never actually existed.

  9. The Guardian goes full racist by aliquis · · Score: 2, Insightful

    White nationalist?

    White? What do they mean?
    Also how is the skin color of that person relevant?
    Because of racist SJWs and BLM people who think it's ok to attack white people?

    1. Re:The Guardian goes full racist by Pfhorrest · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Statistically, if you don't want to be poor do 3 things:
      1) graduate high school
      2) get a full time job
      3) get married before you have kids

      Those may be necessary conditions but they are far from sufficient conditions. You can graduate high school, get a full time job, never have kids, and easily still be making barely over half the median wage, which itself is half again the mean wage, which is still barely enough to save enough in a lifetime not to die in the street when you're old.

      --
      -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
      "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
  10. Re: Rad Left by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you start publishing personal details it is.

    Stop being fucking stupid.

  11. Re:Censor all white-nationalist hate speech now by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    While I prefer to challenge people like Yiannopoulos in public, in this case I can see a reasonable justification for not inviting him to speak.

    The guy is a serial outer of trans women. At previous tasks he has held up photos of women attending those colleges, repeated their names and mocked them for being trans.

    Such attacks are unacceptable and you have to prioritize the safety of students over the desire to offer them a chance to hear him speak.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  12. Banning for "inconvenient truths" is still OK. by DRJlaw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "It's clear that Reddit banned us because we were becoming very popular and spreading inconvenient truths about who's ruining our country and robbing our children of a future," the moderator said.

    Whatever. You're still banned,and whining about secret 'persecutorial' motivations won't do anything to change that.

    Stormfront will probably host you and not bat an eye. Why do you feel so deprived? If you wanted to stay on Reddit you could simply have stamped out the doxing problem and, you know, followed Reddit's 'pretextual' rules.

    1. Re:Banning for "inconvenient truths" is still OK. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Conspiracy theories are their bread and butter. Even when they win and get their guy into the White House, the are still conspiracies to get them off Reddit.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  13. Inconvenient truths? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here's the real inconvenient truth: the people in power only have one thing in common and it's money.

    And they're doing all they can so that you idiots fight amongst yourselves instead of seeing that the rich are the real problem.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  14. Re:They'll Go Underground by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh? Where are those folks? I remember them from previous elections. It seems that the main thing they're doing now is to stand by in the hope that the fascists in power will give them what they want. But the collateral damage is going to be so big, that it's hardly going to be a win for them.

  15. Re: Reddit = a bunch of cowardly idiots. by ooloorie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Given that people like Bannon and papers like Breitbart have been denounced as white supremacists and anti Semitic, it's obvious that the term has lost all meaning. Frankly, I don't care anymore whether people call me a racist or white supremacist; it's about as ridiculous as calling me a zoophile or cannibal.

    Banning these people from Reddit only means that progressives will be even more out of touch with mainstream America than they already are. That kind of ignorance doesn't hurt Republicans, it hurts Democrats and progressives. You can't effectively advocate your point of view from a position of ignorance, or by demonizing the people you want to persuade.

    Learn to listen, people, or keep losing.

  16. Re:Doxing by amicusNYCL · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Reddit tolerates all kinds of shit, they just don't tolerate doxxing (apparently, I'm not a user). There's plenty of weird stuff on there, the alt-right isn't necessarily any worse than a lot of the other stuff. So when they get banned but other things are still there, maybe that deserves a bit of quiet introspection rather than spouting off politically.

    It's clear that Reddit banned us because we were becoming very popular and spreading inconvenient truths

    They spelled "incorrect" wrong.

    --
    "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  17. Make it fair by s.petry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sure, "White Supremacists" can be blocked from Reddit, but what about the leftist nutjobs who believe that you should destroy other people's property and physically assault people with a different political viewpoint? I don't look at reddit as a rule, but I'd be willing to bet that extremist left wing groups exist on reddit and will not receive the same treatment as the "alt-right". That is true with Facebook and Twitter, so I assume it true on Reddit. Feel free to prove me wrong on that, I'll be happy to read about Reddit banning left wing nut jobs.

    Frankly, if I had to look at who is worse right now I'd say it's the extremist progressive leftists who see no issues using violence against people simply because they have a different political view. In the last couple years, I have seen no valid reports of white supremacists out beating people. We have seen dozens of faked claims, and many of those have resulted in charges, but the "Right" has not been rioting and beating anyone. I have seen countless instances of leftists doing just that, and worse. Last night you have a young lady being interviewed on ABC punched in the face and pepper sprayed by one of these "oppressed" liberals. You have another pulled out of a car and beaten for no reason.

    When you have a Government not prosecuting, or even arresting people, who are terrorizing people and preventing their free speech you will end up with a whole lot of violence from the other side. Hence you have a Trump supporter shooting an agitator at a separate rally after protesters started throwing bricks and rocks at people supporting the speaker showed up to counter protest.

    People need to pay close attention to the rhetoric being used by the left right now. Sadly, the useful idiots really can't see the irony and hypocrisy in shutting down other people's free speech by committing physical violence while carrying signs and chanting slogans claiming the other side is fascist. They are claiming that words are violence, and a teacher who is an advocate for violent protests claimed that words from someone raped her. I wish I was joking, but both of those are factual. The claims that words are somehow causing physical harm is being used to justify violence against anyone not agreeing with (or bending over for) the leftists.

    Trying times we are in right now, and in places like California I envision it getting worse before it gets better.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    1. Re:Make it fair by Xyrus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sure, "White Supremacists" can be blocked from Reddit, but what about the leftist nutjobs who believe that you should destroy other people's property and physically assault people with a different political viewpoint?

      I've seen crazies, but attributing them to any political affiliation (except for those espousing actual violence) is pretty damn stupid, don't you think? This is the same type of thinking that groups all Muslims into suicide bombing America hating crazies. Should I lump together all Christians as violent terrorist extremists because of Timothy McVeigh and all those whackos who bomb clinics and send death threats to doctors who perform abortions?

      I don't look at reddit as a rule, but I'd be willing to bet that extremist left wing groups exist on reddit and will not receive the same treatment as the "alt-right". That is true with Facebook and Twitter, so I assume it true on Reddit. Feel free to prove me wrong on that, I'll be happy to read about Reddit banning left wing nut jobs.

      No, the onus is on you to provide evidence that there are forums full of violent threats and doxing coming from supposed leftist groups. If YOU have evidence, then YOU can submit it and get them banned. Enough of the liberal media "legenpresse" conspiracy bullshit.

      Frankly, if I had to look at who is worse right now I'd say it's the extremist progressive leftists who see no issues using violence against people simply because they have a different political view. In the last couple years, I have seen no valid reports of white supremacists out beating people.

      What do watch? Fox news? Is Breitbart you man source of info? Hate crimes, including against African Americans, are quite regular fair. It's just not enough to make headlines. Well, that is, until someone dies or actually looks at the statistics.

      We have seen dozens of faked claims, and many of those have resulted in charges, but the "Right" has not been rioting and beating anyone.

      Alternative facts in an alternative reality.

      I have seen countless instances of leftists doing just that, and worse. Last night you have a young lady being interviewed on ABC punched in the face and pepper sprayed by one of these "oppressed" liberals. You have another pulled out of a car and beaten for no reason.

      You're right of course. Liberals are way to soft. They stop with just beatings and pepper spray. The alt-right just kills people. Much more efficient, and then you don't have to worry about them voting either. For example, like that old white guy that shot and killed a teenage African American kid. Or the alt-crazy who massacred a black church.

      Crazy people are just that. Trying to attribute their behavior to a political motive is just stupid.

      When you have a Government not prosecuting, or even arresting people, who are terrorizing people and preventing their free speech you will end up with a whole lot of violence from the other side. Hence you have a Trump supporter shooting an agitator at a separate rally after protesters started throwing bricks and rocks at people supporting the speaker showed up to counter protest.

      Goebells would have loved you. Which political party just recently told the press to shut up and froze out a major news network? Which political party is trying to implement the Ministry of Truth to prevent information the administration doesn't like from reaching the public? Which administration has fostered conspiracy theories, exaggerations, threatened to lock up political rivals, and has flat out lied repeatedly to the public?

      People need to pay close attention to the rhetoric being used by the left right now. Sadly, the useful idiots really can't see the irony and hypocrisy in shutting down other people's free speech by committing physical violence while carrying signs and chanting slogans claiming th

      --
      ~X~
  18. Re:This is why I hate far left and far right by Harlequin80 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    From where I sit, external to the US but in a first world country. It doesn't look like it is foreigners that are trying to take advantage of you as an American. It looks like it is a small section of the American people that are taking advantage of the rest.

    You have no safety net for your people. There is nothing that stops people falling so far that crime, even violent crime, becomes the best option. Your healthcare system lets people rot. Your regulatory system is crazy complex and yet at the same time appears totally ineffectual in so many ways. Things like guns, abortion, gay marriage are all still topics for conversations rather than just settled and not even thought about.

    As a people you seem to hate your own government. The whole guns argument of needing to rise up against your government is just crazy from an outsiders perspective. You claim history, but America is far from alone in having had a war for independence. Your police force are terrified of the people they are meant to look after, so they themselves have become terrifying.

    Sure there are countries out there that would like to see the US gone. Comes of being a super power and stomping around in other peoples countries. But the vast majority of the world would actually like to see the US grow, be stable and prosper. Because weirdly enough, when the US is doing well, the rest of the world does well as well. It's not a I win you lose situation.

  19. Re:There is only one thing I hate more than fascis by Zak3056 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You are so concerned about some hateful shit of a girl getting pepper sprayed... where were you when peaceful protesters on college campuses were getting hosed down with pepper spray by an agent of the state for a simple sit in?

    Some of us are appalled by both events. That's the problem here, and what people on "the left" keep missing: there are plenty of us out here who aren't racists, who aren't misogynist, who think Trump is a disaster-in-waiting, but who are frankly sick and tired of the political climate where we're called misogynist racists because we simply disagree with your "progressive" politics.

    You lost the election because of people like us. Instead of taking the lesson to heart, you've doubled down on it.

    --
    What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
  20. Re: Reddit = a bunch of cowardly idiots. by MightyMartian · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I'm going to go out and a limb and say I don't think Trump won because majorities in the Rust Belt, or even in more traditional Red states, are a pack of white supremacists. Obviously there is that element (and up until Nixon's South Strategy, that element was more associated with the Democrats, or at least on the fringes like the Dixiecrats), but it sure looks to me like a lot of people were very pissed off (and not without good reason) at what they viewed as the Washington establishment, at a pack of elites who had grown so comfortable in their ivory towers that even if they wanted to help the average person on the street, were so detached that they wouldn't even know where to begin.

    So, to put it in rather blunt terms, the notion that Breitbarts, Milo, Bannon, and ultimately even Trump himself somehow represent the New America is absurd, to the point where Trump has entered the presidency with the lowest approval ratings of any new President since anyone started measuring that. I really do get the impression that he actually has damned little overarching political support outside his base. At best, general support seems to be of the "monkey wrench in the machinery", as in "we sure hope he fucks up the Washington establishment", but there seems little evidence that most Americans believe he's going to be a great president. I simply think the Alt-right, like the out and out White Supremacists, are delusional on this point.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  21. Re:There is only one thing I hate more than fascis by MightyMartian · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How about the "Muslim scare", where anyone with brown skin is automatically assumed to be a dangerous terrorist, and that people who belong to a one-billion member religion that isn't even in and of itself homogeneous are all declared to be part of some "Muslim hoard" that's going to take over America and declare Sharia law (meanwhile, ironically, some Evangelical and Conservative Catholic hold positions that would be more compatible with Sharia).

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  22. Re:Doxing by Dread_ed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The kind of 'common sense' that leads to violent riots at Berkley? Sorry, but I'm not overlooking human rights, decency, and free speech and I am not supporting fascism in any form, or from any political construct in the US.

    As far as I am concerned, anyone who is partisan in America these days is a fool. Your "party" and your "ideology" are nothing more than focus-group-honed brain candy. The narratives they push are engineered to keep you emotionally off balance, stressed, and at the throats of your fellow Americans. Angry sheep are still sheep, no matter how "justified" and "right" you feel you are.

    I swear to god its like watching 50 million Soros finger puppets fight 50 million Bannon finger puppets. Not a one of you have a single idea of your own. You just get the info pumped straight up your asses, completely bypassing your brain.

    --
    When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
  23. Re:Doxing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    What you call common sense is just an extreme yet equally retarded opposite of the right's take on common sense.
    I don't think it is common sense to ascribe the sins of ancestors to the descendants in the present for the purpose of shaming them and insulting them,
    especially (but not exclusively) when you can't prove any such ancestral connection with a person without getting to know their individual family history or ethnic origins.
    But then again, wasting time to know individuals and their histories is not common sense when your purpose is to "progressively" command how they should lead their lives and think according to your political religion of "greater good" and "progressiveness".

    We live in the world of common sense where Feminism has become a moral-policing parody of Religious Puritanism, and are ready to join Muslims in chanting Allahu Akbar, while women are being stoned and killed for not wearing the correct clothes in over a dozen Muslim countries because the same Muslims who are supposed to fight to change those countries are now comfortably washing their hands from the responsibility and joining Western feminists in entertaining marches.

    Common sense. Two words you could wipe your ass with and get it even more stained.

  24. Re:Doxing by Camel+Pilot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All the riots do were draw attention to Milo and increase his books sale. They would have been smart to just ignore him... which is really what these narcissists fear more.

  25. Re:They'll Go Underground by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    He's a hero to some elements of the Left. The Left, like the Right, isn't a singular, and there are a helluva lot of people in the more centrist progressive category (like myself) who find the Chavistas to either be complete fucking morons, or in the case of Chavez and Maduro, just out and out criminals. Further, the whole "Bolivaran Revolution" crapola Chavez spent years spouting was little more than reanimating Bolivar's corpse for personal ingratiation and political gain (to the point where they literally dug the poor bastard's body up in what has to be one of the most grotesque displays in recent memory).

    You see, this is the problem with talking purely in terms of "Left" and "Right", as if these vast monolithic adjectives were actually ideologies in and of themselves, and they're not. The "Right" often includes everything from right-of-center moderates all the way to frothing-at-the-mouth white supremacists, and somehow Libertarians get chucked in there as well, whereas the "Left" is everyone from left-of-center moderates through to wingnut Communists, often with certain anarchist socialist types thrown in as well (despite these groups being more like Libertarians).

    So to say "the Left supported Chavez" is about as accurate as saying "the Right supported Pinochet". Clearly in both cases, large numbers of these supposed groups did not support these people. The people who I associate most often with, who might be called "progressives" and "social democrats" found Chavista populism and the incredibly short-sighted economic policies that Chavez instituted to be somewhere between incompetent and malevolent. My personal view is that Chavez may certainly have started out, like all such men, believing he was helping the Venezuelans, but in a pattern that Latin American political movements have partaken of for a couple of centuries now, ended up helping himself and his buddies in the process, thus simply transferring the kleptocracy from a right wing regime to a left wing regime.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  26. Re:Doxing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You call it a Muslim ban, yet:
    - It doesn't encompass all Muslims but merely 7 countries.
    - Those 7 countries are precisely the ones Obama listed as a risk to the USA.
    - Obama banned travel from Iraq for 6 months to reconfigure the vetting and security system because overhauling a system requires a temporary stop,
        while Trump extended Obama's own system on Obama's 7 listed countries and is doing the same presently.

    Did you even know of these details? I'm guessing not.
    Were you present to call it a "Muslim ban" and throw shit at Obama when he did this? I'm guessing not.
    Do you go online and research and validate the words of people, instead of blindly believing them just because they sound righteous or emotionally good?
    I'm guessing not, because if you did, you wouldn't be calling it a "Muslim" ban, and you certainly wouldn't spew so much hypocrisy in a post for validation points.

  27. Re:Doxing by Nostalgia4Infinity · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Reddit tolerates pretty much anything as long as it matches their political leanings. Not sure why anyone who values a neutral platform would visit the site.

  28. Re:Doxing by lgw · · Score: 1, Insightful

    "Literal Nazis"? I wasn't aware George Soros was actually in the government? I can't even think of anyone in Trump's group old enough to have been a Hitler Youth, let alone actively involved with the party back then. Was there someone there alongside Soros inventorying the possessions of Jewish households to make sure they all got confiscated properly?

    The government's taking "extreme action"? Who's been shot? "with total disregard for the law"? Really? That's difficult to do by executive order - possible, I guess, but seems unlikely.

    All I hear is "ZOMG, someone who disagrees with me is in power! The world is literally ending!". The right was just as worried about Obama, but you didn't see us randomly attacking Obama supporters on the street.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  29. Re:"Dox" by Verdatum · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When Rolling Stone publishes a rape account without diligently investigating and verifying the facts as reported, the magazine and the author get sued by the associate dean, the fraternity, and the frat members involved. So consequences are a thing. What's your point?

  30. Re:Doxing by Grishnakh · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The OP was exaggerating, but he's probably referring to the Trump supporters who were literally making Hitler salutes at an alt-right convention:

    http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

    I don't know that any of these actual neo-Nazis are in any government positions, but many of Trump's people do have ties to people in these groups.

    So yes, the comparisons between Trump and his administration and supporters and Naziism are quite well justified.