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What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

washingtonian.com

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Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#81

Post by chaostheory »

klodolph wrote: post #53

What resonated with me is how impossible it is, as a kid, to make sense of being in the school system. The interaction with an administrator was school discipline gone awry... but it could have easily been something else. (Discipline is the most likely, there are tons of misguided zero-tolerance policies.) I'm lucky that my parents were advocates and organizers and that they knew people in the school administration.…

Reminds me of this story

https://expo.oregonlive.com/news/erry-2018/06/75f0f464cb3367...

(audio) http://snapjudgment.org/no-one-calls-me-shooter-0

It's basically an autistic kid who was falsely accused by an Oregon public HS of being a potential gunman. All of this based on a vague offhand comment by a random student. The school and police refused to provide details until a few years later. When the school released the details, they didn't bother to even interview the other kid who made the random comment before jumping to crazy conclusions.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#82

Post by wwweston »

hourislate wrote: post #34
GreaterFool wrote: post #8

Why are Americans so obsessed with Nazis? I mean, I'm from Europe and I don't recall growing up worrying about everyone being a secret (or overt) Nazi, which, unless promptly punched in the face, would somehow take over. WWII and Nazis destroyed Europe. Are Europeans worried about Nazis? Not as far as I can tell. Yet all I see from American news is Nazis this Nazis that. Can someone explain?

[flagged]

The use of the phrase "virtue signaling" has to have reached a point by now where its use is itself a kind of signal. Because more often than not, it seems to be deployed by people who, like the poster above, not only fail to make a case as to what sort of test they've devised which would distinguish between someone who is acting primarily out of internally negotiated moral belief vs someone who is primarily performing socially negotiated moral belief, but give no indication that they're even aware that this might be important in asserting the "virtue signaling" judgment.

Or, in other words, one of the signals that's being sent is that the speaker is not actually making any sort of point, they're merely performing something that they don't understand using a linguistic package that they haven't unpacked but are pretty sure they can use to erode the status of another party they see as a status threat.

> I personally find the Communists far more dangerous than the NAZI's/Fascists ever were. They are responsible for the greatest human suffering the World has ever seen. A monumental evil based on murder, poverty and destruction.

Well, faced with a rather concrete version of that question in form of actually conforming nation-states, the allies seem to have made a different call than you did about the greater / lesser evils.

There's a lot of competition on the field of ideologically-driven suffering and atrocities, including several major world religions along with communism, fascism, and to some extent, even capitalism, and the driving factor seems to be less the specific hazards associated with any one of them and more (a) human beings and (b) unreflective, imbalanced zeal.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#83

Post by b_tterc_p »

GreaterFool wrote: post #8

Why are Americans so obsessed with Nazis? I mean, I'm from Europe and I don't recall growing up worrying about everyone being a secret (or overt) Nazi, which, unless promptly punched in the face, would somehow take over. WWII and Nazis destroyed Europe. Are Europeans worried about Nazis? Not as far as I can tell. Yet all I see from American news is Nazis this Nazis that. Can someone explain?

I believe this is a lasting effect of the PR campaign to vilify Hitler and the Nazis. Don’t get me wrong, Hitler and the Nazis are obviously villains and deserve every ounce of contempt. But the US went to extra efforts to make sure people knew it was the work on Hitler and the Nazis and not the Germans so that we could quickly forgive the Germans and make them an ally.

Fun fact, before Hitler, the worst person euphemistically was the biblical Pharaoh

Edit: getting some down votes. I hope it’s clear that I’m still trying to say that hitler was maximally bad and not trying to reduce anything to that effect.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#84

Post by sctb »

sarcasmOrTears wrote: post #51
tarsinge wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Please stop posting unsubstantively here. Generic ideological claims without any support are a particularly nasty form of flamebait.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#85

Post by dang »

GreaterFool wrote: post #74
nkkollaw wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably put in a way that can cause flame wars.

Unmoderated quickly devolve into toxic pool of "I don't actually care about what you're saying, I'm just going to downvote/report you". And it works! No discussion can take place just self-reinforcing feedback loop (ironically that's what the author describes in the article!). Moderated platforms are no better because then one is at the mercy of the moderator. What are we to do? I like to discuss anything and everyth…

The spirit you're describing is pretty much the intellectual curiosity that is most welcome here. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

But even when motivated by curiosity, it's easy for comments on divisive topics to get caught in, and even feed, the flames. Therefore one needs to learn how to include a bit of flame retardant each time one does so. Unfortunate, maybe, but it's a reasonable price for not having the forum burn to a crisp.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#86

Post by asark »

baby wrote: post #73
klodolph wrote: post #53

What resonated with me is how impossible it is, as a kid, to make sense of being in the school system. The interaction with an administrator was school discipline gone awry... but it could have easily been something else. (Discipline is the most likely, there are tons of misguided zero-tolerance policies.) I'm lucky that my parents were advocates and organizers and that they knew people in the school administration.…

Heck. I'm still making nightmares about being back to school.

Mid 30s, same, and my k-12 experience wasn't even bad. I wasn't really bullied. I was popular enough, and moved between a few different friend groups, some of them semi-cool (though one of the nerdier groups was my "home"). School's just that traumatic, I guess.

I worry about that for my kids. Unlike an adult, if you're in an environment that's making your life hell (and normal school life is friggin' intolerable, from an adult perspective, without awful-yet-common levels of bullying or social bullshit happening), you don't have any real way to get out except to wait. Assholes can't be "fired". Hell, someone might commit battery and be back in the seat next to you before long, let alone lesser crimes. You can't really get transferred, with any certainty. You can't quit and go somewhere else, and anyway the environments are so screwed up you'd probably end up somewhere that's still bad, even if it's better. You can't even do much to avoid the jerks. The school work itself's a mess even in the best case, and wastes huge amounts of time—any bright kid's gonna notice and find it, at best, very annoying. You're not even being paid.

Keeping the kids indoors all Winter while the sun's out (recess is nearly dead around here, even at the good schools, and they avoid going outside anyway if it's even a little shitty) is dooming tons of them to short-sightedness (insufficient bright sunlight during formative years, turns out that's the main thing that does it), SAD, and probably contributing to obesity. It sucks.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#87

Post by greedo »

pcurve wrote: post #28
GreaterFool wrote: post #8

Why are Americans so obsessed with Nazis? I mean, I'm from Europe and I don't recall growing up worrying about everyone being a secret (or overt) Nazi, which, unless promptly punched in the face, would somehow take over. WWII and Nazis destroyed Europe. Are Europeans worried about Nazis? Not as far as I can tell. Yet all I see from American news is Nazis this Nazis that. Can someone explain?

I don't know if obsession is the right word. However there is strong reaction partly due to large Jewish population in the u.s. and there is no stronger expression of anti semitism than Nazi. Another thing. This may not be a popular opinion but based on my personal observation, ordinary Americans don't "obsess" over Nazi to the same degree as the media.

The percentage of Jewish people in the US is around 1-2%. Large in the sense of a significant portion of total Jews, but compared to other ethnic groups in the US, fairly small.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#88

Post by alexandercrohde »

I was totally onboard with this article until the last sentence.

I was enjoying this article as an exploration of emotional vulnerability, the connection between beliefs and belonging, the mixed blessing of internet anonimity.

But if the (suspiciously articulate) kid goes from alt-right to antifa, I don't think that's any sort of progress to be applauded. I interpreted the article's point to be that alt-right is just emotionally hurt people venting online, and they do antics for attention and the media latches on to it to sell clicks, even if it's all BS.

But if that's the case, the best way to handle it is not to counter-protest, but just to hear out the fears and insecurities.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#89

Post by Jotra7 »

tootahe45 wrote: post #79
kmm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it curious that you got downvoted. I'm European as well and I have had the same question for a while. We have far-right, nationalist parties and even more extreme fringe groups, but no threat of secret Nazis. Maybe it's because we had to deal with the consequences of the actual Nazis and they're not just comic book villains to us. Or because it's the last big war America fought in with a clear bad guy, whereas…

[flagged]

No one wants to have the conversation when disengenous people like you make absurd arguments like this one.

Re: What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right

#90

Post by thrower123 »

GreaterFool wrote: post #8

Why are Americans so obsessed with Nazis? I mean, I'm from Europe and I don't recall growing up worrying about everyone being a secret (or overt) Nazi, which, unless promptly punched in the face, would somehow take over. WWII and Nazis destroyed Europe. Are Europeans worried about Nazis? Not as far as I can tell. Yet all I see from American news is Nazis this Nazis that. Can someone explain?

Alt-right and Nazi have become such reflexive insults that they have lost all meaning. In most cases, it just means that someone dislikes the person, often for imaginary reasons.
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