Comment by anongraddebt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anongraddebt | Hacker News Reader

From what I can tell, 'polite' and 'respectable' culture (a.k.a the dominant culture) in America is center-left if not minimally progressive. At least, this is the case for social issues.

In the 90's, the dominant counterculture was some version of leftism. On the fringes, there was vitriol and anger towards the 'polite' and publicly 'respectable' dominant culture of the time - some version of evangelical and catholic right-wing ideology. Atheism was still edgy. Raging against an undefinable machine had artistic meaning.

We can throw in as many other causal factors as we want in an attempt to explain the current socio-political state of the country, but we can't really deny that it looks as if the new counterculture exists somewhere on the right.

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I remember the days when John Stewart was edgy. Now, you'd be hard pressed to find a mainstream comedian, who focuses on politics (Colbert, Noah, etc.), that isn't clearly center-left. The coastal, cosmopolitan, affluent, center-left culture is practically a monolithic gate keeper of what is and isn't 'respectable'.

>We can throw in as many other causal factors as we want in an attempt to explain the current socio-political state of the country, but we can't really deny that it looks as if the new counterculture exists somewhere on the right.

If you're arguing this in good faith I'm sorry, but this is outright delusion. The political ideology that controls the highest office in the country and half of the legislature is counterculture? Seriously? Can you see how absurd this claim is?

The “alt right is the new punk rock” is one of their marketing pitches. Apparently it works, but only for a certain demographic.

Every political or social collective/group/movement/whatever wants to be seen as hip and cool or whatever. So, the fact that alt-right individuals market themselves this way should come as no surprise. It also never came as a surprise that the center-left labeled themselves #TheResistance when they already had a monopoly on the popular vote and a monopoly on mainstream press and hollywood, which is just shorthand for saying that they marketed themselves as hip and cool and edgy (or whatever) even though they are quite clearly the dominant culture. How many anti-Trump SNL episodes must there be for this to be patently obvious?

What percentage of speakers on college campuses got deplatformed due to being right-wing vs. left-wing in the past decade?

If the right-wing doesn't harbor the counterculture, but rather the left-wing still harbors it, then why were electoral models so blown to bits in 2016 thanks to phenomena like Trump supporters not identifying as such in polls/surveys?

"Nazi Punks Fuck Off"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTs_Q4hEqmA

Political power does not have to be rooted in culture. American culture is overwhelmingly produced by progressives, often with the deliberate intention of furthering progressive values. There are exceptions but the relative paucity and shoddiness of them speaks volumes. Conservatives are by and large treated in art and media as a dubious fringe.

The electoral college is becoming severely strained. With each couple of presidential cycles the country increasingly tests its limits. How many million more votes did Clinton have over Trump in 2016? Trump won the election by ~30K votes spread across two 'blue wall' states and a single rust belt state.

Republican gerrymandering and the agglomeration of left-wing voters in metropolitan corridors goes a long way to explaining the recent Republican monopoly in the Senate.

Now, if you are suggesting that having the White House and half the legislature excludes a party from harboring within its fold a countries counterculture, then explain the 90's. The only rebuttal here is to say that the Clinton administration and the Democrats in Congress during the 90's were not representative of leftist counterculture, but that Trump and the GOP are representative of that part of the right-wing I am labeling as counterculture. The former is perhaps plausible, the latter probably isn't. What goes on on 4chan and 8chan, from what I can tell, is not representative of what goes on in D.C.

Now, for the sake of argument, say we accept this modified argument and agree that Trump and the GOP Congress represents what I am labeling the new counterculture. Can you still not see how center-left politics is the dominant culture? If I watch or read CNN, MSNBC, NBC, Comedy Central, The Economist, The NYT, Washington Post, The Late Shows, The Late Late Shows, pretty much anything coming out of Hollywood, etc. are you suggesting I'll find anti-trump culture to not be predominant within articles and videos I see?

Being anti-Trump doesn't make you center-left. It's not even a question of politics. I can't even articulate all the reasons why he is bad for the country, not in a short comment - the fact that he is right-wing is least among them. Many (most?) Republicans also think this, but are unwilling to publicly undermine "their guy" (particularly at the expense of their careers).

Also, in a society with free media, surely the "dominant culture" is centrist, by definition?

I didn't imply being anti-trump was sufficient for making one center-left. My argument is that a political wing holding the White House and Congress is insufficient evidence for a countries counterculture being precluded from coming from that wing.

The fact that establishment type Republicans (whether in office, writing op-eds and books, or simply voting as normal citizens) are also anti-Trump, strengthens my argument.

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There seem to be at least five possible candidates for a counterculture today: progressives, center-left (the cosmopolitan, coastal, etc.), centrists, establishment republicans, and the portion of Trump supporters that are 'alt-right'(I assume the alt-right populate 4chan and 8chan quite heavily).

The disagreement here seems to be over whether the fact that Trump is in office and the GOP holds the senate, precludes the alt-right from being the countries counterculture. I can see a number of different ways this could evolve argumentatively.

Regardless, to preclude the alt-right from being the counterculture on the basis that the GOP has the White House and the Senate, requires assuming Trump is alt-right, some non-trivial portion of Congress is alt-right, and that for some additional reason these facts preclude the alt-right from being the counterculture.

I wasn't responding to your argument about counterculture - simply the following pair of sentences:

> Can you still not see how center-left politics is the dominant culture? If I watch or read CNN, MSNBC, NBC, Comedy Central, The Economist, The NYT, Washington Post, The Late Shows, The Late Late Shows, pretty much anything coming out of Hollywood, etc. are you suggesting I'll find anti-trump culture to not be predominant within articles and videos I see?

I'm obviously misinterpreting, but to me that sentence ordering does imply that "anti-Trump = center left".

>How many million more votes did Clinton have over Trump in 2016?

Since the election isn't determined by popular vote, and hence candidates don't campaign with a strategy to earn the most votes, this is irrelevant to the outcome and by no means indication that Clinton would have won.

A consequence of your argument is that most everyone on the left who said the electoral college is becoming unacceptable due to Democrats winning the popular vote but not the White House (Gore and Clinton), in fact had empty arguments and talking points. I'm not sure that's a consequence you'd want to accept.

Regardless, do you think the multiple millions of additional votes Clinton received is not at least minimal evidence that the country is a bit more left-wing than right-wing?

>Regardless, do you think the multiple millions of additional votes Clinton received is not at least minimal evidence that the country is a bit more left-wing than right-wing?

Personally, being as how I don't consider Clinton left-wing, nor Trump right-wing, I can't say for certain.

The point is that "alt-right" is the counter culture. "Alt-right" doesn't control half of the legislature, most of the Republicans are more traditional conservatives. You could argue the President has their support but his actual policies are rather far removed from what members of alt-right movement want.

This touches on an interesting change in the trend of conspiracy theories. To quote an article from The New Yorker:

>“Classic” conspiracy theories, according to Muirhead and Rosenblum, arise in response to real events—the assassination of John F. Kennedy, say, or the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Such theories, they argue, constitute a form of explanation, however inaccurate they may be. What sets theories like QAnon apart is a lack of interest in explanation. Indeed, as with the nonexistent child-trafficking ring being run out of the nonexistent basement, “there is often nothing to explain.” The professors observe, “The new conspiracism sometimes seems to arise out of thin air.”

>The constituency, too, has shifted. Historically, Muirhead and Rosenblum maintain, it’s been out-of-power groups that have been drawn to tales of secret plots. Today, it’s those in power who insist the game is rigged, and no one more insistently than the so-called leader of the free world.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/22/whats-new-abou...

It's almost like society in the US (mainly) has become so fractured that some in-power-groups actually think they're the underdogs.

>It's almost like society in the US (mainly) has become so fractured that some in-power-groups actually think they're the underdogs.

Well yes. White people believing they're underdogs oppressed by multiculturalism and shifting demographics, Christians believing they're underdogs oppressed by secularism, and men believing they're underdogs oppressed by feminism all form the spiritual and sociological genesis of modern alt-right and anti-progressive identity politics.

The most politically and culturally powerful demographic in human history (the straight white Christian American male) views itself as history's most existentially oppressed minority. When they look at the groups they perceive to be their enemies they see a consistent narrative of power being gained through struggle, and the solidarity that comes from the persecution complex.

Thus, every argument by those enemies is adopted, inverted and weaponized against them. Black people are oppressed by a racist system? No - black people are the oppressors, just look at BLM, they're shooting white people in the streets. Everyone hates white people now, but what's wrong with being white? Why don't all lives matter? Women are oppressed by a sexist, patriarchal society? No - women have gained so much power and control through feminism that the world is now effectively a global matriarchy and men are being oppressed so much that they're being cucked and driven to suicide en masse. LGBT people are being oppressed? No, society is being forced to accept these alternate lifestyles as normative due to the overwhelming influence of the gay agenda and constant pro-gay propaganda in the media pushing it down everyone's throats, and people who support traditional values are having their rights to free speech, association and religion suppressed. And also they're putting chemicals in the water to turn the frogs gay. Etc.

Well, most of the people who talk about how the white cis straight men have all the power don't seem to believe it either. They keep on calling for all the supposedly white cis male controlled tech companies to police everyone's speech, and even for the white cis male police and government to step in, confident that all that policing will follow their own supposedly-powerless views and stamp out those of their supposedly far more powerful eneimes. The very idea that it might go the other way is seen as so absurd that only a concern troll trying to help the other side would suggest such a thing.

For the record, while I am a straight white American male, I'm a political nihilist in the epistemological sense that I don't think there is any mind-independent truth to be found in politics. I'm a moral realist, though.

To your point about heterosexual religious white people projecting an identity of oppression: is that the average member of the alt-right?

Also, from the comments in this thread, it seems that being the 'counterculture' is somehow noble, positive, 'on the right side of history', etc. I don't see why anyone should assume that.

Lastly, in relatively free societies like the U.S. currently is (and has been for the past couple decades), whatever the counterculture is, it clearly isn't oppressed. I said Atheism was edgy in the 90's, and suggested it was part of the 90's counterculture. Atheists were clearly not oppressed in the 90's, just like the alt-right is quite clearly not oppressed.

>To your point about heterosexual religious white people projecting an identity of oppression: is that the average member of the alt-right?

Probably not, given that I'm describing an extreme viewpoint. I've encountered alt-right people who reject the white supremacist elements of the movement but still identify for various political reasons.

But the narrative of oppression is still part of the identity politics of these movements, given their reactionary nature. The modern men's rights movement, which includes incels, redpillers, MGTOW, etc (the movement itself being older) isn't merely a criticism of, or alternative to, feminism, but a reaction to the perceived oppression of men by feminists. Anti-progressivism and anti-multiculturalism are reactions to the perceived oppression of conservatives, Christians and white people by leftists and other races and ethnic groups.

This phenomenon was covered in the mainstream media during Trump's campaign - the narrative of his success being portrayed as a successful anti-establishment revolution by the disenfranchised "rural white male" that felt betrayed by globalism and the loss of white majority power.

Be specific. Are you saying that the edgy and vitriolic people who populate places like 4chan and 8chan are currently the in-power-group in America?

If they are in fact the in-power-group, then why isn't David Duke making the rounds on CNN, The Tonight Show, Ellen, and SNL?

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