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Comment by mankash666 | Hacker News Reader

This article shines light on the power bestowed upon Twitter employees. They can randomly deactivate one's account, and unless you're the president, you might not have any recourse.

Particularly worrisome is the general left leaning political and social affiliation of such employees. We are an era of systemic censorship of right leaning speech by popular internet platforms.

I'm personally center left, but in no way do I condone the actions of the new breed of leftists, from SJWs claiming "free speech as torture" to wanting "safe spaces" everywhere

View on HN

I'll give a very personal account. I was in the past harassed on Twitter. I received death threats and users were giving out my phone number and address to other Twitter users via DM.

I filed an official complaint, and Twitter's response was this is not harassment, we won't do anything. I am pretty sure because of my political views the Twitter support representative decided they didn't like me. The hypocrisy, bias, and subjective filtering is rampant in silicon valley. It also unfortunately is a thing here on HN as well. To this day I still get downvoted not for the content of my comments, but because solely people "recognize" me.

> I am pretty sure because of my political views the Twitter support representative decided they didn't like me.

That's conveniently completely unprovable. That said, there should be (some) recourse when you feel like you've been treated unfairly. A second opinion or escalation.

On the flip side: Twitter is a company. It might be comprised of people that share a certain opinion and this will show in how they behave. That's how it works with any product or service. There's a gap between what is "morally good" and what you're actually entitled to in terms of treatment by someone else.

> Twitter's response was this is not harassment, we won't do anything. I am pretty sure because of my political views

Given Twitter's utter inability to deal with harassment at all, I'd suggest it wasn't anything to do with your political views at all. They're just that shit.

There was a series of articles a few years ago about closet GOP supporters in the tech industry fearing being "outed" for the damage it would cause to their careers. In your experience do you feel that this concern is justified?

(I think there was at least one startup CEO who declared that if he found out that anyone at his company had voted for Trump, that he would fire him/her)

Absolutely. I've been lucky enough to be self-employed for a bit, but if you walk into any bay area startup nearly everybody will be a vitriol against Trump and conservatives very publicly. It is not even subtle. I'm the kind of person who actually enjoys a debate, and my lack of PC offends some. If I were an employee, probably would be problematic.

I find it interesting that people feel the need to defend Trump because he’s in “their team”. Can’t help but feel this is an effect of the two party system.

He’s objectively a problematic person as a leader but since there is no other conservative around now conservatives feel the need to clinch to him more than is healthy.

Reason is that the political debate is no longer right vs left in the US. Trump and his posse have proven to be compulsive liars.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trump...

This means there is little left to debate.

? The "appropriate" size and role of the federal government is still a very worthwhile and earnest point of debate, and that is a classic left/right issue.

Sorry but nobody is for small government. Nobody is for a balanced budget. It is a farce.

We all have two piles: a. Things we want the government to do b. Things we don't

If you're for a balanced budget, you'll oppose current tax cut plans and demand government cut spending. The problem is of course where do we cut spending? Find me a dollar of "waste" and I'll show you someone who benefits from it. Can we please stop pretending?

> Find me a dollar of "waste" and I'll show you someone who benefits from it.

I expect others who've also worked on Government projects would find that as preposterous as I do.

Trump has actually proven his bone fides for small government in the sense of reducing regulatory burden.

There was an article about that a few days ago that got a lot of attention here on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15595586

We still have a secret ballot in this country, and this is why.

Without sources for any of your claims (GOP supporters fearing an outing, CEO that would fire Trump voters) your comment comes over as a way to incite a heated discussion here, AKA trolling.

For the former, a sibling commenter has provided a HN discussion regarding a CNN article with a 10+ minute interview with people who are being interviewed with a voice changer for fear of being outed.

Regarding the latter, here's Grubhub's CEO calling for Trump voters to resign: The CEO of Grubhub, an online food delivery service, sent a company wide email Wednesday suggesting employees who agree with President-elect Donald Trump’s behaviors and his campaign rhetoric should resign.[1].

I remember reading articles from reputable media outlets for both issues, but I personally do not know peers who feel this way (which makes sense because well, if the news were true, many of them are in hiding). Hence the genuine inquiry towards an actual person -- a HNer -- who would have first hand experience with such attitudes. It's honestly a very rare chance to be able to ask someone this; I frankly only know one GOP voter within the several hundred tech people I am acquainted with.

I sincerely must ask in return whether you are trolling me, since you seem to be unaware of the fact that these issues have been widely reported on in the past.

[1] regrettably the link is fox news: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/10/boss-tells-pro-trump-em...

Not supporting Trump — supporting his behaviors and campaign rhetoric. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to tell people who support attacks on Gold Star families or Hispanic judges to reconsider their place of work. That goes way beyond a difference of opinion.

Not to Godwin the thread, but where does a company need to draw the line? On the extreme end of the spectrum, I would assume that no company would want someone with Nazi-supporting political beliefs on their staff, and that most people would find it acceptable to fire a Nazi. That means there's some point on the line at which, on one side it's acceptable to fire someone for their political beliefs, and on the other side, it's not. So, where along the line from socialist, to liberal, to conservative, to Trump-supporter, to Nazi should that point be established? Who decides?

The debate they were having was whether or not it is true that Trump supporters and people who are merely conservatives, are correct in their fear of being "outed".

Whether or not it is "moral" to fire people for being a Republican is a separate issue, that you can decide for yourself on.

We are merely stating that these fears are legitimate fears.

It seems reasonable to fear any activity that could damage your career. If I know companies will fire me (or not hire me) because I'm a Dodgers fan, I'd be right to be afraid of being outed as a Dodgers fan.

I didn't read it that way, it's a valid question even without the references, and it's a problem that warrants discussion.

> It also unfortunately is a thing here on HN as well. To this day I still get downvoted not for the content of my comments, but because solely people "recognize" me.

Out of curiosity, how do you know that?

Personally I think the audience on HN is pretty diverse and the response depends a lot on context (TFA), so assuming that you're not writing dumb things, an expressed opinion might not be as popular as you think depending on the audience inclined to read the comments of a particular article. For example I criticize Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and others equally and noticed that for the same negative opinion about them I got vastly different responses, depending on article and timing.

Also, don't get me wrong, but noticed your Twitter profile in your description — and an account with only 286 followers isn't so popular as to be recognizable across the web.

I'm not disputing that you've been harassed on Twitter, I also have friends that have been harassed and Twitter did nothing about it. Just saying, in regards to thinking that your opinions are rejected due to whom you are, just make sure you're not paranoid.

The only fact in your statement is that you received threats. Rest is all your interpretation which suits your argument especially how Twitter didn't look into your matter because of your political inclination.

I am surprised that Twitter didn't react more strongly especially given your claim that you received death threats on the platform. Maybe there is something missing here too?

> I am surprised that Twitter didn't react more strongly especially given your claim that you received death threats on the platform.

They don't care. Many people get death threats on Twitter a day with no action from the Safety Team (see the replies to their "We're humans too and doing the best we can!" from last month.)

Lots of left-leaning people have frustrating experiences with Twitter support as well

A similar thing happened to me.

It turns out that humans have memories and reputation is important.

Not to invoke Godwin, but Hitler’s opinions on mundane things will always be filtered through the lens of what he did and said otherwise. It is the same for all people.

If you don’t want to damage your reputation, either publish your unpopular opinions anonymously, keep them to yourself, or figure out why your views result in others wanting to threaten you and evolve them into something more palatable to the society in which you live.

Is firing people for which party they vote for REALLY a war that you want to get into?

Do you really believe that only Republicans would be targeted?

If this stuff becomes normalized the Left needs to understand that there are a whole lot of powerful conservatives in the world, and that left leaning people will be hurt just as much as right leaning people.

Attacks on open discourse, and freedom of thought hurt EVERYONE. And you should be careful what you wish for.

Why do you think that I think this would target republicans?

Both “right-leaning” and “left-leaning” people in the United States pretty clearly quality as violence-supporting fuckheads, so I am fine with this being applied universally.

So then why is the opposite not true of liberals especially in the bay? Just because they are the VAST majority they are allowed to publicly harass, give death threats, silence opinions, shame, witch hunt? It's happening from both sides, but still hypocrisy.

"I'm personally center left" ... <Reactionary talking points>

Hopefully I don't get dang'd by observing how common a meme this is.

Companies, public and private, have the legal right to take on whatever political position they have, and beyond having the power to control dialogue, there is no way they can abdicate exercising that power; it's unavoidably emergent from their technology that someone's tweet has to show up top when you log in. This extends to anyone that writes code connecting a query to some media content.

Since asking for Government intervention in this realm is highly illiberal, the exercise of this power is a matter of corporate social responsibility. And how the CSR shakes out around the use of a platform to encourage hate and violence of any stripe is a point of contention.

"I'm personally center left" ... <Reactionary talking points>

They said "center left." That, by definition, means they're not going to be in lockstep.

So you're taking someone that effectively said: "I generally agree with Foo but some of their actions are not to my taste" and responded by finding them guilty of association with the enemy.

For the sake of argument, I'm ignoring the fact that the "reactionary" label is thrown around to mean a "contrarian" to the left's memes rather than a bonda fide political "reactionary" (which means something more specific than "contrarian" + "right wing").

SJWs, free speech, and safe spaces are all indeed reactionary talking points.

From Wiki: "A reactionary is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society"

Seems dead-on to me.

Well one solution is to take the reddit approach, where you allow different communities to mostly choose who they want to interact with on their own free will.

In twitter's case, one way to do this would be to give users more power over what shows up in their feed, and who they interact with.

Perhaps they could allow users to compile their own community block lists. IE, a group of volunteer moderators would compile their own block lists together, and then if you want to subscribe to the "Trump Trolls block list" then you can feel free to do so.

And the people who DON'T like your block list, can feel free to NOT subscribe to it, or subscribe to their own "liberal trolls block list".

That way everyone wins. The trolls can troll, but you don't have to listen to see them if you don't want to.

> power bestowed upon Twitter employees

Customer support agents need to take actions against people's accounts. This is literally their job description. This is true at every company.

> you might not have any recourse.

Free service.

> We are an era of systemic censorship of right leaning speech by popular internet platforms.

lol

Yeah - I am not sure what the expectation is. So, going forward, every account reject needs to go through 3 approvals? Then, we will hear how Twitter is so slow tackling abuse and hate on its platform (and ftr, it is already pretty slow).

Yeah I'm sick of reading crap about employees being made to feel “safe“. It's patronizing.

Also, the employees at company X make +$100K per year, they're totally owning the game of capitalism and therefore life in general - They're damn safe and if they don't feel safe then they should see a shrink.

There are literally nazis promoting themselves on twitter without censorship, so I disagree with your claim.

There are literally nazis promoting themselves on twitter without censorship

There's all kinds of genocide being promoted on Twitter, and the so-called Nazis are literally the only ones being censored. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander says I. Either Twitter - a for profit entity - is a common carrier or they impose editorial standards, they can't be allowed to get away with playing both sides as it suits them. And by "suits them" I mean, sells the most ads.

> and the so-called Nazis are literally the only ones being censored

False. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Twitter

“So-called nazis”, huh?

I'd prefer a term such as "white supremacist" since the NSDAP isn't actually a thing anymore. But we both know that the word can mean anything these days. And we all know they're not the only ones with disturbing or distasteful ideas.

Remember that Twitter was OK with ISIS using it, right up until it started to affect ad revenues, then they made only a half hearted attempt to stop them. Their actual ideology is only, make money.

In Germany you are called a Nazi by some very left wing politicians if you say that maybe the rejected asylum seeker from Pakistan who cut the throat of his 2 year old daughter* should be deported.

* Current news! They just caught him on the run in Spain a few days ago.

So you'll excuse me if I don't take every accusation of nazism 100% seriously.

Do you have a source for this?

The group of people who literally self identify as Nazis is a very very small group.

The group of people that get accused of being Nazis can span all the way up into the hundreds of millions (Ex: Many people call Trump a fascist, and therefore his X million supports would be fascist under these accusations)

Self-identification isn't the one true criterium. See "I'm not racist but ...".

And yet, if you go around claiming that their are millions or hundreds of millions of Nazis these days, as many people are claiming, you'd be wrong.

The brush that people are painting about who is a Nazi is very broad, these days.

> if you go around claiming that their are millions or hundreds of millions of Nazis these days,

Do you have a source for that?

> The group of people who literally self identify as Nazis is a very very small group.

Luckily self-identification isn't the most reliable way to categorize things. A robin doesn't have to say "I am a robin" in order for you to say "Oh, look, a robin." It's not like suddenly thousands of years of development of classification systems doesn't exist anymore. The group of people who, whether they proclaim it or not, express white-supremacist, nationalist, and vitriolic views is unfortunately not that very small.

Same goes for the other side. It is a fact that in Germany people have been attacked by antifa on the street for "looking like a Nazi" (and no, they were not sporting Hitler moustaches).

Bottomline is that you do not get to judge who is what based on some self-made criteria, just like the legal system enforces a presumption of innocence even in a case of "he was standing over the dead body with bloody hands".

> It is a fact that in Germany people have been attacked by antifa on the street for "looking like a Nazi"

Do you have a source for that?

The "other side" of?

I can't help but wonder why you immediately jump to what they look like rather than by what they say and do in publicly viewable spaces. How much might we wager that, if you actually have a source to show for your fact, what you're talking about has less than 1/10000th the occurrence rate of what the rest of us are talking about?

Rose McGowan would disagree with your assertion.

So now we can debate whether they (Nazis, or whoever) should be allowed to use a platform, allowing themselves to be identified and dealt with by the law.

In that regard there is no global consensus. And arguments for and against can be quite compelling.

We know that attempting to suppress ideas can have unintended consequences.

I am against censorship, however as an European I agree with our country's constitution that says freedom of speech is granted only as far as hate speech isn't involved.

Of course who should have the power to identify hate speech and censor content and what the definition of hate speech is, that's debatable. However a platform like Twitter is also private property, another right protected by the constitution and people don't necessarily have free speech rights on somebody else's property.

As for the compelling arguments about letting Nazis speak in order to identify them:

1. read some German newspapers just before 1933 – the same arguments against censorship have been used then as well, nothing new

2. if you want to see actual antisemitism, some literal Nazis, go to https://gab.ai — nothing on Twitter is as bad as what goes on in there and the moderates that are against censoring such opinions usually don't realize how bad they can get or their reach

Again, I'm very much pro free speech. But free speech is not my religion and it needs to be balanced against the other rights that we have as well, like property rights, or the right to feel safe and to be treated fairly and respectfully.

That's because your governments constitution is viciously flawed compared to Americas, in which a system was established on the idea that we have rights independent of government and the government is only there to protect those rights, and may not infringe those rights. The argument isn't let any particular $hatedgroupofthemoment speak... the argument is that you have no right to presume yourself or anyone else to have the power to silence them in the first place. This is something even Christopher Hitchens talked openly about, and part of the reason he became a citizen. America's form of constitutional democratic republic, while in some disarray at the moment, is quite a unique accomplishment in the annals of history. It's what I consider the non-jingoistic and true basis of American exceptionalism, a term too often used in bandwagon derision.

For good reading on the subject, try this:

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

I honestly think your comment would be much stronger if it didn't start with the viciously flawed comparison.

It was emotionally difficult for me to get past that first sentence. I otherwise agree the US Constitution, in theory is, potential, exceptionally powerful.

You are right but by the time I started dwelling on it was too late to edit. Sorry, that's something I'm working on (being less abrasive).

Freedom of speech is an absolute. You have it or you do not.

The moment you start restricting it you don't have any. I'm from France and there is no freedom of speech here.

If you think laws made to fight against "hate speech" will stay in their current form you forget about what happened with special anti-terrorist laws. They always get applied to more and more things. What is accepted speech today can be hate speech tomorrow. Remember: the power we let good government get will also be available to shitty government later.

Yes, but Twitter isn’t the government so they can’t deny someone their freedom of speech. Only the government can do that

> says freedom of speech is granted only as far as hate speech isn't involved.

I see this all the time on HN, mostly Europeans. This is false. US freedom of speech is universal, including Nazi or hate. There is no such clause that prohibits hate speech. That's Europe's thing.

I specified that I'm an European in that same sentence, so that's a straw man.

Sorry, I missread. That’s my bad. You are right, you did say you are European. Apologize.

For what it's worth, I thoroughly agree with you.

Could you please not take us straight into ideological hell? These inescapably repetitive flamewars aren't a real discussion, they're just teeth-gnashing.

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How do you know this to be the case?

There are also uncensored calls for "killing all whites", instituting sharia, and murdering gays. Your point is?

So "promoting themselves" is an action that should only allowed to a subset of people?

If so to whom and how to you identify those people?

It's not "who", it's "what". Instigating violence is forbidden for one example. Defamation too.

Nazism is based on belief that some ethnicities are to be blamed for all evil in the world (defamation), and proposes to deal with that by one ethnicity exterminating or enslaving the others (instigation of violence).

Does it really surprise you it's forbidden in many countries, and many websites doesn't want to have it promoted on their property?

And additionally - twitter is a private website. It's not censorship, when a newspaper chooses who can write articles for them. Make your own newspaper if you disagree.

> Instigating violence is forbidden

For good reason! But I don't get why you criticize the fact that there are

> nazis promoting themselves on twitter

What I'm trying to say here is that you should criticize if they do something bad (violence, threat of violence, ...) but not when they promote themselves (which is totally legal).

Promoting nazism is promoting violence.

Really bad press for twitter.

Just treat these companies as media companies with editorial discretion instead of as utilities.

Really, the moment you start to take advertising, you're responsible for content. Professional advertisers have specific rules about content they can associate with. I've worked with them and they're strict about that, for example, they can't show a beautiful fashion spread next to a bloody image in a magazine. That's just basic advertising and branding.

And once you have editorial discretion, you can do whatever you want with content, and no one can complain. Your policy can be made simpler. "Don't piss off Bob" can be a perfectly valid editorial policy, instead of whatever complication Facebook has to go through in determining policy.

I also think this would encourage the creation of more competing social media outlets, which is probably why the dominant ones like to think of themselves as utilities.

> the creation of more competing social media outlets

Like gab.ai? Not allowed on iPhones.

Perhaps Twitter could be considered a media company with editorial discretion, but Apple?

Either treat these giant SV companies as utilities, or break them up.

Why wouldn't Apple have editorial control over their own private marketplace?

For the same reason electricity providers and ISPs shouldn't be allowed to. The companies that make products essential to modern society shouldn't be allowed to decide who can participate in modern society.

Just.. not use iPhones?

These are unnecessary products.

Please don't make smartphones necessary products in everyday life.

I wonder how many people consider smartphones necessary products.

I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted. You’re absolutely right. Maybe the idea of technology not being a neutral good makes the downvoters uncomfortable.

edit: yep, seems it does.

No, this shines the light on the editorial control bestowed upon the owners of the twitter.com domain name (and any other domain name).

someone has to do it...they can't have a board meeting each time they deactivate any random account. I'm sure for VIP accounts safeguards will be put in place.

Why was the employee allowed access after being fired /leaving is the question.

As I understand it, it was their last day with the company so they'd still have had their credentials.

Hmm... don't most companies remove access to critical systems as soon as it becomes known that an employee is leaving? For whatever reason?

At some companies, turning in your two weeks notice gets you escorted off the premises immediately, with your personal items following you in a box.

Please re-consider your use of the term "SJW" as a derogatory term. I had hoped that garbage would stay on reddit. Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln were 'social justice warriors'. The more accepted definition is of an extreme leftist which in truth is statistically irrelevant % of the population. SJW is a strawman term that's great for dividing us and categorizing those with opposing views as the boogeyman.

Viewing US political culture from outside makes this even more entertaining. It appears to many people in Europe to be mostly two center-right/right groups calling each other nasty names.

Of course the standard left/right dichotomy is a historical accident and contingent on many local factors. And yet we continue to reify it as if it were some Platonic truth.

America's extreme leftists (AKA SJWs) aren't center-right. They want socialism, they want to silence everyone who disagrees with them, they are willing to use any tactic (including censorship and even violence) to get what they want, and yet, in a startling lack of self-awareness, they consider the center-right half of the country "Nazis".

This attempted act of censorship by an ex-Twitter employee is a fairly tame example of their tactics, though notable for affecting the President.

All of America's extreme leftists would probably fit in a 200sqm hall, with room to spare. Why worry about a statistical anomaly? Just because they have Tumblr accounts? :)

(For the downvoters, prove me wrong, how many votes did a far left party get in US elections in the past 20 years? Does the US even have a far left party? :) )

It's much more than a statistical anomaly. It's a rather large group of people, some quite famous and powerful.

Lea DeLaria: "Or pick up a baseball bat and take out every f-cking republican and independent I see"

Madonna: "I’ve thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House."

Mickey Rourke: "I’ll meet [Trump] in a hotel room any motherf-cking day of the week and give him a Louisville slugger."

Bow Wow: "@realDonaldTrump shut your punk a-- up talking s--t about my uncle @SnoopDogg before we pimp your wife and make her work for us."

Eminem: "And fuck Ann Coulter with a Klan poster. With a lamp post, door handle, shutter. A damn bolt cutter, a sandal, a can opener, a candle, rubber. Piano, a flannel, sucker, some hand soap, butter. A banjo and manhole cover"

Then there's Kathy Griffin's famous photo with a severed "Trump" head, Snoop Dog's video shooting Trump ...

And that's just Hollywood. There's no room here to discuss all the incidents of actual violence, or protesters denying people the right to hear speakers at public universities, etc, etc.

Mickey Rourke is a Republican who endorsed Ben Carson.

https://www.thewrap.com/mickey-rourke-calls-donald-trump-big...

Eminem isn’t a good example. He hates politicians and Hollywood “elites”, and Trump is both

The quote I used from Eminem was about sexually assaulting Ann Coulter. Does he routinely talk that way about political pundits?

Umm listen to the Marshall Mathers LP and then get back to me

No please. There's enough room to discuss incidents of actual violence. I'd like to see them, backed up by sources. It would be interesting to compare statistics.

7 celebrities talking shit does not equate a massive, unified, violent left-wing movement in the US with conspiracy-like powers and tactics to censor the right. I think the right is pretty well represented in the US.

How about this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

EDIT: Twitter literally suppressed the leaks of DNC and Podesta emails hashtags and admitted to it:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-01/twitter-admits-it-b...

https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/4766f54d-...

Is that conspiracy enough for you?

How about this:

On October 31, 2016, The New York Times reported: "CNN has severed ties with the Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, after hacked e-mails from WikiLeaks showed that she shared questions for CNN-sponsored candidate events in advance with friends on Hillary Clinton's campaign."

And that's just off the top of my head.

EDIT 2: Can you explain how all these very similar headlines were possible without there being a conspiracy? And yes, those are real, I saw it when it happened.

https://pics.onsizzle.com/headlines-think-the-media-got-the-...

7 celebrities "talking shit" (encouraging violence) and being applauded for it. And there are more than 7, but I thought 7 would sufficiently illustrate the point.

Measure the support for the movement by the number of people who celebrated those remarks. A lot of people.

Steve Scalise.

There are a lot more than the far right, as evidenced by the recent protests around the country by BLM and Antifa. And the recent trend of fighting free speech on college campuses doesn't seem to be limited to a few institutions.

Can you fit 200 000 subs of https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/ in a 200sqm hall?

Can you fit all his voters there?

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

His wiki mentions "socialist" 35 times. Is that not leftist enough for you?

There's circumstantial evidence that he was even a Stalinist at one point: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sanders+stalinist+kibbutz

You are aware that outside of the US "socialist" isn't quite as pejorative as you seem to think it is? The mainstream center-left parties in many European countries have the word "socialist" or a variant thereof in their names.

Yes, but we can't have a meaningful discussion if we disregard Occam's razor (If the man calls himself a socialist and has done so for decades, then that's what he is) and go into the "No true Scotsman" territory instead.

All of America's neonazis would probably fit in a 200sqm hall, with room to spare. Why worry about a statistical anomaly? Just because they have Voat accounts? :)

As an outsider, I don't see the far left having an influence on American politics. The far right, on the other hand, does seem to have one. Or am I mistaken?

They sure have some influence on medias. Also, a lot of events thought as right-leaning get disturbed: MRA conventions, speech from "not the right people" in gaming conventions etc. which have security prices jacked-up because of bomb threats, fire alarm pulled to interrupt it. Also you get the antifa violence which everyone seem to have forgotten.

I think the far left's primary influence in 2016 was in pulling Hillary to the left during the primary, which caused lasting damage to her campaign (as she said) and helped lead to Trump's election.

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

A literal socialist reaching 43.1% of votes not influential enough?

American democratic socialists like Sanders aren't far left, and are really more social democrats than “literal socialists”. (Sure, DSA is part of international socialist fora, but so is the UK Labour Party, and no one sane is calling Labour “far left” either.)

Someone, therefore, from the moderate left getting a sizable minority of votes within the left-most party of a two-party system where the most votes in that party went to a center-right neoliberal is not evidence of the far left having much (or any) influence, especially when it's the best anyone not from the center-right has done in that party for at least a quarter century.

The man literally visits Soviet Union as his idea of honeymoon after his wedding.

There's circumstantial evidence he was even a Stalinist at one point: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sanders+stalinist+kibbutz

You do realize how closely your argument resembles a "No True Scotsman" in this case, yes?

Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

Person B: "But my uncle Angus likes sugar with his porridge."

Person A: "Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

EDIT: Here he is, calling himself a socialist without any qualifiers in 1989: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_QLek6Qvzg

Sanders is certainly a socialist by some definitions; and there are certainly definitions of socialism by which it is exclusively a far-left ideology.

The problem is that they aren't the same definitions, and the game being played of pretending that they are is the fallacy of equivocation.

https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/close-the-...

"These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?"

Would you describe Venezuelan regime as center-left social democrat?

Who's the banana republic now? Indeed, the irony would be amusing if only this failure did not leave millions and millions of people with no money, no food and no hope.

Were any policies he actually proposed socialists?

1. People can change.

2. People might moderate their actions when faced with reality (heck, even Trump does/is forced to).

From what I remember back when he was campaigning, most things he was proposing would definitely fall under socialist-democrat in Europe.

If he became president and succeeded at first he might have been widely celebrated, as comrade Chavez was. Then he would have likely won the re-election in a landslide that dwarfed Reagan's victory and implemented policies further to the left.

And then a decade in the future (might even be more than that, US is resilient) it would have blown up in everyone's faces, just as it did in Venezuela.

The general public has a short attention span, it seldom thinks of what would happen 10-15 years down the road.

The narrative you describe in your post is largely fabricated to rally, enrage and indoctrinate individuals.

It's disheartening how deeply the "us vs. them" mindset dominates our politics. You used the term "they" or "them" seven times in your short post. Seven. Who are they? A few trolls on twitter does not equal a meaningful movement. Categorizing half of the American populace based on the views/actions of fringe nutjobs is absurd and not conducive to meaningful discourse.

Having a slang term for "them" (SJW) implies that it's a such a common issue that people face daily, when in reality it's a strawman argument largely fabricated by organizations interested in keeping you squabbling vs examining their policies.

You go on to say "attempted act of censorship by an ex-Twitter employee is a fairly tame example of their tactics" "Their Tactics" as if this incident was part of a master plan orchestrated by a shadowy far-left extremist org. This is pizza-gate levels of delusion.

"Categorizing half of the American populace based on the views/actions of fringe nutjobs is absurd"

1) Lena Dunham has called for the extinction of white men. 2) The President of the United States then sent his teen daughter to do an internship with this "fringe nutjob".

Sorry, this crazy, hateful bigot is not "fringe", she's squarely in the mainstream of the modern Democratic Party. They need to fix that if they're planning to ever win a national election again.

> Lena Dunham has called for the extinction of white men

Had to Google that. Is there more than the 30 second animation? Because as a straight white male, I didn't feel particularly victimised by it.

It doesn't matter whether you, personally, feel "victimised" by it. Most participants in Internet lynch mobs don't actually feel personally threatened by whatever it is they're screaming about.

If she had done that to any other identifiable group, she would have been hounded from the public sphere.

Instead, she gets rewarded with some personal time with the President's daughter. Do you think Trump, or Bush II, or Bush I, or Reagan, or Nixon... would have sent their child off to intern with someone who called for the extinction of, say, black people? Nope.

And no, that's not the bottom of her lunacy, not by many, many levels.

Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln were both Republicans.

Sorry, downvoter, but they were. You can, as they say, look it up.

P.S. King famously urged that people be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

I cannot think of anything more antithetical to the modern "SJW"/"privilege theory"/"identity politics" point of view.

But as a conservative, he probably is against Martin Luther King and what MLK was after, no? So calling MLK a SJW would make sense from conservative point of view.

"But as a conservative, he probably is against Martin Luther King and what MLK was after, no? "

No.

We see the "I'm a Democrat but don't support this Democrat" (sub with Republican if desired) position all the time in astroturfing campaigns. The giveaway is usually in the choice of language, e.g. "sjw" as opposed to a less charged term like "further left"

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