Potential Problems with the Left

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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby Windy » Sat Aug 19, 2017 4:06 pm

Crimson847 wrote:To be fair, as I understand it the argument with respect to Trump is that he only condemned white supremacists directly due to the massive political and media pressure on him to do so. Pressure that doesn't exist for the respondents in an anonymous survey. You could argue that left-wing politicians take certain stances (such as on ANTIFA) for the same alleged reason that Trump eventually condemned white supremacists, and I'm fine with that if it puts an end to the weak and pointless argument that you're criticizing. Arguing that survey respondents are doing the same thing is substantially further than your opponents have gone, however, so the "turnabout is fair play" approach doesn't justify it.


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In literally the same screenshot that Avi just linked, only 4% support white nationalists and white supremacy, even less than the percent that supports antifa. Furthermore, there's three times more people who disagree with whtie nationalism than disagree with antifa. Assuming (without evidence) that 100% of these people who agree are aligned with the political right, that still makes up a miniscule portion of the right overall. But according to TCS the right is the one thath as an extremism problem.

If you think I'm being unfair, it's only because your own standards are unfair. I'm not going to argue whether or not your standards actually are unfair, but even if they were, you can't fairly apply them.
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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby iMURDAu » Sat Aug 19, 2017 4:18 pm

Windy wrote:
Krashlia wrote:Be honest with me... How much time do you spend on CringeAnarchy? I get my impressions about the American left from watching more than a few errors occur, and from a few favorite "areas of the web" that I like to search and browse.

Do you think theres something to be said for the idea that, when it takes up much of your thinking and sight, you think thats all there is?


Half of my generalizations of the left come from watching TCS.

The left has set up this kind of logic that ensures that no one is allowed to condemn their own extremists. We're not allowed to criticize the extreme left if they're fighting Nazis. Antifa will always claim they're fighting against Nazis. Any group that opposes a leftist group will have some neo-nazis endorsing it. Doodle claims that it's because antifa has a good cause so their extremists are a fringe minority, while the nazis have a inherently bad cause so all of them are extremists. Gamergate's message was "ethics in journalism" but they're nazis because some neo-nazis support them. Trump has never explicitly endorsed white supremacy or nazis and has at multiple times denounced them but he's still a nazi because David Duke supports him. Even charlotteville's protestors were officially protesting against removing confederate statues rather than nazism.

Any group that's opposed to the left will inevitably have neo-nazis supporting them. This is all it takes for the left to label the group nazis, and no one is allowed to criticize the extreme left as long as there's nazis, so no one is allowed to denounce the extremists on the left. If it seems "obvious" to you that they're all nazis, well now you know how a lot of people feel about the left.


I wouldn't think there's a big enough sample size on this site to make half your generalizations.

I get that Republican candidates can't do much beyond denouncing white supremacists who endorse them. Gamergate couldn't physically separate from neo-nazi's due to the movement being internet based.

But when they're marching against the removal of Confederate statues and that's supposed to be the cause, at what point when the Nazi flag is all around you does a person:
Image
and stop marching alongside them? Might stop these folks from being labeled Nazi.
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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby Windy » Sat Aug 19, 2017 4:33 pm

iMURDAu wrote:I wouldn't think there's a big enough sample size on this site to make half your generalizations.

I get that Republican candidates can't do much beyond denouncing white supremacists who endorse them. Gamergate couldn't physically separate from neo-nazi's due to the movement being internet based.

But when they're marching against the removal of Confederate statues and that's supposed to be the cause, at what point when the Nazi flag is all around you does a person:
Spoiler: show
Image

and stop marching alongside them? Might stop these folks from being labeled Nazi.


I wasn't there. I can't confirm whether or not there really were nazis everywhere or if the media only focused on the small street that had a person with a nazi flag there.

In the video of the crash itself there were at least dozen people armed with bats rushing at the car. Should I assume there were antifa marching everywhere or were we just lucky enough to film the one street that had a dozen of them?
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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby Crimson847 » Sat Aug 19, 2017 7:15 pm

Windy wrote:
Crimson847 wrote:To be fair, as I understand it the argument with respect to Trump is that he only condemned white supremacists directly due to the massive political and media pressure on him to do so. Pressure that doesn't exist for the respondents in an anonymous survey. You could argue that left-wing politicians take certain stances (such as on ANTIFA) for the same alleged reason that Trump eventually condemned white supremacists, and I'm fine with that if it puts an end to the weak and pointless argument that you're criticizing. Arguing that survey respondents are doing the same thing is substantially further than your opponents have gone, however, so the "turnabout is fair play" approach doesn't justify it.


current year
still trusting polls


Image

Seriously though, it depends on the polls, notably how many of them have found a similar result, what the methodology is, and how large the margin of error is. I've already expressed my issues with this survey.

In literally the same screenshot that Avi just linked, only 4% support white nationalists and white supremacy, even less than the percent that supports antifa. Furthermore, there's three times more people who disagree with whtie nationalism than disagree with antifa. Assuming (without evidence) that 100% of these people who agree are aligned with the political right, that still makes up a miniscule portion of the right overall. But according to TCS the right is the one that has an extremism problem.


In (literally) the same post you quoted from, I expressed my dislike of the "Trump is a white supremacist/Nazi" line of argument and sympathized with your desire to end it. If I'm not cool with calling him one it'd be weird if I was trying to argue that most of the right supports white supremacy. I also contested whether the data avi cited was useful at all in determining the left's sympathy for extremism. Finally, while "TCS" may contend that the right has a worse problem with extremism than the left, I do not. I'm well aware that which side a person believes has fewer problems with extremism has a correlation of approximately +1.0 with the side they themselves identify with most, and this gives me great pause in making such a judgment myself.

If you think I'm being unfair, it's only because your own standards are unfair. I'm not going to argue whether or not your standards actually are unfair, but even if they were, you can't fairly apply them.


Why do you say that?
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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby BinaryStep » Sat Aug 19, 2017 9:05 pm

Windy wrote:I wasn't there. I can't confirm whether or not there really were nazis everywhere or if the media only focused on the small street that had a person with a nazi flag there.


i mean the rally was literally organized by neo-nazis and advertised with blatant nazi imagery so

Image

for those lucky enough not to know:

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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby sunglasses » Sat Aug 19, 2017 9:38 pm

Yeah, I'm not aware of who most of those people are beyond spenser and baked alaska.
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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sat Aug 19, 2017 10:00 pm

What the hell kind of Nazi names themself after a dessert?
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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby Windy » Sat Aug 19, 2017 10:13 pm

Yeah and the women's march had a sharia law advocate, a literal murderer, and someone that's been convicted of terrorism in Israel as some of their organizers. The woman's march is also supposedly the biggest protest ever. Should I just assume all anti-Trump people support these things?

You can't assume everyone is going to know who Richard Spencer is and there's not a swatsika anywhere.
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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby BinaryStep » Sat Aug 19, 2017 10:18 pm

Windy wrote:Yeah and the women's march had a sharia law advocate, a literal murderer, and someone that's been convicted of terrorism in Israel as some of their organizers. The woman's march is also supposedly the biggest protest ever. Should I just assume all anti-Trump people support these things?

You can't assume everyone is going to know who Richard Spencer is and there's not a swatsika anywhere.


The difference is, every key figure on the Charlottesville rally poster is a white supremacist. That's pretty telling.

Also, Nazi imagery isn't just swastikas.
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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby iMURDAu » Sat Aug 19, 2017 10:22 pm

Windy wrote:
iMURDAu wrote:I wouldn't think there's a big enough sample size on this site to make half your generalizations.

I get that Republican candidates can't do much beyond denouncing white supremacists who endorse them. Gamergate couldn't physically separate from neo-nazi's due to the movement being internet based.

But when they're marching against the removal of Confederate statues and that's supposed to be the cause, at what point when the Nazi flag is all around you does a person:
Spoiler: show
Image

and stop marching alongside them? Might stop these folks from being labeled Nazi.


I wasn't there. I can't confirm whether or not there really were nazis everywhere or if the media only focused on the small street that had a person with a nazi flag there.

In the video of the crash itself there were at least dozen people armed with bats rushing at the car. Should I assume there were antifa marching everywhere or were we just lucky enough to film the one street that had a dozen of them?


The same goes for people protesting the protest. Once they see weapons and the antifa imagery around them they should've had a 4th wall break moment and reconsidered lest they be grouped with them. I saw more than one Nazi flag in pictures from multiple media sites. I saw the bats you refer to also. Extremists are the problem, we all know that. Disassociating with extremists should be the goal but I've been shouting that at the clouds for 20+ years and look where it got us.
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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Sat Aug 19, 2017 10:23 pm

There were a lot more people than those ten shouting "Jew will not replace us!"
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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby NathanLoiselle » Sat Aug 19, 2017 10:29 pm

I'd like to point out, although the discussion has moved on, that as a leftist the forums here aren't really all that leftist.
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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby Windy » Sat Aug 19, 2017 11:08 pm

BinaryStep wrote:The difference is, every key figure on the Charlottesville rally poster is a white supremacist. That's pretty telling.


Their official twitter account has literally endorsed a convicted cop killer. Three of the four key figures have done it on their own accounts too. Also there's kind of a severity difference between having shitty opinions and inviting literal murderers and terrorists to be your role models.

Unless one of those people on that poster is actually a murderer/terrorist? I don't really know who anyone on that poster except spencer is.

There were a lot more people than those ten shouting "Jew will not replace us!"


It's a fringe minority you know.

I'd like to point out, although the discussion has moved on, that as a leftist the forums here aren't really all that leftist.


TCS is one of the least leftist forums that's still leftist.
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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby Learned Nand » Sun Aug 20, 2017 12:07 am

Again I am forced to ask what this thread is even about. I think we agree that people at at Nazi rally organized by Nazis are at least sympathetic to Nazis, but that this comprises a very small portion of the right in general. Similarly, support for violent extremists on the left is negligibly small. It is wrong in either case, therefore, to generalize about the views of either group based on those extreme members. Is there anything I'm missing that we actually disagree on, or is this thread being fueled by pure contrarianism?
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Re: Potential Problems with the Left

Postby NoodleFox » Sun Aug 20, 2017 12:42 am

aviel wrote:Again I am forced to ask what this thread is even about. I think we agree that people at at Nazi rally organized by Nazis are at least sympathetic to Nazis, but that this comprises a very small portion of the right in general. Similarly, support for violent extremists on the left is negligibly small. It is wrong in either case, therefore, to generalize about the views of either group based on those extreme members. Is there anything I'm missing that we actually disagree on, or is this thread being fueled by pure contrarianism?

Because people are endorsing or downplaying these extreme leftists and their actions. And those people are in high places.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2017/08/15/yes-were-allowed-to-also-talk-about-leftwing-violence-n2368972
Sorry, but if we are going to have a national conversation about ugly racial politics and violence, we cannot ignore half -- or at least a large portion -- of the mutually-fueling equation, as Ben Shapiro lays out:

"On the one side, a racist, identity-politics Left dedicated to the proposition that white people are innate beneficiaries of privilege and therefore must be excised from political power; on the other side, a reactionary, racist, identity-politics alt-right dedicated to the proposition that white people are innate victims of the social-justice class and therefore must regain political power through race-group solidarity…[these factions] are largely growing in opposition to one another. In fact, the growth of each side reinforces the growth of the other: The mainstream Left, convinced that the enemies of social-justice warriors are all alt-right Nazis, winks and nods at left-wing violence; the right, convinced that its SJW enemies are focused on racial polarization, embraces the alt-right as a form of resistance."

A national discussion about political violence must include the obviously relevant fascistic thuggery of Antifa Leftists. Noting that Charlottesville police said the clashes were engaged by 'mutual combatants' does not diminish the evil of white supremacy or neo-Nazism. At all. It states a fact about the nature of the violent upheaval on the ground. President Trump's error over the weekend was failing to call out and reject specific hate groups by name; it was not accurately condemning grave criminality on both sides of the armed conflict (in this case, the immorality of one side's aggression dwarfed the other's, due to the heinous, lethal car attack). Antifa's brutality and violence hasn't merely been limited to the horrible spectacle in Virginia. They've assaulted Trump supporters at political events, they've rioted to prevent others' exercise of free speech rights, and they've used threats and intimidation to cancel civic events in which Republicans planned to participate. If we are serious about putting a stop to escalating political violence in America, acknowledging the far-Left's significant contribution to the problem is not "whataboutism." It's aboutism.


https://www.weaselzippers.us/353819-because-cnn-has-to-cnn-antifa-is-trying-to-achieve-peace-through-violence/

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Edit: added quotations to separate Shapiro's quote.
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