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Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

The reason why extremism is having more trouble taking root in Europe is because there's less inequality there. Where inequality is highest, terrorism is highest.

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This probably won't be an unpopular view, but I really think its culture and specifically things like news media.

Watching FOX and even CNN exacerbates me in a way that watching things like the BBC don't. The standards for journalism and discourse are incredibly different.

And its a feedback loop because I don't just blame the media, I blame the people that feed the media and increase the race for ratings and fear mongering.

I agree to a point, but surely the news media can't be where all the signal is coming from, there's too many forums on the internet (like the chans, and now social media sites) with too many users.

I don't see how it's related to inequality. I don't think any of these shooters were poor or went through poverty. For this incident the press showed pictures of a big single family home in suburban Dallas.

That's their parents' home, no?

The US middle class is shrinking. And it's always dangerous to have lots of young men with no prospects. With no future worth living into.

But seriously, mass shootings are just a sideshow. It's the political implications that are truly frightening.

>That's their parents' home, no?

Are there a lot of parents that won't allow their kin to live with them when the only other option is homelessness?

Kicking them out might not mean instant homelessness, they can get a job before leaving the house, crash on a friends couch.

However they're at a much greater risk of becoming homeless.

yes

It's not necessarily about whether they are/were objectively poor. I believe, (part of) it is about the perception that others/outsiders are getting an unfair advantage at the cost of the tribe the shooter identifies with.

By what measure has extremism failed to take root in Europe?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2015_Paris_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Berlin_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Arena_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Stockholm_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Strasbourg_attack

If you meant nativist extremism, I suspect multi-party democracies allow something of a safety valve. AfD and Brexit Party voters can still feel like they’re being heard while identifying as less extreme than NDP or BNP. In the American two-party system, one side is always painting the other as their most extreme example with no credible third parties for contrast, and indeed extremists do sometimes rise to prominence from within either party.

Also:

The Utøya massacre / bombing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utøya

Jo Cox UK MP assassination: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/europe/jo-cox-briti...

UK right-wing riots: https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/right-wing-media-u...

Attacks on immigrant vendors in Greece: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-greece-crisis-dawn/specia...

Dresden anti-islamist marches: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/15/dresden-police...

That's the first time I've ever seen the 2011 riots in London called "Right Wing".

I was in London at the time. They were sparked by the police killing of a drug dealer, rightly or wrongly, and were more chaotic and violent than any sort of political.

Whatever the reaction was in the US, that article just calls it wrong.

--edit-- I think it might be you that's read it wrong, the article is just about US right wing media interests using the London riots to further their political goals in the US.

You might want to take that link off your list, it doesn't support your argument.

Yeah, I'm going to need proof on that. Political extremism is, like, a European invention. How about this

https://taz.de/taz-Recherche-auf-Englisch/!5558072/

or this

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/world/europe/italy-neo-na...

Yes and no. It really depends.

Many ME terrorists are actually relatively wealthy (Bin Laden being the most famous example), and historically revolutions occur more from a rising middle class rather than from the lowest classes. Inequality can play a role - but many times other factors are far more important.

I doubt it’s that one dimensional. One could point out that making things equal results in (edit) even more terror (as most former communists countries prove). Of course that reasoning would ignore the Scandinavian “exception“.

It is actually that simple, because it is a fundamental part of social psychology. In primitive cultures, when one man amassed too much wealth, he'd give it away for two reasons: one: it brings him prestige as a benefactor, and two: it prevents disgruntled members from killing him.

We're socially wired to keep things "fair", and when very unfair things happen, we have an almost religious feeling of righteous indignation. If someone is cheating society, we want to punish them and set things right. This is why there's a tendency towards lynch mobs, or their modern twitter equivalents.

Equivalently, when someone feels excluded from the basic things he sees others enjoying freely (food, sex, shelter, leisure), he also feels this injustice, and will want to lash out, punish, and bring justice back to his society. If he's excluded for long enough, or to an extreme enough degree, he'll stop associating himself with that society, and possibly even consider replacing it with a better one. Of course, not everyone who feels the bad end of inequality is going to take up a gun and start shooting, but the less emotionally stable you are from your circumstances, the greater the risk. These "manifests" are a last-ditch effort to be listened to, respected, and included. I'm not talking about listening to whatever weird bullshit they're spouting; I'm talking about listening to their pain and humanity.

The sad part is that many justice systems are designed to exclude those convicted of a crime, thus excluding the most vulnerable, who need inclusion the most. It's one reason why you have such high recidivism rates in societies with more vengeful justice systems.

Inequality is a form of exclusion, and we're wired to fight it. Fighting terrorism is fighting the symptom rather than the cause. The harder you hit them, the harder they fight back, because they've got nothing left to lose that they care about, and they have "righteousness" on their side.

That is the most succinct well thought out reasoning on this phenomenon I have ever read. I wish there was a way to stop this rather than have "rich people should share", because that just seems really unlikely :<

All societies drift towards inequality. We can't avoid that because our rules and laws are imperfect, and people will take advantage to control a bigger slice of the pie. That's fine, so long as we have corrections from time to time to redistribute wealth and power (such as the wealth giveaways that primitive societies practiced, or debt jubilees in more complex societies).

Historically, when inequality goes on for too long, social unrest takes root and gradually grows worse, divisive factions and subgroups grow, "little battles" take place, and, if untreated for too long, revolution breaks out.

By Scandinavian “exception” do you mean (1) that Scandinavan countries are more equal than most Western countriea but less oppressive than communist countries, or (2) the high rate (in terms of people killed) of white/extreme-right terrorism in Scandinavian countries (i.e. Brevik)?

Former "communist" countries were not equal. There was corruption, and a pretty large split between normal people and the higher ups in the party. There was lack of basic supplies.

> Imminent threats and specific calls to violence are a different matter.

More equality does not mean communism or everybody gets exactly the same. You position is just a straw man argument.

> Scandinavian

Scandinavian countries are social democracies, like most of Europe, they are not community countries. And are no exception but good examples of implementing good policies.

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