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Comment by hooande | Hacker News Reader

> "while for the most part the other side just rolls its eyes and cracks jokes to 'own the libs.'"

They literally stormed the capitol, dude.

Here's the bottom line: there is not an equivalent of qanon or MTG on the left. You can exaggerate any number of things you don't like about liberals to ridiculous proportions, but this fact will still be true.

Honest discussions require looking at the world bluntly and clearly. If you want to list various social trends you don't like, start a thread for that. We're trying to discuss whether the parties are fundamentally different, or not.

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>Here's the bottom line: there is not an equivalent of qanon or MTG on the left.

The left is currently re-enacting the Chinese cultural revolution and most people won't realize it until it's too late.

Learn about critical race theory: https://newdiscourses.com/2021/01/what-is-critical-race-theo...

You should go actually learn about critical race theory, from critical race theorists, rather than from someone's opinion of a straw man

It’s racist. It's literally based on Marxism. There are so many examples where it leads to racism once you apply it in practice: https://www.city-journal.org/racial-equity-programs-seattle-...

Where are the examples of it improving the world? There are none. It’s an evil ideology.

Assembling a mob is almost always a bad idea as it tends to get out of control. What’s notable about the Capitol riot is that it was a rare instance of Republicans doing this. The only other instance that springs to mind is “Charlottesville”, which of course the media talked about for years afterwards. Meanwhile, “the left” formed mobs all summer - in city centres, outside police precincts, outside the White House, etc.

When “the left” does QAnon it’s called the Mueller Investigation and the Rachel Maddow Show and it’s broadly embraced rather than limited to a bunch of cooks on social media.

So one side believes that rich people secretly get together to eat babies, and the other side has a news opinion show?

Yup, same thing.

I think probably <0.1% of R voters think rich people secretly eat babies, and it was certainly never an idea entertained on cable news. Whereas there was practically non-stop media focus on the Russian collusion conspiracy theory and I think probably half of Democrats thought it was actually true.

30% of Republicans have a favorable opinion of QANON, which explicitly says high ranking Democratic Party leaders drink the blood of babies/are pedos/etc. https://www.businessinsider.com/30-of-republicans-have-favor...

What is your non whataboutism response to that?

I think that poll is likely bullshit.

Only 1500 people participated which is basically nothing. How can that possibly be representative of a country of ~300mil? The questions say "Have you heard of Qanon?" and "Do you like Qanon?", but doesn't clarify what Qanon is... For all we know those 30% of people polled heard "Qanon is a movement against the Democrats" and thought, "Oh, I like that." They did not sign up for 'satan worshipping pedos'.

Without seeing their methodology, there's no reason to believe the information is accurate. How did they confirm people submitting answers were really who they say they are? And YouGov is a British company which I've never heard of, not a criticism but it does make me suspicious.

There's so many problems with surveys like this, but instead you jumped immediately from "Business Insider said this" -> "30% of Republicans are conspiracy theorists."

OK, lets say you're right. Lets say less than 30% of Republicans are conspiracy theorists who think that prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton are secret pedophiles who should be murdered.

What is the acceptable percentage of Republicans that think Hillary Clinton should be murdered? 25%? 10%? Because its certainly greater than 1%. Much greater.

This is only the beginning.

I understand where you're coming from but this isn't a good argument.

First, you're again jumping to conclusions about what people believe in order to straw man them - I've never heard anyone call for Hillary's murder, only her imprisonment. I still don't see that kind of thing as representative.

Second, by this kind of logic, the Muslim ban was a great idea. While only an incredibly small percentage of them actually committed terrorist acts, what's the acceptable percentage of those who think that radical Shari'a is a good idea, even if they don't engage in violence? 25%? 10%? Look, here's another random unverified poll that says half of all British Muslims support illegalization of homosexuality: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/11/british-musl... Guess we should systematically discriminate against them!

In both cases you are using stereotypes to hurt people. This is not to say Qanon people should be given a free pass, call them out on their bullshit. But I think the percentage would have to be nearly 100 in order to justify any extreme actions against Qanon. And it clearly isn't.

What are you talking about? Are you in the right thread? None of this makes sense in regards to my parent comments. Yikes. And I'm not engaging in your "Muslims are bad" whataboutism deflection. What extreme actions do you see me advocating for here? What stereotypes am I propagating?

Weird stuff.

This is not hard to follow, try and keep up.

Qanon supporters represent a small fraction of Republicans. Muslim extremists represent a small fraction of Muslims.

Your comment talks about the "acceptable percentage" of Republicans who believe in Qanon. Travel bans for Muslims were justified based on the rise in Islamic terrorism - e.g. "An unacceptable percentage of Muslims are engaged in terrorism, we must ban ALL of them."

In both cases the majority is misrepresented by the minority. In both cases criticism against the minority is misapplied to the majority. In the first case you argue that this is justified, whereas I argue in both cases it is not.

It is wrong because Muslims and Muslim Terrorists are two different groups. It is wrong because Republicans and Qanon Crazies are two different groups.

> What stereotypes am I propagating?

Oh, so you are arguing in bad faith. Nevermind.

cozuya, you said you're not interested in engaging but replied within six minutes! My email is in my profile if you want to talk more.

> Guy/gal makes an embarrassingly boring, potentially racist deflection of the discussion to a Muslim whataboutism nonsense

> I tell him I'm not interested in engaging in a Muslim whataboutism deflection

> Muslim Muslim Muslim Muslim Muslim Muslim Muslim Muslim Muslim Muslim Muslim Muslim Muslim

What a waste of your time and effort.

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