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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

#461

Post by titanomachy »

pgeorgi wrote: post #333
titanomachy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably a consequence of the media. Proclaiming yourself a nazi is still an easy way to provoke outrage and get media attention in America, so attention-seekers abuse it. Also Americans value free speech over most things. Proclaiming yourself a Nazi in Europe would probably have more severe consequences socially. In Germany it could land you in prison.

> In Germany it could land you in prison. Proclaiming yourself a Nazi shouldn't. Expect to be watched closely by intelligence services though (unless you're a cop, very different rules apply then). Promoting the ideology may land in you in jail, depending on details (after a series of trials ending in fines because we believe in measured response).

I am not German or living in Germany, so I have to rely on secondary sources here. I understand that there are laws in Germany banning the use of Nazi symbols [1], as well as very strong laws against hate speech.

Maybe I should have said "face criminal penalties" instead of "end up in prison".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a

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

#462

Post by antepodius »

boapnuaput wrote: post #446
_yt0l wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It has little ideological substance Fascism is an attempt to preserve tradition and meaning in an increasingly chaotic and senseless world. It creates order by demanding a return to organic hierarchical structures and by eliminating threats to a meaningful existence. Fascism is clearly incompatible with modern values which place the individual first. Individualism atomizes people rather than seeing them as part of a…

This is an interesting cryptofascist argument: The world has meaning, and denying that meaning is an artifice which leads to alienation and atomization. A counterpoint: There is obviously no such thing as meaning in the traditional/religious/corporatist sense. Chomsky, Wittgenstein, Gödel, Tarski, etc. hammered this particular peg into the ground last century.[0] Additionally, the natural/artificial divide doesn't ma…

Different societies can be more or less functional with respect to a given set of values.

And besides, if someone complains about something being artificial, I'm not sure what matters is the appeal to nature so much as complaining about the thing being rigid and insufficient.

The word 'fascist' in your post doesn't seem to mean much. I can replace it with 'bad' and it doesn't seem the change the meaning.

"this [...] is a bad resurrection myth, and [...] is a bad fear of the Other."

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

#463

Post by wutbrodo »

mirimir wrote: post #386
wutbrodo wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit tangential, but you sharing your experience with the term before it became widely-known reminds me of something interesting about the way we group and label ideologies. I still remember 5+ years ago having periodic exposure to the term alt-right and having it more or less exclusively refer to relatively languid writings like Mencius Moldbug and NRx[1], in sharp contrast to the rowdier, meme-ier aestheti…

Just to be clear, it didn't call itself the "alt-right" back then. GamerGate was a turning point, I think. And yeah, it hit mainstream in the 2016 US presidential cycle. But until maybe 2015, I really had no clue that this was a political thing.

Oh haha, ok. Then never mind, my comment is somewhat irrelevant

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

#464

Post by closetohome »

vzcx wrote: post #154
closetohome wrote: post #147

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.

I may be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure Conservatives are the opposite of "free spirits."

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

#465

Post by mrguyorama »

ricardobeat wrote: post #389
thrower123 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't think I'd make it in the current age. Or any other country (besides Russia/USSR?). That doesn’t sound like an average childhood at all.

Welcome to the poorer rural areas of the united states

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

#466

Post by amanaplanacanal »

skookumchuck wrote: post #322
CydeWeys wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, we had quite similar upbringings. My dad was the co-president of the county's Gifted & Talented Association, and like you I was always in the best classes and magnet programs (even if that required busing), and when I had bad teachers, my dad got me swapped into the best teacher's class within a week. I even had a similar issue with a teacher, but fortunately that was later in high school and I was able to handl…

> And yeah, having someone in your corner who knows how to navigate the school system and get the best for you is super important. This is very typical of the bureaucracies that run socialism. It becomes a system of bartering favors, connections, and influence. (Instead of money.)

I thought socialism was the central ownership of the means of production. What do you think it means?

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

#467

Post by mrguyorama »

mipmap04 wrote: post #179
educationdata wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't private schools also have zero tolerance policies?

Usually they have the policies, but choose not to enforce them. The rule is there so they can expel or severely punish kids at their discretion, but typically don't want to because that represents lost revenue if the kid leaves.

The biggest pressures on school administrators and teachers are parents through direct screaming and anger, not politics. If you want to have a good schooling environment, make sure to put a parent sized amount of support behind teachers that are good, even when they come to you and tell you little jimmy is being a right asshole and needs to be disciplined

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

#468

Post by mrguyorama »

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…

Don't forget that this is a huge point why "Just let them speak/Censorship is the devil" Has utterly failed the past 20 years

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

#469

Post by bdhe »

CriticalCathed wrote: post #327

I'm always skeptical of the veracity of these articles. This one doesn't pass the sniff test. It has a narrative arc that doesn't recall reality. Seems contrived. The thing that rang truest was the school interaction. That's where my trouble with authority started -- overzealous, bored, administrators.

What about the narrative arc seems contrived to you? Is it the ending? Because I agree with that. Everything else seems plausible does it not?

And where does your trouble with authority take you now?

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

#470

Post by mrguyorama »

yellowapple wrote: post #245
jniedrauer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I've heard this story more than once now. School faculty are terrified of public scandals and many of them are checked out of their jobs. So they tend to take the path of least resistance (blame the boy just in case, to avoid ending up on the news). The solution is probably some variation of "pay teachers more."

I don't think "pay teachers more" is sufficient. It's one part of the solution, but the other part is "be at least a little bit hesitant to fire junior teachers". When I was in high school, pretty much all of my teachers under 40 were constantly on the verge of not having a job (due to constant budgetary inadequacies); they'd be repeatedly pink-slipped only to barely manage to keep their jobs another year. Naturally,…

As a teacher's son, you've made a bunch of fairly ageist generalizations that are not true. There are plenty of shitty old and young teachers, and plenty of amazing old and young teachers.
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