Comment by TheOperator | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheOperator | Hacker News Reader

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The author of this article is a conservative. Noticed how he went out of his way to appear politically neutral. Notice how one of the two comments to this post is attacking him on a reputational basis.

This is the problem I see and likely the problem the author sees even if he's veiling it. The left wing specifically keeps disregarding other peoples views wholesale on a reputational basis. When I make posts online left-wingers regularly dig into my post history to find a reason to discredit me while right wingers don't even bother looking. If I'm making a right-wing point just like the author I go to pains to obscufate the fact I'm making a conservative argument. Otherwise making the argument is pointless because your intended audience, those with left wing views, won't read it.

I don't mean to make a completely partisan shitting on the left post. I have voted left wing in every election I've been a part of. I blame the uptick in politically motivated violence on the right. I believe "scientific racism" is increasingly becoming mainstreamed on the right through "red pills" as an explanation for say why inequity in employment/crime stats exists and is fair.

However holy shit merely talking to the right these days can cause a whole bunch of people to hold you in contempt. It ultimately will and has backfired because it's entrenching intellectual blindness which is bad for the left and bad for society.

You know, you make an interesting point. I think you're referring to the same thing that the author is referring to.

On the left side of the political spectrum, It's not a single phenomena though, I think you can break it down into two camps on the left: 1. older-school globalist liberals. Probably older, supported the Clintons, ect. These people seem to have traditionally looked down on the right as backward, uneducated "basket of deplorables" or whatever. Plays into the ivory tower liberal stereotype. 2. New-school farther left. Probably younger, fans of AOC et al. They'd also be likely to look down their noses, but in more of a moral superiority perspective.

I think the condescension of #1 goes back decades and has already borne its fruit in (at least to a degree) the political situation we find ourselves in today. I worry that group # 2 hasn't learned those lessons and is proving that they'll just repeat the same mistakes. Unless they self-destruct arguing about Israel, which totally mystifies me.

That said... so much of what comes out of the right is complete and utter bullshit. From the massive propaganda machine that is fox, to infowars, to tiny hyper-racist subreddits — there's a lot of noise to separate from the signal that might be a valid, reasonable conservative argument.

With that in mind, sometimes I wonder if we don't need a bit more contempt.

Maybe if the type of outright hate speech the mainstream right seems to support was not acceptable, that would open the floor for some actual conversation.

To summarize: I wish that democrats and the left weren't been so quick to dismiss legitimate concerns from everyone outside of NYC and SF (hyperbolic, I know). But it's right wing (and especially religiously-motivated) politics that have completely skewered our politics and media.

Saying "fuck that and fuck you" to anyone who supports that system is a reasonable reaction, in my opinion.

But where does that leave us? I don't know.

> Saying "fuck that and fuck you" to anyone who supports that system is a reasonable reaction, in my opinion.

Why is saying "men can't be women" considered hate speech, and "fuck you" is not. One conveys unreasoned aggression, while the other is a clumsy attempt to state objective truth.

Yup, exactly.

>New-school farther left. Probably younger, fans of AOC et al

The Axiom of Choice is a political thing now? I'd have thought it generally has strong support among both sides of the political spectrum; in spite of their vocal presence online, constructivists are still a relatively small minority of the mathematical community.

Appreciate the non sequitur, but not really funny.

> the uptick in politically motivated violence on the right

I haven't looked closely, but it seems like the preponderance of such violence has been coming from the left these days (ignoring people with obvious mental health problems). Charlottesville is the obvious exception, but clearly overbalanced by the guy that attempted to assassinate a bunch of Congressmen at that ball game.

Are there lots of examples I'm missing?

Pittsburgh massacre.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/us/active-shooter-pittsbu...

Also, the bombs sent to a number of democrats, funders of democrats, and Trump critics:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/10/25/bomb-timeli...

That said, individual events aren't particularly helpful, the media might be omitting major events (or more likely, a lot of smaller ones). So you can refer to this study by the Cato Instititute:

https://www.cato.org/blog/terrorism-deaths-ideology-charlott...

After Islamic Terrorism (9/11 unsurprisingly had a pretty big impact), you have right wing nationalists being the biggest contributors to murders by an order of magnitude.

I'd chalk Pittsburgh up to mental illness rather than politics.

The Cato study is interesting, but unfortunately covers a period of decades. I was referring to the last couple of years or so, which unfortunately this does not break out.

You must be thinking of the Sutherland Springs Church massacre which did not have a political or racial dimension cited by the shooter.

Mr Bowers, prior to murdering his victims wrote on social media:

"A man with that name had posted anti-Semitic statements on social media before the shooting, expressing anger that a nonprofit Jewish organization in the neighborhood has helped refugees settle in the United States. In what appeared to be his final social media post hours before the attack, the man wrote: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/10/27/pittsburgh-...

When you justify your actions due to a belief that jews are replacing "your people" you're a right wing nationalist. I am not surprised that ideologies that back this proposition attract crazy people who then commit murder.

There seem to be an awfully large number of mentally ill people who read rightwing material, post on rightwing message boards, and then engage in political murder.

I guess. How many political murders are there in the US each year, though?

> That said, individual events aren't particularly helpful, the media might be omitting major events (or more likely, a lot of smaller ones).

I recall that the media did not label the Knoxville UU Church Shooter a right-wing terrorist in spite of the fact that he wrote an actual political manifesto prior to the shooting which reads - and I mean this literally - like a dumb guy quoting Ann Coulter:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090327071401/http://web.knoxne...

Neither the Pittsburgh massacre nor the bombs have been proven to be from the right.

For the massacre, the killer actually hated Trump.

For the bombing, consider this: people who want to actually hurt their targets, rather than running a false-flag operation, tend to succeed.

>For the massacre, the killer actually hated Trump.

That doesn't disprove that he was right wing.

>For the bombing, consider this: people who want to actually hurt their targets, rather than running a false-flag operation, tend to succeed.

Proof?

Mental illness doesn't cause violence.

The examples you're missing are the mass murders of Jewish people in a synagogue, or people in a church, or people at a concert, or the shooting of a gun into a crowd of protestors, or the driving of a car into a crowd of protestors, or the disproportionate amounts of domestic violence perpetrated by people on the right.

Somehow none of these seem to count because reasons, but the right are fundamentally dishonest when they discount this violence.

> Mental illness doesn't cause violence.

??? Reality begs to differ...

Be specific. "Mental illness" is not a good catch-all term for a variety of different conditions. Depression tends to cause violence towards the self - suicide and self-harm - but not violence. What specific mental conditions do you have in mind and how have they been diagnosed in the people under discussion?

No, it doesn't.

Violence is common. Mental illness is common. Some people happen to have both, but there's few of them where the violence is caused by the mental illness.

When looking at things that predict violence we see that substance misuse is a better predictor. Previous exposure to violence (as a perpetrator or victim or witness) is a better predictor. Either of these combined with untreated SMI where the patient is not in contact with services is a stronger predictor. But SMI itself is only a weak predictor of violence.

You can read the NCISH (National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by Mental Health Patients) data for a research based look at the data.

https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=38469

EG, from the summary on page 6

> most patients had a history of alcohol or drug misuse; homicide in the absence of comorbid substance misuse is unusual

> around half of patients were not receiving care as intended, either through loss of contact or non-adherence with drug treatment

> patients are also at high risk of being victims of homicide

And for a more researchy source: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/183929

> In patients with schizophrenia, 1054 (13.2%) had at least 1 violent offense compared with 4276 (5.3%) of general population controls (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 2.0; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.8-2.2). The risk was mostly confined to patients with substance abuse comorbidity (of whom 27.6% committed an offense), yielding an increased risk of violent crime among such patients (adjusted OR, 4.4; 95% CI, 3.9-5.0), whereas the risk increase was small in schizophrenia patients without substance abuse comorbidity (8.5% of whom had at least 1 violent offense; adjusted OR, 1.2; 95% CI, 1.1-1.4; P<.001 for interaction). The risk increase among those with substance abuse comorbidity was significantly less pronounced when unaffected siblings were used as controls (28.3% of those with schizophrenia had a violent offense compared with 17.9% of their unaffected siblings; adjusted OR, 1.8; 95% CI, 1.4-2.4; P<.001 for interaction), suggesting significant familial (genetic or early environmental) confounding of the association between schizophrenia and violence.

Yes. To pick one particular group in one particular metro area, here's violence in Portland caused by right-wing violence-causers:

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/07/patriot_prayers_...

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/08/patriot_prayer_a...

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/08/patriot_prayer_a...

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/10/patriot_prayer_f...

And here's police collaborating with the violence-causers:

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2019/02/text-messages-be...

https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/02/frustration-not-solu...

Ignoring antifa’s role in this is a bit disingenuous.

Upvote for the links.

Yeah, I've been following the Portland thing a bit. To my eyes, it seems a bit like frenemy sport between PP (kind of full of themselves) and antifa (wannabe fascists without the martial skills).

If this is the extreme of right-wing violence in the US at present, well, wake me if something interesting happens.

Seems pretty minor compared to that prof that tried to murder someone with a bike lock (for example): https://www.foxnews.com/us/felony-charges-filed-against-alle...

And don't miss antifa hating on senior citizens: https://www.foxnews.com/us/portland-antifa-protesters-caught...

The stories in your links cite Portland police, among other sources, without mentioning the link between several prominent police officers who were present at those protests, and the right-wing groups opposing them. I mean, we're talking about a cop literally telling someone, "we have an arrest warrant for you, but here's how you can avoid arrest ...".

With that in mind, anything that Portland police says about antifa in those protests is basically untrustworthy by default.

Portland Police have stated that it is their policy to routinely reach out to both parties before such an event. You're receiving only half of a story.

There's a difference between reaching out, and actively trying to obstruct justice. Note that it wasn't a case of, "if you show up we'll have reasons to arrest you". The arrest warrant was already issued, but one of the cops involved was trying to prevent it from being served.

There's plenty of details about this story by now, all of them easily verifiable, and practically none in favor of the police.

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