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Comment by DuskStar | Hacker News Reader

There are Leftist movements in the US that are arguably just as violent as those on the alt-Right. What's the chance that these policies apply to both sides equally? Given the history, I'd say not much. And I don't think that's a good thing.

EDIT: Unless someone is saying that AntiFa ISN'T violent?

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The recent controversies at Evergreen College provide an illustrative example. Videos of student protestors bullying professors, ala Maoist Cultural Revolution style, were taken down due to issues with "bullying".

It's worth noting that these were original videos uploaded to YT by the protestors themselves!

Also worth noting that the videos were probably taken down less for "bullying" and more because they made the protesters look horrible, too.

Make up your mind.

By your definition(s), YouTube can't possibly handle inflammatory leftist material.

If they don't remove it, they're clearly leftist biased.

If the do remove it, they're also clearly leftist biased, but for a different reason.

You can't have it both ways.

IMO, the entire situation with Evergreen College is closer to being an alt-Right propaganda piece than a leftist one. Screaming at and demanding the resignation of a professor essentially for saying that "On a college campus, one's right to speak - or to be - must never be based on skin color" looks pretty bad, you know? The fact it was produced by leftists who need a far better grasp of optics really doesn't change that.

Removing things that make one side look bad - but not similarly doing the same for the other side - is bias, yes. Unless you think YouTube would have removed videos taken by the protesters if the situation was reversed, and it was a neo-Nazi protest that was looking horrible?

Pardon me, but your view is ridiculous!

Or are you claiming that the people at Evergreen are all secret members of the Pepe Brotherhood and that they are not holding their leftist views honestly?

What part of his view seems ridiculous to you?

The idea that hundreds of non-white alt-righters could gather at a college and all act like extremist liberals while not leaking the fact they're alt-righters is pretty absurd to me.

It's a good thing DuskStar said absolutely nothing like that, then, right?

It was implied when DuskStar said it was a right-wing propaganda piece. That implies that it was done intentionally to push a narrative.

He didn't say that. He said it was playing in the media the way a right-wing propaganda piece would have played, even though it wasn't one. I thought that was pretty clear, especially given the last sentence of his first paragraph.

I don't think DuskStar was claiming it was a false-flag protest, just that it made the people doing it look bad.

Yep, exactly! Not entirely sure how people might think I was suggesting Evergreen's protests were a false flag, that really wasn't my intention.

No, DuskStar is claiming that the people at Evergreen are leftist college students who did something stupid, and the thing they did makes leftists as a group look stupid. So other leftists are trying hard to hide the thing that was done, to avoid the PR fallout.

This was pretty clear in what DuskStar wrote. See the "the fact it was produced by leftists who need a far better grasp of optics" bit.

> What's the chance ...?

How about doing some old-fashioned data gathering for the benefit of the community? Document all violent events, how many YouTube videos are posted of each, how many are removed and how long it takes for each to be pulled down.

Without data, it's just conspiracy theory.

Considering there are several hours of video uploaded to YouTube per second, this is nigh impossible for someone without Google-level resources.

And that's just the last two points of your comment. The first requires a nation state.

You could do a statistical sample or find some proxy variables.

So far, no they aren't. Not even close. Not that there isn't any violence from the left, but not nearly as much.

But using the left/right simplified political spectrum is a terrible metric in any case. If there was ever a time to at least use the compass metric to differentiate between authoritarian/libertarian opinions as well as left/right it is now. It can be hard to realize as an American but judged globally you are comparing far right authoritarians to centre or even centre-right authoritarians as if they were opposites.

>So far, no they aren't. Not even close. Not that there isn't any violence from the left, but not nearly as much.

This is based on information that is highly controlled by the companies which we were just discussing, right?

> Not that there isn't any violence from the left, but not nearly as much

Are you sure? I'd love to see credible sources for this data, for the US. Note that sources talking about "hate crimes" are unfortunately not usable here simply because they by definition exclude violence towards groups that violent left-wing groups target. I am aware that after this last election there was an upsurge in hate crimes; there was also an upsurge in violent attacks on Trump supporters. I have had little luck finding good numbers on what's going on, and would appreciate pointers.

Also, are we talking about recent history, or historically? Because again, for the US, there was a good deal of left-wing violence in the 70s that has been successfully whitewashed out of history. For example, some (but not all) of the leaders of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground moved right on to positions like "Clinical Associate Professor of Law at the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law"[1] and "communications director at Environmental Advocates of New York" (and for the same one, "heads up his own consulting firm called Jeff Jones Strategies that specializes in media expertise, writing, and campaign strategies that help grassroots and progressive groups achieve their goals")[2]. Going further down the list we have people becoming high school teachers and then academics specializing in education[3], and mathematics instructors [4].

At least as of 20 years ago, none of this was discussed in high school history classes that cover the period. Most people who didn't personally live through it aren't aware that any of this ever happened.

> or even centre-right authoritarians as if they were opposites

The centre-right authoritarians, by that definition, are not the ones involved in what would be considered "leftist violence" in the US.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardine_Dohrn [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Jones_(activist) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Machtinger [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rudd

Oh definitely recent, historical would be different ... although you'd have to be very careful to pick your dates to include the blip of leftist violence and exclude say, the Klan. Not that you don't have a point about the lack of education about the leftist violence in the 70s, but the moral victors tend to write the history.

Sure, there was an uptick in attacks on Trump supporters. But you take all of those and I'll take only violence against muslims or trans people, your choice. Hell, if I took only violence against non-muslim brown people mistaken for muslims the numbers would still be higher.

> Hell, if I took only violence against non-muslim brown people mistaken for muslims the numbers would still be higher

Do you have a source for that? Because, again, I've had a _very_ hard time finding credible numbers for this stuff, and would love some actual data.

> What's the chance that these policies apply to both sides equally?

I would say there's a very good chance that it will

How do you figure?

Well most of the abuse is from the right, so most of the correct action will be towards the right. It won't be equal in terms of amount of action for a given side, but it will be equal in terms of blocking dodgy content.

>Well most of the abuse is from the right, so most of the correct action will be towards the right

That's a hell of an assumption. This subthread succinctly illustrates the problem at hand.

Well, you're assuming asymmetry with no evidence that it's particularly likely.

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