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Comment by fiblye | Hacker News Reader

I think, in a way, the media is kind of empowering the "alt-right" by constantly referring to them as the "alt-right". It presents it as the little guy vs The Man, and I think that makes it much more palatable than "far right."

Influential people who think the government is intentionally making gay frogs, that media needs to be under strict control, that climate change is a Chinese hoax, and that everything is us vs (((Them))) just got a candidate that represents their views into the White House. There's nothing alt about it. It's just straight up mainstream now. Referring to it as such takes away from the rebel factor and reveals that this is, in fact, just the new system, as bad as the old one.

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I absolutely hate it as a term. It's an exercise in rebranding of an ideology and it's a pretty clever one as well. Alternative (alt) implies that they're somehow ideologically different from the rest of the "right". They aren't, they're as you say just further right.

Also alt with the lower case a carries with it some techy payload as well which together with people like Thiel makes it look like its some expression of ideas about the future when it's mostly about nostalgia for the past.

I can't believe how easily this has been swallowed by everyone particularly the media.

It's a little odd, since 99% of the time it's really just a euphemism for a particular kind of neo-nazi.

Really? The alt-right side don't support immigration and like their own culture - which is a very common thing across the world, particularly amongst the working class. neo nazis specifically advocate violence.

I generally vote for the Labour party, but that doesn't mean I and my fellow Labour voters (Corbyn aside) support Mao/Chavez/PolPot-style murdering of our enemies.

this is how the Alt-Right frames itself, and it's pretty ingenious. People discuss protection of culture, and completely step over the part about "their own culture".

The Alt Right ideology relies on the principle that White culture is the "true" culture of the nation, and that other contributions simply do not count. They cast an illegitimacy to the history of minorities in the US.

The debate about protecting the culture is irrelevant because they do not want to protect the nation's culture. They want to protect White culture.

It's the same as the (generally left) folk feel fine about when preserving areas from other cultures.

Want to preserve Oakland or the Mission as is? That's fine.

Don't like seeing women forced to walk around in burkas and girls having their genitals cut (I live in London where these re both issues)? That's racist. Obviously Islam isn't a race, and this makes no sense, but it's something people still claim.

Either preserving existing cultures is OK or it isn't.

I'm sure genital mutilation is already prohibited under British law. The problem with the burkas is that is it of course difficult to determine or prove that they are not worn voluntarily. I know some girls from liberal (Christian/Atheist) families who converted to Islam who wear a Niqab. I can guarantee you that they are not "forced" to do this.

FGM is illegal, but there has been zero prosecutions, and estimated a few thousand girls mutilated since the laws were passed.

One of the reasons FGM goes on in the UK is precisely that people don't want to be seen as judging a culture, even for something which is statistically more likely to happen in a culture: ie, the problem could be addressed with medical inspections in schools but this won't happen for fear of being called Islamophobic (oddly enough I learnt most of this from reading Bridget Christie's book, and she's pretty damn left). A similar situation occurred in the systemic rape cases in Rotherham.

And yes, of course people can voluntarily submit to something, it doesn't change that others are forced.

So I've checked and I agree that the numbers of mutilations that apparently happen in the UK is quite shocking. But I don't see how medical inspections in schools are the answer to be honest.

Medical inspection would provide clear indication to parents that the government is actually checking for FGM and prosecuting accordingly.

First of all, mixing Chavez in with Mao and Pol Pot is ridiculous. Pol Pot is responsible for killing 1.6 million people. He ran labor camps, etc. Please name how many people were killed on purpose on orders of Chavez. Please name a labor camp.

I'm not even sure if Mao should be directly compared to Pol Pot. Probably not.

Second, the Labour party has been social democratic for at least 30 years. It cannot be compared to communist parties at all.

Chavez tortured most of his opponents. No killing fields, or year 0, but advocating and using violence for political purposes is clearly a connection. Obviously, Momentum aside, Labour is against such ideas, that was precisely my point.

Edit: you edited your post to add:

> "Pol Pot is responsible for killing 1.6 million people. He ran labor camps, etc. Please name how many people were killed on purpose on orders of Chavez. Please name a labor camp."

...after I added multiple sources showing Chavez using torture and other forms violence. Nobody claims Chavez was as violent as the others - in fact, I specifically claimed the opposite in my reply before you edited your post. Merely that he used violence including torture.

Please post sources for your claims.

edit: I did not edit my post after you provided any sources! From the start it contained "Pol Pot is responsible for killing 1.6 million people. He ran labor camps, etc. Please name how many people were killed on purpose on orders of Chavez. Please name a labor camp."

http://gb.lmgtfy.com/?q=chavez+torture

That's not a source, that's a Google search. In fact even for your search no results come up (for me) that suggest what you claim. And I'm not even talking about the reputation of potential sources.

I have actually made an effort and checked, for example Amnesty International for the time that Chavez was in power. I don't find evidence that he tortured most of his opponents, sorry.

Yes, it is a Google search. That is a stellar observation. Using a search engine would have been less characters than asking me. For example, you could click:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Venezuela#2000...

and read up this from Amnesty https://web.archive.org/web/20070922230635/http://web.amnest... :

> The security forces have reportedly used excessive force, and detained large numbers of opposition supporters, during nationwide street protests against the government of President Hugo Chavez. At least nine people have died and scores of others have been injured, including a number of police officers. Amnesty International is concerned that there may be further politically motivated violence, and disproportionate police response.

or http://www.weeklystandard.com/horror-in-venezuela/article/34... (I haven't heard of Weekly Standard before though)

> At the hospital he was detained by the DISIP, Chavez's secret police, and taken to their headquarters for questioning.

> During his interrogation, fingernails in his left hand were torn out. After being further tortured and injected with drugs, the secret police took him into the bowels of the building and placed him in a cell.

Or this from the BBC (I have heard of these):

> Venezuela troops 'used torture'

> Troops are accused of beating and kicking detainees Venezuelan ombudsman German Mundarain has said security forces tortured some protesters who were detained during recent anti-government demonstrations.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3571383.stm

Are you seriously claiming Chavez isn't a well known human rights abuser or are you debating what constitututes 'most' or 'an opponent' like whether that changes my point that Chavez used violence just as Mao and Pol Pot did and that most normal humans think that's a bad thing?

For this thread I'm focusing on the claim that "Chavez tortured most of his opponents" and that he is supposedly comparable to Pot Pol (again a guy probably killed 1.6 human beings). These claims are ridiculous.

Reports about occasional police violence (can even happen in the US) and single cases of torture (not from a reputable source) are not enough for such a broad claim.

Again: I'm simply grouping well known violent leaders, I am not comparing the scale of their violence. Pol Pot is also very different from Mao: again, that doesn't change the point about far-left leaders using violence existing or that most mainstream left folk wouldn't support this.

Are you saying that Chavez isn't a torturer or that the BBC isn't a reliable source? If so I think I'll end this conversation here.

the politically correct term for a racist

A white racist.

The Black Panthers are also racist, but I would not call them alt-right or neo-nazis.

alternative is pretty much a synonym of neo

I was thinking about this earlier. It's so silly. Neo Conservative was already taken so lets make up a new term to label people with. "I know, how about alt-right..."

Alt-right people came up with the name for themselves, it wasn't a term others created to label them.

Either way it's a navel-gazing orwellism.

The alternative is neo-neoconservative, like post-postmodernism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-postmodernism)

You're a programmer, right?

NewNewClass ...

> ... that media needs to be under strict control ...

Is that really an alt-right position? I lost interest in politics a long time ago, but the last time I heard that sentiment was from the left - calling for the Fairness Doctrine to be brought back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine

I don't think so. If anything the alt-right probably believes that the media is already under extremely strict control by the left. The elections made it very clear that the majority of the main stream media is in line with Hillary/the Liberals/the regressive Left. Almost every media technology company is also perceived to be in line with that pro-liberal media bloc (See: Twitter's almost exclusive banning of right-wing rule-breakers, Facebook's pro-Liberal news curation, Google's perceived tailouring of Hillary search results).

The alt-right probably wants free speech above all, to the point where hate speech is permitted in much the same way that safe spaces are today.

the media is kind of empowering the "alt-right" by constantly referring to them as the "alt-right". It presents it as the little guy vs The Man, and I think that makes it much more palatable than "far right."

Great observation and you hint at a simple solution - call them by their conventional moniker: the far-right. There's nothing new about their ideologies and "the far-right" elicit a different response from people than the newer and unfamiliar "alt-right".

Maybe, and in some cases you're likely right. In others, might it not be people who consider themselves right (and not extreme) but no longer feel the Republicans (the traditional right) truly represent them?

As an aside, there are likely plenty of people on the left that feel similarly.

might it not be people who consider themselves right (and not extreme) but no longer feel the Republicans (the traditional right) truly represent them?

The far-left/left/center-left etc and right side counterparts are defined by policy and ideology, so whether they feel the GOP was in touch doesn't really make a difference.

You wouldn't call the Republicans "right" if they started handing out generous welfare packages to the masses.

> You wouldn't call the Republicans "right" if they started handing out generous welfare packages to the masses.

Like their pre-Obama universal healthcare proposals? The one dimensional political spectrum, with n-right vs n-left, doesn't work at all.

> The one dimensional political spectrum, with n-right vs n-left, doesn't work at all.

It's not a good way of accurately gauging the political spectrum but I'm not sure I'd say it doesn't work at all. A better method would be to add two more axes so you have x, y and z which would allow you to measure social policy (services, infrastructure), fiscal policy (an increase or decrease in state assets, taxation) and international relations (trade, alliances). The end result would be a kind of tetrahedron that represents the shape of a party's policy (that's not the point of it - it's just an interesting feature of having a three dimensional gauge).

> It's not a good way of accurately gauging the political spectrum but I'm not sure I'd say it doesn't work at all.

As it fails in such a modest charge, I'm comfortable saying that it doesn't work. The only variable that it would come close to measuring is individual freedom vs collective comfort. A multidimensional representation would do a better job, but it would quickly become so complex that it would be useless - as most people hold contradictory ideas.

That is why far-right does not accurately describe alt-right, think of it as a second dimension on the traditional spectrum.

> think of it as a second dimension on the traditional spectrum

Maybe I'm missing something but in this thread I haven't seen anything that shows how the alt-right is fundamentally different to, despite the flawed labeling system, what is standard fare for the far-right. What sits in this second dimension, and does the rule apply to the left? Is it consistent?

I'm certainly no expert on the matter, but I'd doubt anyone who said they were. The first thing that comes to mind is that the alt-right is nationalistic and has no problem with some form of collectivism. The far-right, on the other hand, is much closer to the min part of minarchism.

The alt-left, if it is presently a thing, is even less defined than the alt-right. But in the interest of maintaining symmetry, I'd say that it would have a progressive agenda by way of individualist means. Emergence?

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