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Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

economist.com

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Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#211

Post by catgary »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #208
jacquesm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're right. And it's not just first nations people. Being a person-of-color in Canada is definitely no picnic as soon as you get out of the larger towns. I've seen quite a bit of this first hand and up close while living there. Consider that your viewport is small enough that the rougher parts of Canadian life for minorities are invisible to you.

I believe you, and I would rather live in a larger town myself. However, I think that on this front, Canada compares very well to the US, France, the UK, Brazil, China, and Japan (known for its xenophobic culture), to name a few places. No place is perfect, but we have it better here than a lot of other places, on many fronts.

I just want to remind you that a family of four muslims was run over by a bigot in London, Ontario in the last week. And that in 2015, Harper and the CPC traded in a dog whistle for a bullhorn when he talked about “old-stock Canadians” and proposed a “barbaric cultural practices hotline” - and that party has just spent 10+ years leading the country!

Canada has some major problems with racism, and a lot of news media (particularly in the PostMedia family) is fanning those flames.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#212

Post by jacquesm »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #208
jacquesm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're right. And it's not just first nations people. Being a person-of-color in Canada is definitely no picnic as soon as you get out of the larger towns. I've seen quite a bit of this first hand and up close while living there. Consider that your viewport is small enough that the rougher parts of Canadian life for minorities are invisible to you.

I believe you, and I would rather live in a larger town myself. However, I think that on this front, Canada compares very well to the US, France, the UK, Brazil, China, and Japan (known for its xenophobic culture), to name a few places. No place is perfect, but we have it better here than a lot of other places, on many fronts.

But that's now how you improve, by comparing yourself to the worst the world has to offer. You make it seem like Canada is doing well, it isn't.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#213

Post by mensetmanusman »

dasb wrote: post #43

It's funny when radical progressivists in my country try to translate the "white male" cliché into our local context, because white (as in caucasian white) people are are less than 5% of our population.

My sister in law just immigrated from South Africa. Some of her high school classmates referred to themselves as African American…

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#214

Post by mensetmanusman »

ehnto wrote: post #28
buildingmateri wrote: post #13

Living in an expat destination country currently as an American, I regularly get crap from friends, Australian, British, South African, about the perceived madness of American political culture that's now popping up in their work lives and home countries. Slightly reminiscent of living abroad during Bush-Iraq years as an American where you become a target of blame.

Australians knew more about American politics day to day during Trumps presidency than we did our own politics. It was surreal.

As an American, I am sorry. It is sad that our wealth is used to export such media and indoctrination.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#215

Post by alentist »

stubish wrote: post #100
mandis wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now why is this comment being downvoted. The last few nooks of the internet are being invaded by thought police.

Unsubstantiated claim, followed by a seemingly unrelated segue into US political commentary.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23110664

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#216

Post by trophycase »

pjc50 wrote: post #103
trophycase wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lmao the "discrimination is about power" is so played out and is used as a tool to justify "reverse" racism (which is just racism). What does a police officer being more afraid during a traffic stop of black people have to do with institutional power? What does people walking home at night and crossing the road when "certain" people are on their side have to do with institutional power? Nothing. This whole "racism =…

> What does a police officer being more afraid during a traffic stop of black people have to do with institutional power? The police officer is institutional power. The organization which issues him a gun is institutional power. The prosecutor who will decline to prosecute him when he murders a black man is institutional power.

Obviously, but the officer being more scared of a black person has nothing to do with institutional power, that's my point. I can be a penniless, poor homeless person and still be a racist piece of shit. I don't require power for that.

In my example, the fact that the person is a police officer has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they are also discriminating. Certainly issues arise when the two intersect (having institutional power and discriminating) but don't conflate the two as the same.

Also this whole argument rests on the fact that power is some binary thing which isn't true at all. Power imbalances exist in every facet of life and sometimes, traditionally "oppressed" classes of people have more power than "oppressor classes" in some situation or another.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#217

Post by wolverine876 »

Dma54rhs wrote: post #93
wolverine876 wrote: post #72

America provides the means by which political culture flows, such as via Twitter and Facebook, but remember that a significant portion (of unknown size to me) of American social media rhetoric is imported . Where did trolling, nationalism, troll farms, hate speech, nihilism, mass-scale disinformation - where did each of those originate? I'm not implying an answer, by the way. I don't know; is there any research? My p…

20 years ago American left wingers had similar ideas than your right does right now, what are you trying to say? Do people think the infamous Russians invented the right wing rhetoric? That is next level history washing and quite frankly misinformation.

20 years ago the American left (depending on how far 'left' you mean) was advocating action against climate change, for universal health care, for abortion rights, against tax cuts for the wealthy, for more investment in public education, etc. They certainly did not advocate against immigrants, for nationalism or ethnic nationalism, hate speech, etc.

But I'm presenting the facts for your claims, when you should be. Do your other claims have some basis?

Also, I didn't say anything about the Russians, though they do operate troll farms and try to influence social media.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#218

Post by wolverine876 »

acituan wrote: post #95
wolverine876 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound difficult to me. It has nothing to do with whiteness and maleness; it's about political power. If there is a group that is a dominant political power, it's the same thing. That's why issues of 'reverse racism' are a different problem: Discrimination is about power, not race. If American Buddhists are discriminatory against Baptists, it's obnoxious but not an issue of oppression or much threat to Bapt…

> If there is a group that is a dominant political power, it's the same thing The problem is to assume that dominant political actors cohere to constitute a group, a conspiratorial evil one at that. Hypotheses of evil conspirators played out so many times throughout history and it never ended well. We all have a not-so-high-precision heuristic of detecting agency, therefore we sometimes ascribe agency where there is…

That's a conceptual question but doesn't call into question the practical reality: People clearly have some identity as a group, and act against other perceived groups. In the last few years it's gone from subtle to brazenly, proudly advocated, as evidenced by ethnic nationalism. Arguably, much of the worst in human history was born from discrimination against a group: Armenians, Tutsis, Jews, African-Americans, Muslims in Bosnia, etc. etc. etc.

But to the concept, which we can learn something from: How do you reconcile what you say with the fact that people do have group identities - not as their complete identity, but part of it - and act as a group and treat others as members of groups? They clearly and explicitly do: People will openly discriminate against people based on skin color, sexual orientation, etc. As I said, ethnic nationalism has exploded, worldwide.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#219

Post by wolverine876 »

nverno wrote: post #127
wolverine876 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound difficult to me. It has nothing to do with whiteness and maleness; it's about political power. If there is a group that is a dominant political power, it's the same thing. That's why issues of 'reverse racism' are a different problem: Discrimination is about power, not race. If American Buddhists are discriminatory against Baptists, it's obnoxious but not an issue of oppression or much threat to Bapt…

If it was just about political power it wouldn't make much sense given we've had a darker skinned person as president half this century (slight exaggeration), not to mention the current vice president, etc. etc.

> If it was just about political power it wouldn't make much sense given we've had a darker skinned person as president half this century (slight exaggeration), not to mention the current vice president, etc. etc.

The distribution of power isn't binary, all or nothing. African-Americans have gained some power, but if you look at photos of Congress, the courts, the executive branch, governors, Fortune 1000 CEOs, powerful people in Silicon Valley, etc., it will be apparent who has most of the power.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#220

Post by wolverine876 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #191
nverno wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was just about political power it wouldn't make much sense given we've had a darker skinned person as president half this century (slight exaggeration), not to mention the current vice president, etc. etc.

In the western world I’d say it’s more about economic power, or the power behind the politicians. The 1% and large corporations are the real power, not whoever happens to be in office this week.

The overwhelming majority of politicians, especially in higher offices, are white males.
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