Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonian.com

301–310 of 514 posts

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

#301

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.

I don't think I'd make it in the current age. We routinely drove snowmobiles to school in the winter, parked across the street in an empty lot during hunting season so that our bird guns were locked up technically off of school property, and carried leathermans and swiss army knives every day as a matter of course. Kids were frigging dipping Grizzly into soda bottles in the back of the class room most days.

People would have a conniption fit now, and this was only when Bush II was in office.

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

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The damning thing is the alt-right is very occasionally right. This one stuck out at me: > I trained myself to freeze my facial expression into something neutral so that when I countered Sam’s remarks—“Feminists keep divorced dads from seeing their kids” was a favorite—it would seem as if I’d actually considered his perspective. A big chunk of the alt-right is precisely divorced dads drawn in, or people drawn to thei…

> “Feminists keep divorced dads from seeing their kids” was a favorite—it would seem as if I’d actually considered his perspective. Except that feminism actively derides both the gender norms that say mothers are better caregivers and the US court system's bias against fathers in child custody rulings. There is literally decades of literature and other sources on these points. A old, common talking point and accusati…

[deleted]

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

#303
post #58
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?

I've watched the so-called alt-right develop online over the past 2-3 decades. Usenet, Live Journal, Encyclopedia Dramatica, the chans, etc. At least at the start, it was mostly about trolling and lulz. The anger of TFWNG. But somehow it's been captured by the actual right wing. That's frightening. There's a lotta young male angst out there.

> young male angst

Tbh, it's this sort of thing that fuels the alt right. I'm a young male and I have some political concerns. I don't consider myself alt-right. But, when you dismiss my concerns as "angst" - I'm far more likely to continue talking to them than to you.

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

#304

This is why I homeschool my kids. I think as geeks we've solved the problem of learning, look at all the stuff we've built by figuring out how to learn by ourselves. We don't really need schools for this function anymore.

You can't homeschool social skills though.

Humanity was socializing long before public schools existed, and by no means does the present public school system have a monopoly on teaching social skills.

Statistically, home schools produce outstanding educational outcomes compared to public schools on standardized tests, so public education proponents insist that they compensate for this by providing better "socialization". This claim is conveniently difficult to refute with hard data since "socialization" is harder to quantify, but it doesn't prove public schooling produces better socialization outcomes.

To the contrary, homeschooling is so effective at education because it's taylored to a particular student's developmental level in each area, including socialization. Home educators have tremendous schedule flexibility, and in many areas, large co-op resources, presenting endless opportunities for friendship, teamwork, conflict, community service, and time to develop their own interests (programming? theater?) with other like minded students. For instance, while day-school students are stuck in a room not interacting with one another, a nine year old home schooled student may attend day rehearsals for a play at the local university, volunteer at a local food bank, or build robots with their FRC team, all before playing little league baseball after the day school students become available. These opportunities don't just lock students into same age groups all day for 10 years, but allow time for them to participate in the real world community outside with a broad range of both peers and adults.

The diversity of opportunities for homeschool students often results in a student whose social experience and civic responsibility is as outstanding as their standardized test scores. You can absolutely homeschool social skills.

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

#305
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portions of our far-right literally wear Nazi regalia. If it weren't for that, we'd probably be less concerned.

Don't worry about the LARPers. There are so few of them, they are so dumb, they have so little power, and they never will. Worry instead about those quiet ones out there reading old and problematic books: the free spirits, burning forth, ready to smash all our tablets of values.

[deleted]

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

#306

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.

I don't think I'd make it in the current age. We routinely drove snowmobiles to school in the winter, parked across the street in an empty lot during hunting season so that our bird guns were locked up technically off of school property, and carried leathermans and swiss army knives every day as a matter of course. Kids were frigging dipping Grizzly into soda bottles in the back of the class room most days. People wo…

I think your geography had more impact than your era. Is your hometown much different than this today? Seems like the normal rural vs urban divide to me.

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think UKIP is fascist? Wikipedia defines that with the phrase "...dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition...". Many powerful politically inclined groups are forcibly silencing their opponents these days, but UKIP is not among them.

Yes, I most certainly do. Ukip's belief system is pretty fundamentally palingenetic ultranationalism at its core. (As is "Make America Great Again [By Making Sure White People Win]".) EDIT: but, gosh, I sure can't help but notice the first part of the sentence you cherry-picked: "Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of radical, right-wing, authoritarian ultranationalism" - can you tell me why you tried to play dirty pool a…

I suppose UKIP not wanting to submit to their EU bureaucrat overlords makes them radical, right-wing, authoritarian, ultranationalists. Can't someone just finally be sick and tired of all the consequences of EU globalism without being labeled a racist? Sigh... I guess someone has to live for decades in one of the areas worst affected by globalism in order to grasp what has been squandered. For most people, they're not paying the price, so they don't see the problem.

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

#308

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.

I don't think I'd make it in the current age. We routinely drove snowmobiles to school in the winter, parked across the street in an empty lot during hunting season so that our bird guns were locked up technically off of school property, and carried leathermans and swiss army knives every day as a matter of course. Kids were frigging dipping Grizzly into soda bottles in the back of the class room most days. People wo…

> dipping Grizzly into soda bottles

What does this mean?

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that's stupid! We (non racist people) know that black people are black and white people are white (biological differences), we just don't think it's in any way a reason to treat them differently. (same thing with men and women ;)

That's a bald-faced lie. If it were true, you'd be against affirmative action and quotas. Which you're not.

I'm not an advocacy for affirmative action and quotas, but I think they were made to "counteract" social discrimination based on race and sex, and not race and sex differences themselves. I think I might say that in an imaginary society without racism and sexism, I would be against affirmative action and quotas! (well there wouldn't be need for them...)

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

#310

This article is not good. It has its good points but the rest of it is deeply and completely flawed and it definitely has the feeling of ideological propaganda. If you don’t know why that is the case, I will explain. Firstly, it causes me actual physical pain to read because I have a son and society has become so default toxic towards men and assumes that they are somehow evil and guilty for....wanting sex and not kn…

>Until the Democratic Party and liberals admit to these things, moderate their tone, I am never, never, never coming back, and I voted for Obama twice.

I always find this argument fascinating. "Some people made fun of white males, therefore low income people shouldn't get healthcare/college".

I dislike identity politics too, but I don't let it change my values.

Post reply on HN