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

Excellent, excellent points. Antifa members are often just a sick with fears, insecurities, and vengeance, as alt-right members. They are both peddlers of resentment, just run by different priests, and aimed at different enemies.

Self-examination, getting beneath the ideologies and down at the underlying emotional content motivating their hosts is the only productive path to dialog and growth I've encountered so far.

> "Why are Americans so obsessed with Nazis?"

Terms like "Nazi" and "alt-right" are powerful memes. They have dictionary definitions of course, but people aren't dictionaries. Outside of special practices (engineering, math, etc), people think in terms of relatively vague concepts - in memes. Language can be used to shape people's perception of reality. This very article is an example of that, look at how many characters in this simple story had their beliefs shaped by memes of various kinds: the girl who had detailed beliefs of what the boy did despite having next to no information; the school administrators who were absolutely sure he had done something terrible despite working from a child's opinion, the parents who had trouble seriously addressing their son's new obsession despite being highly knowledgeable on "the facts of the matter". Another example is forum discussions on topics similar to this one.

Human beings hold an incredibly detailed model of reality in their mind, they have extremely high confidence in their model (after all, if it was incorrect, they'd change it of course), yet every single person's model is largely based on memes. Ideas and "facts" about the reality they live in, picked up from here and there, all added to the ultra high resolution model of reality they hold in their heads. The vast, vast majority of that model is based on vague, often incorrect data. But to the observer, it looks perfectly correct.

As for why Americans are so obsessed with Nazis? Because it is a powerfully persuasive meme. Attaching a label ("Nazi", "alt-right", "socialist", "crooked Hillary", "Lyin' Ted", etc) to someone alters the mental model of reality held by other human beings. Sometimes it is used for good, sometimes it is used for evil. Language has always been used to shape people's perceptions of reality, the internet has just increased the speed of propagation. We often hear how we should base our opinions on facts, yet those in power who tell us this seem rather reluctant to give up their reliance on memes.

Here's a fun experiment: next time you encounter someone online asserting a "fact" that you sense is actually a meme, ask them how they know that their fact is actually true. In my experience, you will collect several downvotes, and zero answers to a perfectly obvious and reasonable question.

That's true, but their representation in media/policy is extremely high. (and, I hate that I have to qualify this statement of fact, but I am not saying this is a good or bad thing -- or that I even particularly care).

Serious question: can you give an actual example of this because I can't think of a single one.

A lot of commentators without thinking seem to call the nazi's a 'left' party -- I assume because of the word socialist in the party name -- there are many books on the history of the nazi party, and reading any of them should be enough to clear anyone of this misapprehension.

It's an interesting story. I find the conclusion not unsurprising. The author seems to assume the existence of `alt-right` as a monolithic group with a specific agenda. As far as I can tell that's not true. These groups may come out together to protest because they've been lumped together by the media. If they weren't all branded `alt-right`, would they connect? If you want to disarm them, divide them! Don't label them as a single group.

A lot of these groups have internally inconsistent ideologies. These can be overlooked for a while as one is drawn to the community. But eventually the novelty wears off and cracks start to show and one realizes that a lot of the personalities are one note and don't actually have anything interesting to say.

This is true about the Left and the Right.

And then one moves on.