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Comment by carlosrg | Hacker News Reader

Good for him. I might not agree 100% with his memo, but what we've seen the last days, treating the guy like he just wrote Mein Kampf, silencing any favorable opinion in the media (big headlines when a scientist disagrees with him, being silent when a different scientist agrees with him) and internet forums like this one just hinders any possibility of real debate. And that fuels the most right-wing media and forums, by the way. Don't act surprised if the "alt-right" keeps growing in tech and elsewhere.

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Not sure the term "alt-right" will grow as much as it will dilute as it's applied to everyone who doesn't conform to the mainstream liberal platform.

Just associating the term to James Damore is ridiculous. A couple weeks ago, Linda Sarsour called Jake Tapper a member of the alt-right for criticizing her.

It's become a meaningless catch-all term for the left.

Over the past few decades the Left has used this technique a lot. Take a term like 'racism' or 'white supremacy' and expand its definition to cover many more people than the original definitions did. The problem is that the terms then dilute and becomes less effective as a shaming label. Does the Right ever use this strategy? I can't remember a case where it does.

> Does the Right ever use this strategy? I can't remember a case where it does.

Sure. Here's an example from this week: http://i.4cdn.org/pol/1502213891937.png

"Conduct yourself in an honorable manner. Shouting things like n[...] and k[...] just turns normies off and makes our movement look bad. If you have to condemn someone, call them 'anti-white.'"

Literally the literal alt-Right is suggesting that instead of insulting people for their own race just because you don't like them, you should use "anti-white" as an insult, ascribing racism to them, whether or not it's accurate.

from that .png

> This event does not exist so you can get your rocks off punching antifa.

("antifa" == "Antifascist Action")

They are concerned some of their attendees want to get into fights with anti-fascists. For fun.

That is a good question. What are the labels the right uses to marginalize the opposition? Perhaps new words will need to be invented to describe people who are the classical definition of racist and white supremacist.

I'm on the right and the only thing I can think of is when some conservatives use "liberal" as a derogatory term but I don't think that's nearly as bad as calling someone racist or white supremacist, when they're not. All that does is shut down any chance of a meaningful discussion.

The term Socialist is widely thrown about, directed at Democrats. It very, very rarely applies. Even Bernie Sanders isn't a Socialist, even though he pretends to be one in name because it bolsters his attempt to appear radical vs the status quo. There is so little actual understanding of what Socialism is these days, people widely believe the Scandinavian nations are Socialist (they're all mixed economy welfare states, not even remotely Socialist, with most of the economy privately owned, vast private wealth very common, and functioning on free market principles with hefty doses of regulation).

It's somewhat understandable that people can't keep democratic socialists and social democrats straight. But most Democratic figures they call socialist are just so far from any of that that it's unbelievable.

Forgive us - "conservatives" largely support the world's most famous birther, a man who criticized an American judge based on his ethnicity, and attacked a gold star family because they were muslim. If they're not racist, then they're totally cool with it? Or just really stupid. Forgive me for making that conclusion.

Were you in a coma for the eight years they spent screeching about Obama being a socialist, something he clearly is not even close to?

True, but just as "left" is a meaningless catch-all term for pretty much anything not-conservative.

Political labels in general aren't very meaningful. But "alt-right" (as I remember it) was a more sinister term denoting support for extreme beliefs like racism, etc.

And frog memes.

Which died out very suddenly once Trump was voted / in office, which means either Reddit coincidentally updated its algorithms right then, or the online marketing / propaganda agencies called it a day.

"Alt-right" is now used identically to "SJW", but in the opposite political direction.

But if you read the document itself you'll see that this guy is an avid leftist. The whole purpose of the document is to increase diversity ...

This guy, by any measure of the imagination IS A PROGRESSIVE.

That's why, I think, the left has just created a few million more "rightists": leftists that feel personally attacked. Even within Google where rightist viewpoints are few and far between.

Agreed. His conclusions might have been disagreeable, but hardly worth the outrage.

The media and the echo chamber it feeds is, once again, to blame.

Always the media to blame, never the person who didnt have the self-discipline to not only keep their views to them-self, but made it in to a memo to circulate.

> keep their views to them-self

So we want to ban open discussion now? "Have a complaint? Tell HR! But be careful cause if it's the wrong type of complaint we'll very publicly fire and shame you!"

It wasn't a complaint to hr, don't act like it was.

>So we want to ban open discussion now?

Can you make a larger strawman than that? I don't know.

You removed all context from the situation with that quotation and are representing it like it was some absolute.

The memo was not some sort of mass email sent to all employees. It was posted on an internal message board that was purposed for discussion and peer review. The media is absolutely to blame as they blatantly doctored the original document with their own publications.

You guys talk as if he was advocating genocide

All I got from the document was him questioning entrenched beliefs about diversity.

Thats barely the end of the world

I mean, he's the one who injected left vs right in his screed. Imagine if this manifesto was written in the field of medicine.

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