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Comment by moksha256 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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?

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