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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

#451

Post by belorn »

chii wrote: post #118
hinkley wrote: post #36

> Sam prides himself on questioning conventional wisdom and subjecting claims to intellectual scrutiny. For kids today, that means Googling stuff. One might think these searches would turn up a variety of perspectives, including at least a few compelling counterarguments. One would be wrong. The Google searches flooded his developing brain with endless bias-confirming “proof” to back up whichever specious alt-right s…

The role of education (and parenting) is to teach the child how to sort information they obtain from sources like those googled results. Why did he believe in those biased sources of info? How come he didn't have the skills to determine what is fact and what is opinion stated as fact?

In part I would say it is because facts is very rarely as clean as we would want so the norm is to mix opinion and facts in a way to create a easy to understand narrative. In addition information tend to be simplified by making things more extreme, like turning "a few" to "all" and "sometimes" to "always".

The article brings up several topics which education did not give the boy enough tools or information to properly investigate. The relation between religion and violence. The relation between religion and usury laws. Wealth statistics and distribution and the extreme amount of different way it can be presented based on different narratives. Gun laws in relation with crime statistics. Human rights and how/why there exist sex differences in the law covering rights and responsibilities for women and men during and after a pregnancy.

Those are quite complex topics and the issue as I see it is not that he was unable to determine which sources from Google is right or wrong, but that society is presenting them as easy facts with right and wrong narratives.

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

#453

Post by forgottenpass »

crsv wrote: post #167

It’s a very well written piece, but it just feels too well written, to the point of feeling to precise, too calculated, too... contrived. Aside from the opinions expressed, the ideological concerns, the relevance to the current political landscape - these are all relevant and interesting explorations, but the whole narrative is just too picture perfect and too close to a screenplay. It just feels like good fiction.

It IS fiction. It contains true events, and way more real than "based on a true story" fiction. But we're reading the story this mother told herself about events that transpired.

The writer needs this to be a story about descent into a seedy underbelly, slowly becoming more and more unreachable by those around him, followed by a come to Jesus moment. Hell, it even has a clean three act structure and villain (a dangerous influence that Mom and Dad don't understand and are powerless to stop).

It can't be a story about an isolated kid that memed too hard and needed to be see with his own eyes how retarded the people in the deep end are IRL.

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

#454

Post by sangnoir »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #88

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…

Counter-protesting neo-nazi's doesn't make one Antifa, unless you suspect the teenager and his presumably middle-aged mom were going to be Black Bloc'ing (if so, the article ended way too early). Antifa is a very specific ideology and is not a nebulous "counter-protesting the alt-right"

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

#455

Post by claudiawerner »

woofie11 wrote: post #404
claudiawerner wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reply or at least the first source cited is a little disingenuous; modern feminism (mostly third wave and left-wing) rejects the doctrine of essentialism used by second wave feminists. Most third wave feminists are highly critical of gender essentialism (for instance on trans issues which for them must deny essentialism) to the point where you and the person you're replying to are speaking of totally different m…

> If you don't believe me when it comes to what modern feminism actually believes I'd be happy to walk through a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article to make the point. Most modern feminists do not support the tender years doctrine. No need! Just point me to the testimony at any senate hearing where any major feminist group stood up for equality in family law or in domestic violence law. Or an endorsement of a…

As far as I know, most U.S. states (34 of them) reject the tender years presumption in the first place. Furthermore, there are different approaches to feminism; liberal feminism propounds formal equality, which is generally rejected by other approaches which favor more radical solutions. The issue becomes vanishingly small when it turns out that most men opt for joint custody when it comes to the choice, and this is only of the very small number of custody trials in court - the vast majority are settled out of court.

And it's a mistake to characterize opposition as only being legal; if I said I was against murder, would you only believe me if I prosecuted a murderer, or campaigned for the death penalty?

What if feminists had other (bigger) issues to fight in the name of gender equality, which would be better for them to direct money? What if they don't believe that "standing up for equality" in the way you think makes much sense compared to writing and educating in society? We can already see this at work in other areas of feminism; a great number of feminists believe that pornography is harmful, but few seek legal means against it.

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

#456

Post by thefringthing »

Xelbair wrote: post #416
js2 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As shared by a friend of mine recently: Well, my kid screwed up! She took a multitool to school. It has a knife blade. I'm sure every student will go home and tell their parents that someone had a knife at school. Which is true, and only part of the story. I am glad she is at a private school, where she was only suspended for the day, vs at a public school with an onduty police officer, where she would have been form…

Wait.. there are resident police officers in schools in USA?!

"Normal country", as they say. Gotta keep the school-to-prison pipeline pumping.

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

#457

Post by dondawest »

lancefisher wrote: post #320

When my brother and I were in high school, he got into a discussion with the English teacher. At one point of disagreement, he asked her heatedly, “what are you on about?” We’d been watching a lot of Monty Python. She misinterpreted it as, “are you on the rag?” and proceeded to flip out. She went to the principal, and they began some Title IX paperwork along with extreme disciplinary action. This was a small rural sc…

Your parents are so awesome.

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

#458

Post by dondawest »

pard68 wrote: post #395

When I was in 3rd grade a girl accused me and my best friend of purposefully stepping on her. We were forced to sit in a room, no parents, no lunch, until we confessed. Eventually I was told I could go to violin lessons if I admitted to my wrong. So I lied to get out of the room I had been left in for 5 hours. My friend never lied. He got in a lot of trouble because I did lie. He left school the next year after being…

Damn. That’s tough. I’m sorry that happened, but almost no third graders would be able to successfully deal with such a classic “prisoner’s dilemma.”

All I’m saying is, try not to blame yourself, anyone would have acted the same in that situation. The system is to blame, not you. :/

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

#459

Post by ergothus »

deogeo wrote: post #117
Rebelgecko wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was not my interpretation at all, especially in the part where he interviews marchers and finds that some of their beliefs are "internally inconsistent"

What do their beliefs matter, if his own are consistent? That's just association fallacy.

We're literally talking about how this teen decided who is trustworthy. As pointed out in the article, googling around to confirm GAVE HIM "confirmation". Recognizing that their views fell apart under inspection despite the previous confirmation required (as written, at least) above-average critical thinking.

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

#460

Post by malms »

crsv wrote: post #167

It’s a very well written piece, but it just feels too well written, to the point of feeling to precise, too calculated, too... contrived. Aside from the opinions expressed, the ideological concerns, the relevance to the current political landscape - these are all relevant and interesting explorations, but the whole narrative is just too picture perfect and too close to a screenplay. It just feels like good fiction.

I had the same feeling :(.
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