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

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

#211

Post by rdiddly »

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?

That which is obviously true or obviously false needn't even be mentioned.

That which is secretly true must be contradicted constantly.

That which is secretly false must be affirmed constantly.

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

#212

Post by drak0n1c »

aetimmes wrote: post #165
alexandercrohde wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I don't know if I think a middle-aged man who goes to a rally to hold up a sign saying "NO TRUMP. NO KKK. NO FASCIST USA," is progress over the alt-right. To me it's the exact same thing -- an overly zealous person who takes politics as a tribal game and has no sincere intention of changing anybody's mind.

> an overly zealous person who takes politics as a tribal game and has no sincere intention of changing anybody's mind. But he did, didn't he?

That persuasion happened thanks to his verbal communication, not his over-the-top rhetorically toxic T-shirt.

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

#213

Post by anigbrowl »

ukulele wrote: post #13

> He would be offline for a month and would need other mods to cover for him. To ask for help, he had to out himself as a kid. I wonder to what extent the alt-right actually is a young teen movement, with adults mixed in (being the ones who show in person). Is there any at least semi-reliable data on this?

Not much (I'd estimate <20%) and no.

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

#214

Post by yellowapple »

educationdata wrote: post #172
rayiner wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What drove me crazy about K-12 is that all the bullshit zero tolerance policies affected mainly the normal kids. The real problem kids didn’t care, and continued to wreak havoc. It’s the main reason I send my kids to private school, even though the public schools where I live are good.

Don't private schools also have zero tolerance policies?

I'd imagine there's a more direct financial incentive; if a student's parent(s) decide(s) to pull that student out of school because of a disagreement with the school's administration, then that directly leads to less money for the school.

Meanwhile, a public school doesn't have that direct penalty; if anything, it's just one less student in already-crowded classrooms, so pushing a student out might very well be a net positive.

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

#215

Post by opportune »

educationdata wrote: post #178
opportune wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of this is due to marketing. I know for example PragerU heavily advertises on Youtube. Is there a way for an advertiser on youtube to get better recommendation placements?

How is PragerU fascist?

I don't think PragerU is fascist. I was thinking you can get from video games to PragerU in two hops like the parent comment mentioned. Maybe two hops from there you can get to fascist stuff

Keep in mind a lot of fascist stuff tries to brand itself as " a search for "inconvenient truths" and usually doesn't outright say "yes I want to support a white ethnostate and murder minorities by doing X/Y/Z".

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

#216

Post by alehul »

esoterica wrote: post #176
alexandercrohde wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I don't know if I think a middle-aged man who goes to a rally to hold up a sign saying "NO TRUMP. NO KKK. NO FASCIST USA," is progress over the alt-right. To me it's the exact same thing -- an overly zealous person who takes politics as a tribal game and has no sincere intention of changing anybody's mind.

The exact same thing? That’s one hell of a false equivalence. The alt right aren’t bad people because they are “overzealous”, they are bad people because of their bigotry on the basis of race, religion and national origin.

To be fair to the poster you're replying to, I can assume a much more charitable interpretation is that the quote draws an equivalency between being against Trump and being against the KKK, and that's the over-zealous and tribal aspect.

It's similar to saying "No Bernie, No Marx." Yes, they're on the same side of the spectrum compared to center, but it seems unfair and disingenuous to combine them as such.

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

#217

Post by opportune »

tropo wrote: post #186
eropple wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno why you're downvoted; to me it's a reasonable question. What I don't know--and why I am profoundly concerned about such recommendation algorithms--is if there's any way for non-Googlers to ever check that.

I didn't know either, until I saw educationdata's comment. It's subtle, but I think opportune is implying that PragerU is fascist.

I'm not. I am implying that it is conservative and advertises a lot. If you can get from videogames to PragerU in a couple clicks I wouldn't be surprised if you could get from PragerU to facist stuff in a couple clicks.

And if it's possible to get from almost anywhere in youtube into conservative propaganda territory in 1-2 clicks, then from there I think the recommendation system can (without ads) probably get you to the fascist stuff, since the recommendation system wants to give you more right wing politics and maybe can't differentiate very well within that space

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

#218

Post by anigbrowl »

drak0n1c wrote: post #203
deanCommie wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"KKK" and "No KKK" are exactly the same thing? FFS...can we stop with the false equivalence? When one side is preaching intolerance, and the other side preaches intolerance to intolerance THEY ARE NOT BOTH EQUALLY INTOLERANT .

The parent comment was not equivocating "KKK and anti-KKK", it was simply pointing out the false equivalence on that guy's T-shirt. All-caps claims that Trump, the KKK, and Fascism are equivalent is part of the problem and exacerbating tribalism. The anti-Semitic terrorist in Powey wrote that he felt personally betrayed and furious at how friendly Trump is with Jewish people and his support for Israel. The media, and…

Yeah, he was angry that Trump isn't far right enough for his taste, a common trope among Nazis. I'm not sure how transfer any responsibility for his crime onto the people who are protesting against right wing extremism though.

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

#219

Post by newnewpdro »

rayiner wrote: post #166
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.…

What drove me crazy about K-12 is that all the bullshit zero tolerance policies affected mainly the normal kids. The real problem kids didn’t care, and continued to wreak havoc. It’s the main reason I send my kids to private school, even though the public schools where I live are good.

> It’s the main reason I send my kids to private school

I was sent to a private school for jr. high, and it was a shit show that severely derailed my education at the time.

Unbeknownst to my well-meaning parents, it turned out the private school was where parents of abusive troublemaker bullies sent their kids after their barely having passed public school, as the last option before military school.

There were quite a few years where I wanted to murder the administrators at the school and my parents because they were entirely incompetent and in my eyes responsible for creating this abusive situation I was forced into, for no apparent reason other than religious beliefs (it was a catholic school, catholic parents).

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

#220

Post by orf »

deanCommie wrote: post #163
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?

That's because Europeans have their heads in the sand like ostriches about all forms of societal change. I'm a Canadian that just moved back after 4 years in Europe, and I found it impossible to have a progressive-minded conversation with most europeans (not all, but much higher ratio than at home) - about feminism, rape culture, about racial discrimination, about unconscious bias, about migration and immigration. Eu…

Who's getting nervous about brown people at train stations? This whole observation seems pretty weird.

A foreigner from a different continent finds it hard to talk to most Europeans (because they are all a singular block) about feminism? Don't be ridiculous. They likely just didn't want to talk to you about it, and it sounds as if you laboured on such points a few times.

And, depending on how well you knew the people you where talking to, they likely mistook your accent for American (I'm English and this happens even to me), which would certainly affect how people see your views on such topics and would impact their willingness to talk to you about it.

All in all, not many people want to talk to American sounding people they might not know very well about issues like their views on feminism or racial discrimination. I see this more as a "you" thing than a "Europe" thing.

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