What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by jimmydddd » Thu, May 09, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

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.

My kids' middle school had a similar problem. For example, three kids out of a hundred would cause a problem during lunch, so all hundred kids in the grade had to sit in alphabetical or some pre-determined order for the rest of the year. My kids said everyone including the teachers and kids knew who was causing the problem, but everyone had to pay for it. I think the school was afraid to single out the "trouble makers" (they were just throwing food or yelling or some other typical bs) and contact their parents, so they just made all the kids pay for it.

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

#482

Post by mirimir » Fri, May 10, 2019, 12:15 AM UTC

mmierz wrote: post #437

will4274 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I see people trot it out in online arguments as an excuse, or in think-pieces as a justification. But if white male identity politics is very important to someone, important enough to find common cause with literal neo-nazis, I think their conversion already happened.

Maybe. However, as TFA shows, "conversion" isn't irreversible.

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

#483

Post by bifrost » Fri, May 10, 2019, 12:58 AM UTC

camelite wrote: post #398

dTal wrote: post #18

This is gripping, insightful and beautifully written. I especially like how it leads with the request to go to the Mother of All Rallies, so that the reader gets to experience the same knee-jerk reaction as the parents. I like how that knee-jerk reaction is later proven wrong. It compellingly illustrates the importance of open-mindedness, and that "sunlight is the best medicine". Very thought provoking.

It's fiction imo

I agree, its completely fabricated. There's only one believable thing in it - the failure of the school.

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

#484

Post by bifrost » Fri, May 10, 2019, 1:04 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #58

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?

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.

I think you're spot on here. I always saw a lot of one-upsmanship in terms of harassment and being offensive, but eventually it got real. A friend of mine jokes that "weev won the election" and I'm not sure how wrong he is.

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

#485

Post by c22 » Fri, May 10, 2019, 1:09 AM UTC

GreaterFool wrote: post #350

dang wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flagged on HN means that some users thought your comment broke the site guidelines and shouldn't have been posted here. (See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. ) After that, your comment got enough upvotes to override the flags, which is why the [flagged] marker disappeared. I think your comment was fine, but I had to read it pretty closely to be sure. Most…

> The word "Nazi" itself contains a provocative charge I find this a bit confusing. Provocative to whom? There are 1) people calling other people Nazis and there are 2) people being called Nazis. 1) Can't claim they're being provoked because they're the ones using the word in the first place. I don't think 2) would be offended by the word itself . They don't like being called Nazis, which is different. When someone s…

There are also 3) people like yourself and myself who are neither calling anyone a Nazi, nor purporting to be Nazi's, but who are nonetheless provoked by the usage of the word.

I'd argue this category actually represents the majority demographic. Heck, I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've typed the word "Nazi" on the internet.

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

#486

Post by vzcx » Fri, May 10, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

closetohome wrote: post #464

vzcx wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I am not talking about conservatives.

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

#487

Post by vzcx » Fri, May 10, 2019, 1:14 AM UTC

FlowNote wrote: post #239

vzcx wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe we should burn those old books, just to be safe

Yes, you'd better...

In case it wasn't clear (Poe's law, and all), I am speaking about myself and people like me, who get along just fine but find themselves quite at odds with the modern world and it's mythologies, and also deeply uninterested in what these radical groups and "activists" have on offer.

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

#488

Post by skookumchuck » Fri, May 10, 2019, 1:33 AM UTC

krageon wrote: post #432

skookumchuck wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

This is a typical feature of any bureaucracy, which basically describes every large power to some degree (some of which are more bureaucratic and others are less).

In a free market business, you can get special treatment, favors, etc., by offering more money. For example, if you want a better apartment, you pay more money for it. Under socialism, where supposedly everyone is treated equally and the apartments are supposedly equal, you get the better apartment using influence, trading favors, bartering, etc.

For another example, when you need surgery, which surgeon do you get? Under capitalism, you pay more for the better surgeon. Under socialism, you get the better surgeon through influence, favors, barter, bribes, etc. The same goes for any service or product where nothing is exactly equal.

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

#489

Post by MrOwen » Fri, May 10, 2019, 2:12 AM UTC

camelite wrote: post #398

dTal wrote: post #18

This is gripping, insightful and beautifully written. I especially like how it leads with the request to go to the Mother of All Rallies, so that the reader gets to experience the same knee-jerk reaction as the parents. I like how that knee-jerk reaction is later proven wrong. It compellingly illustrates the importance of open-mindedness, and that "sunlight is the best medicine". Very thought provoking.

It's fiction imo

How did you arrive at this conclusion? At least for myself, no red flags or gross inconsistencies were readily apparent so I took it as truth.

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

#490

Post by renaudg » Fri, May 10, 2019, 2:29 AM UTC

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…

You have your own head in the sand about something else : most Europeans you spoke to were probably all too familiar with the kind of North American identity politics you were pushing onto them (what you describe as a "progressive-minded conversation"). Most of us (including progressives) find it alien, over the top, polarizing if not sometimes downright harmful and counterproductive. Our choice not to partake is a conscious and informed one.

You mention fascism being on the rise throughout Europe because of our supposedly poor understanding of these issues, but the intersectional flavor of progressivism you're advocating hasn't exactly demonstrated it could make society less divided (quite the opposite). In other words, I guess we're not quite prepared to get lectured about fascism by the continent that brought us Trump recently.

In fact, this article is a powerful cautionary tale against the backlash that comes with ostracizing young white males. And yes, I'm pretty sure most Europeans shook their head reading the piece of insanity below, thinking "only in America"

One morning during first period, a male friend of Sam’s mentioned a meme whose suggestive name was an inside joke between the two of them. Sam laughed. A girl at the table overheard their private conversation, misconstrued it as a sexual reference, and reported it as sexual harassment. Sam’s guidance counselor pulled him out of his next class and accused him of “breaking the law.” Before long, he was in the office of a male administrator who informed him that the exchange was “illegal,” hinted that the police were coming, and delivered him into the custody of the school’s resource officer. At the administrator’s instruction, that man ushered Sam into an empty room, handed him a blank sheet of paper, and instructed him to write a “statement of guilt.”

Thanks, but no thanks.