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The Data of Hate

nytimes.com

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Re: The Data of Hate

#31

Post by incision »

The maps alone [1] seems to sum up so much of my experience with prejudice over the years. I grew up in and around and still live near DC which is near/at the bottom of the scale here.

First, it wasn't until I found my way onto the Internet regularly and into online games in particular in the second half of the 90s that I witnessed hate for Jews outside of history lessons. Suddenly, mixing in real-time with a not terribly diverse crowd from all the country the very word 'Jew' was an insult and heard regularly.

Next, in the early 2000s as my career got underway I ended up working with the people who vendors would fly in from cheaper parts of the country.

At the time, the staff in our group was better than half black with middle management comprised of a black man, hispanic man and an orthodox Jew. We had several people come who were particularly about who they were willing to take direction from and at least one who was sent packing mid-project for his very strong opinions on ethnicity.

Finally, as we move through tourist season in DC I've already had my summer dose of tourists talking about how 'wasting money educating negros is killing the country' and Obama's birth certificate.

I guess I should be very glad to have been born into such a melting pot.

1: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/13/sunday-review/...

Re: The Data of Hate

#32

Post by henrymercer »

sethsd wrote: post #26
henrymercer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why do some people feel this way?...And I can honestly offer the following answer: I have no idea." Do you actually not know? Or are you asking rhetorically? The reasons seem pretty obvious to me, not sure why they would be hard to figure out.

i meant that i don't know what the answer is. because the obvious answers that sound really good -- diversity, education, economic development -- may not work.

IMO, the Stromfront-type writings consist of about 30% legitimate grievance and perhaps 70% crackpottery, all portrayed in a grossly simplified and vulgar way. Part of the fuel for the crackpottery, is that the media/NYTimes in general ignore or downplay the legitimate grievances. Once you stop believing the NYTimes, well, what do you believe? You can believe anything a random site on the internet says. So one obvious answer, which you left out, is to actually address the legitimate grievances.

The other obvious answer is censorship. Why don't we have a Stormfront TV channel? Because such a channel could never get a cable license, and if it did, it would get sued out of existence. Surely some lawsuit can be conjured up to shut down Stormfront, and make it impossible for other web hosts to host such sites?

So either address the grievances and make peace or crush them underfoot and leave no doubt - those are always the two traditional ways to deal with hateful dissenters.

Re: The Data of Hate

#33

Post by Houshalter »

blendergasket wrote: post #4

I find it really interesting that at a micro level on forums like this there is the same goodness and kindness to one another. People doing each other favors, people encouraging one another, etc. I mean, I guess it makes sense. People are essentially the same no matter what weird, dark beliefs they hold, but it just always boggles my mind that, out of some fundamental goodness and bond with their fellow human, someon…

For tens of thousands of years we lived as tribes of hunter and gatherers. We are biologically programmed to form groups and hate other groups that are perceived as an enemy to our group. Evolutionary psychology is complicated and speculative, but it's quite clear we have evolved an ability to form strong feelings of hate towards other groups.

I like this quote from HPMOR:

>Because the way people are built,... the way people are built to feel inside -...is that they hurt when they see their friends hurting. Someone inside their circle of concern, a member of their own tribe. That feeling has an off-switch, an off-switch labeled 'enemy' or 'foreigner' or sometimes just 'stranger'. That's how people are, if they don't learn otherwise...

>You grew up in a post-World-War-Two society where 'I vas only followink orders' is something everyone knows the bad guys said. In the fifteenth century they would've called it honourable fealty... Do you think you're, you're just genetically better than everyone who lived back then? Like if you'd been transported back to fifteenth-century London as a baby, you'd realize all on your own that burning cats was wrong, witch-burning was wrong, slavery was wrong, that every sentient being ought to be in your circle of concern?

Re: The Data of Hate

#34

Post by astrodust »

hawkharris wrote: post #11

Hate speech can be a good thing. When someone verbalizes hatred, he or she gives us a chance to push back and question underlying prejudices. This is always better than a heckler's veto of racist or sexist ideas. Drowning out the hurtful speech doesn't address the root causes of ignorance, fear and anger.

Don't forget that organizations like Stormfront give people purpose, something people often struggle to find in places like Montana.

We all want to be part of something bigger. Some turn to open source, contribute to the community. Others build wild conspiracy theories and focus their energies in that.

Re: The Data of Hate

#35

Post by jqm »

I think the eventual solution to racism will be love.

OK, maybe not love, but at least lust. We tend to take a very narrow time view of a few hundred years. However I can't but imagine in the US in two or three hundred years it will become increasingly harder to tell races apart.

Look at countries like Brazil. Look at the amount of interracial marriage going on right now in the US as opposed to 50 years ago. That I suspect is the future and I don't know how racism survives it.

Re: The Data of Hate

#36

Post by lmz »

jqm wrote: post #35

I think the eventual solution to racism will be love. OK, maybe not love, but at least lust. We tend to take a very narrow time view of a few hundred years. However I can't but imagine in the US in two or three hundred years it will become increasingly harder to tell races apart. Look at countries like Brazil. Look at the amount of interracial marriage going on right now in the US as opposed to 50 years ago. That I s…

> However I can't but imagine in the US in two or three hundred years it will become increasingly harder to tell races apart.

So instead of various diverse races you prefer a single mass of people with no distinct race?

Re: The Data of Hate

#37

Post by hiddentao »

bhaumik wrote: post #19

Discussion around this article: https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t1051922/ Germany's win today: https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t1052081/ "Yes. I like Argentina also because they're mostly white, and they sheltered the heroes of our race after the Zionist take-over of Europe. But I was for Germany all the way. I loved how they utterly crushed Brazil in their own house. I don't like that they have to have an African…

And in looking through the discussion around this article (see link in parent) they seem to view separation of ethnicities (into homogenous countries) as the solution to their problems.

Re: The Data of Hate

#38

Post by blendergasket »

cpa wrote: post #15
hawkharris wrote: post #11

Hate speech can be a good thing. When someone verbalizes hatred, he or she gives us a chance to push back and question underlying prejudices. This is always better than a heckler's veto of racist or sexist ideas. Drowning out the hurtful speech doesn't address the root causes of ignorance, fear and anger.

Although I think you're right, that is definitely not what's happening on Stormfront. There's nobody "pushing back", just racist people talking together.

Yeah, I agree with this. On the internet it's so easy to get sucked into an echo chamber and completely cloister oneself in some belief system or another. Then every other perspective is the foolish mainstream media who are only there to feed the sheeple or some agenda of the enemy. I think these echo chambers breed/cater to a sort of messianic paranoia.

Re: The Data of Hate

#39

Post by blendergasket »

hiddentao wrote: post #37
bhaumik wrote: post #19

Discussion around this article: https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t1051922/ Germany's win today: https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t1052081/ "Yes. I like Argentina also because they're mostly white, and they sheltered the heroes of our race after the Zionist take-over of Europe. But I was for Germany all the way. I loved how they utterly crushed Brazil in their own house. I don't like that they have to have an African…

And in looking through the discussion around this article (see link in parent) they seem to view separation of ethnicities (into homogenous countries) as the solution to their problems.

Yeah. That's interesting. I guess their ancestors shouldn't've formed empires. I imagine it'd be sort of hard to keep a racially separated empire.

Re: The Data of Hate

#40

Post by michaelochurch »

henrymercer wrote: post #32
sethsd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i meant that i don't know what the answer is. because the obvious answers that sound really good -- diversity, education, economic development -- may not work.

IMO, the Stromfront-type writings consist of about 30% legitimate grievance and perhaps 70% crackpottery, all portrayed in a grossly simplified and vulgar way. Part of the fuel for the crackpottery, is that the media/NYTimes in general ignore or downplay the legitimate grievances. Once you stop believing the NYTimes, well, what do you believe? You can believe anything a random site on the internet says. So one obviou…

30% legitimate grievance

Legitimate grievance? How is blaming the world's problems on "the Jews" (as if they all operated as one) anything remotely resembling legitimate grievance?

Poor, rural white Americans are getting a raw deal (thanks, in large part, to right-wing politicians they were misled into electing) but that's because poor, rural people everywhere are getting a bad deal these days. "Whites are an oppressed group" is complete idiocy and an indefensible position.

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