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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

#241

Post by refurb »

catgary wrote: post #211
tachyonbeam wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Trudeau used the term old stock too. Was that a dog whistle as well? Do we have a racist PM right now?

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

#242

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

giantandroids wrote: post #35

Had first hand experience of this. I maintain an opensource project which is popular on NPM. An issue was raised in our github about we should have a statement of support for BLM in our readme. I said no as politely and diplomatically as possible. I would rather the project remains non-political, they said that made me complicit. The thing is I am from Europe. I think BLM is a very worthy policial movement, as do I a…

> I also think there are injustices in palestine and the with Uyghurs etc, but we are going to end up with most of our Readme filed with political statements at that rate.

I brought this same point up in a discussion once, but the response was that BLM is the number-one pressing sociopolitical issue in the world today, and it was offensive that I would even suggest that other examples of oppression in the world are comparable to the greater oppression that African-Americans face.

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

#243

Post by nverno »

wolverine876 wrote: post #219
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.

> 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, power…

I think you're implying the rich are powerful, which seems rather obvious since being rich is usually the result of being successful in some fashion.

I took a quick look into the African American stats you mention from https://www.statista.com/chart/18905/us-congress-by-race-eth.... It appears ~14% of the house is African American - the same as the reported percentage of the population. In other words exactly what you'd expect if the house was draw at random from the population.

In the senate, it looks like only ~3-4% is currently African American. The senate of course is composed of two senators from each state, thus over representing the sparsly populated states that have very little ethnic diversity (most of the country by area), so a more thorough analysis would be necessary to argue something about skin color having an effect/how much of an effect on senate races.

At a glance, it doesn't look too different from what I would expect given the assumption skin color/race aren't important (my experience everywhere I've lived in the USA). But, the US varies so greatly between regions it may as well be a few countries mashed together in many respects. My hunch is that the house/senate will continue to become more ethnically diverse given the current climate - being from a minority group seems more beneficial, if anything, politically.

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

#244

Post by anticodon »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #225
archagon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, what US troll factories? I have never heard of this, and I can’t find any news articles about them. Sounds dubious.

I think anticodon is viewing posts critical of Russia as manufactured rather than organic. "There can't be enough people out there who actually think this to post all this stuff, so it must be a troll factory!" But I think that plenty of people do in fact view Russia negatively, and they speak their mind. (But then anticodon could think that the reason that they all think negative things about Russia is because of tr…

US doesn't openly acknowledge existence of troll factories, but there're several institutions in the US created at least in the last ten years to "fight Russia presence on the Internet". They're associated with Pentagon and CIA. What would they do with all their huge budgets?

Also, until 2 years ago, there were tons of identical comments posted under different nicknames on different social networks.

E.g. under different unrelated videos on YouTube about new Russian ship or airplane, you'd see identical comments saying something: "It's shit, government should stop wasting money to build inferior technology and buy it from the West and money are better spent on retired people".

I've even made tons of screenshots as evidence, with word for word identical comments under different videos from different nicknames. Sometimes there were even duplicates from different nicknames under the same video or article.

Of course, technology became more sophisticated since then.

And I'm not even starting about "legitimate" US propaganda translated non-stop by media outlets like Radio Freedom, and tons of other medias that operate on the territory of Russia, are funded from US budget (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) and the point of their existence is the same: to translate nonsense about Russia in Russian non-stop. E.g. gather all the crimes and translate them all day non-stop causing a depression in Russian listeners and viewers that nothing good happens in Russia, that it's all just a "Putin's GULAG".

You go on the street and see new roads, new houses, expensive cars, happy people, no crime, clean streets. You open Radio Freedom or any other US-funded website or magazine, and it's all depression, sadness, violent crime...

It's really annoying and I even think that people even have some kind of immunity now against this kind of US propaganda because we're bombarded with it non-stop since 1991.

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

#245

Post by rzmnzm »

anticodon wrote: post #177
odiroot wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For some of us from excolonies, this is starting to feel like neocolonialism. Then imagine how it feels for people in countries that were never a western colony -- quite the opposite, under Russia's shoe. It's like, if some aliens from another descended upon us and forced their morals.

Unlike Western colonialism, Russia/USSR developed the new territories. Look at Central Asia, for example. There were no cities, almost no population, no houses for the most part (other than some primitive clay huts), no education, no medical care, sometimes not even written language. Definitely no any kind of industry. USSR invested billions to build infrastructure, schools, factories, power plants, hospitals, irriga…

These are mostly rehashed Soviet propaganda talking points. The Baltics cannot be compared to Central Asian republics, and Soviet occupation was greatly detrimental to the Baltic nations, not to mention unwanted. Much more economic wealth was taken by the Soviet Union than ever received. The Baltics were more than capable of building hospitals, schools, etc and had fine examples of all of these. Many atrocities were committed in the Baltic nations by the Soviet Union (as indeed many atrocities occurred in all parts of the Soviet Union) Indeed, today the 14th of June is the memorial day for the mass deportations from Latvia to the Soviet Union https://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/policy/society-integration/history...

The USSR was quite literally an evil empire which rightfully belongs in the trash bin of history

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

#246

Post by rzmnzm »

rzmnzm wrote: post #245
anticodon wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike Western colonialism, Russia/USSR developed the new territories. Look at Central Asia, for example. There were no cities, almost no population, no houses for the most part (other than some primitive clay huts), no education, no medical care, sometimes not even written language. Definitely no any kind of industry. USSR invested billions to build infrastructure, schools, factories, power plants, hospitals, irriga…

These are mostly rehashed Soviet propaganda talking points. The Baltics cannot be compared to Central Asian republics, and Soviet occupation was greatly detrimental to the Baltic nations, not to mention unwanted. Much more economic wealth was taken by the Soviet Union than ever received. The Baltics were more than capable of building hospitals, schools, etc and had fine examples of all of these. Many atrocities were…

Also it is not illegal to speak Russian, how ridiculous. Please stop watching whatever garbage TV propaganda you are doing.

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

#247

Post by eli_gottlieb »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #34
dominotw wrote: post #23

In India we had black lives matter movement where they panned the use of 'fair and lovely' facecream.

Here in Canada we've had BLM protests, "defund the police" and "ACAB". I don't really understand. As far as I'm concerned Canada is about as close to a utopia as you can get on this planet. We have one of the lowest crime rates in the world. I'm pretty sure if we "defunded the police", things would only get worse. AFAIK, the "defund the police" chant was supposed to be in response to American police forces buying arm…

>I also get the general impression that whoever came up with "defund the police" has anarchist inclinations. It's basically doublespeak. They keep saying that "defund the police" only means "reform the police", but what they actually want is to dismantle the police, which is exactly what "defund the police" sounds like.

In America, we get subjected to a bunch of these people saying loud and clear, "Yes, we really do mean abolish the police." And yes, a large number of them have anarchist inclinations.

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

#248

Post by desperate »

durnygbur wrote: post #133

Even my parents in their 60s living their entire lifes in now post-Communist country have opinion about Trump's (non) reelection. They're not even actively participating in social media - their smartphones are sucking in toxic content and public TV is broadcasting "news from the greatest ally country". It's so sad watching them bathing in this cesspool, it's like watching your daugther in GirlsDoPorn. Americans you'v…

My bad, I'll call it off right now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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

#249

Post by jfengel »

giantandroids wrote: post #35

Had first hand experience of this. I maintain an opensource project which is popular on NPM. An issue was raised in our github about we should have a statement of support for BLM in our readme. I said no as politely and diplomatically as possible. I would rather the project remains non-political, they said that made me complicit. The thing is I am from Europe. I think BLM is a very worthy policial movement, as do I a…

While I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, there have been demonstrated instances where that behavior comes from trolls trying to stir up trouble and cast doubts on the merits of social movements. BLM even has a web site where you can report it:

https://blacklivesmatter.com/help-us-fight-disinformation/

I have no idea if that's the case here. I've also known over-zealous supporters of movements to do the same thing.

I'd just caution you to be skeptical about apparent misbehavior. Our existing animosities are being amplified, sometimes for lulz and sometimes for political gain. This person was, undoubtedly, a jerk, but exactly what kind of jerk may not be quite so clear as it might seem.

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

#250

Post by Dma54rhs »

wolverine876 wrote: post #217
Dma54rhs wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. D…

Looks like you have been influenced by disinformation, absolutely not true - https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/joe-biden-2006-vote-...
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