Hacker News Reader

Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

I wonder, does such a person share a lot of characteristics of his mental state with someone who on the other side of the political spectrum, breaks into factory chicken farms to free birds, or who torches an entire dealership of SUVs to save the planet?

Is there not something a little bit fascinating in realizing that regardless of the particular political belief driving them to do something, there must be something that goes haywire in the mind to think that "this is so right that I am justified in destroying property, people to get it done". Maybe when you get to that state (regardless of the particular issue at hand), you should ask as a final check "am I absolutely sure I'm not crazy"? (lol)

Also makes you wonder if, for all the convictions you have about some issue, maybe you would equally be as passionate on the other side of it if you had simply been raised by different parents, been fed different points of view, etc. Maybe our belief that we are morally right is not as great a motivator of action as we think it should be?

View on HN

> I wonder, does such a person share a lot of characteristics of his mental state with someone who on the other side of the political spectrum

This sounds like the "horseshoe theory":

"In political science and popular discourse, the horseshoe theory asserts that the far-left and the far-right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear political continuum, closely resemble one another, analogous to the way that the opposite ends of a horseshoe are close together."

It's no surprise that "[t]he horseshoe theory has been criticized by those from both ends of the political spectrum who oppose being grouped with those they consider to be their polar opposites [...]" by the way ;)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory for the full article.

moebius strip would describe this more accurately than a horse shoe

I thought of a donut shape, but Möbius strip is good too.

Thank you for sharing that. I was not aware of the term, but I have been aware of the idea.

In a narrow manner I have seen this up close.

The people some call Antifa, a term they also use themselves, will show up for protests and demonstrations. Nobody invited them, many would prefer that they were not there. In general, they detract fromt the message of the protests.

Black clad people with various accoutrements needed to fight the police and damage privat property and related activities.

They do not want to talk much with the organizers, and they have no wish to leave.

Their expected presence means that a lot more cops show up with shields and what not to do battle.

I swear that the cops want to fight them, and they want to fight the cops.

These are young men (the people fighting the police are nearly all men from what I have seen, but this was back 10 years ago)

They have a lot of aggression, and they like to break stuff, fight and cause mayhem.

The young men on the other side (and again mostly men) who also wish to fight, break stuff and because mayhem is pretty much identical in mindset, in approach and in action.

Their willingness to hide behind a "political ideology" to further their political wishes through violence.

I think what cause they end up fighting for is somewhat arbitrary. They meet some chick who is left wing, or right wing. They grow up in a certain place with parents of a political persusation.

They may well and up aggressive and causing trouble without the excuse of a political or religious ideology.

As someone with quite a few left-wing friends, this comment was pretty funny to read. I have no idea why people think they can pick apart the inner machinations of the minds of people they've seemingly never spoken to, not into whose ideology they have the slightest insight or interest. Very strong "boomer opining at their suburban kitchen table about the problem with today's youths" energy.

Any given person who identifies as an antifascist is vastly more likely to have deeply sincere & considered political beliefs than essentially anyone else you know in your life.

Almost everyone identifies as anti-fascist. That's why references to Hitler are references to things considered universally awful. A problem many have with Antifa is that they took a term and made it their own, implying that everyone else is not against fascism.

I think the biggest misunderstanding is that Antifa is some sort of group or organised movement.

That's it. Of course being anti-fascist or anti-capitalist are some of the main talking points of left wing protesters and sure, there might be groups of organised protestors. But there is no one organisation behind it all and that is the misconcenption many people have when they hear the word Antifa.

No one should be afraid or ashamed of claiming to be anti-fascist, just because some people who have claimed to be that have not acted ethically!

> implying that everyone else is not against fascism.

Weird how you take them opposing fascism and you doing nothing about fascism to correctly conclude that you're doing nothing about fascism but then baselessly blame them.

"you don't know me mannnnnnnnn"

>Any given person who identifies as an antifascist is vastly more likely to have deeply sincere & considered political beliefs than essentially anyone else you know in your life.

jfc bloviate more why don't you.

please get offended at sweeping generalizations about the left and the respond by making sweeping generalizations about everyone not identified with the left. I'm sure it'll convince everyone.

Almost like one-dimensionalizing a whole lot of ideas doesn't make much sense in the first place.

There is an alternative explanation for the observations of "horseshoe" theory. One of the examples often given by that theory is how both far-right and far-left is more authoritarian compared with mainstream. To me the better model would be viewing the current political paradigm as being extreme about individual freedoms.

In other words - when you are at the south pole every direction is north. This tells us more about where we currently are, and not about the similarity of those other directions.

I know that we don't like her here but Ayn Rand had another explanation to that which seems plausible as well - that both are extreme manifestations of the same concept - collectivism.

As someone else notices above, both Far Right and Far Left have quite a bit of disregard to personal freedoms so Ayn Rand may be onto something here...

"this is so right that I am justified in destroying property, people to get it done"

I do not think that this is necessarily a sign of something "haywire in the mind". The powerful use this logic all the time, and yet it is not a mainstream view that ordering an air strike, for instance, is clearly a sign of mental illness.

Perhaps it should be.

It’s only wrong if you fail. If you succeed you were a “revolutionary”.

I think it's more like: if you are on your own you are crazy, if you are in a big group you are revolutionary, if you win you were right, or something like that.

True. Also, until you win, you are a "terrorist," unless backed by a major power, whose media will call you a "freedom fighter."

I think it's just the conviction that the "problem" is very serious and the conclusion that an extreme measure is the only possible solution (due to reasoning based on incorrect or incomplete information).

I guess you could call that crazy, but it's more like stupid (due to lack of sufficient research/information) and impulsive (lack of second-guessing).

Anyone can fall for it imo, but for most people self-preservation overrides the will to sacrifice themselves (and others) for "the greater good". Which is what extremists are doing, believing their actions are right and the cost (incl. loss of lives) and self-sacrifice are necessary.

> I wonder, does such a person share a lot of characteristics of his mental state with someone who on the other side of the political spectrum, breaks into factory chicken farms to free birds, or who torches an entire dealership of SUVs to save the planet?

If I am convinced that in so doing I'm helping save the planet, a little property damage, sabotage or violent intimidation is a small thing to ask of me. Even if it saved only my family, I'd easily burn every SUV in the world to the ground. I just haven't found any reason to believe that it will save my family, or the planet.

> there must be something that goes haywire in the mind to think that "this is so right that I am justified in destroying property, people to get it done"

As an example, what is it that's gone haywire in me to believe that the police are sometimes justified in killing? We all pretty much accept different forms of institutionalized forms of violence that destroys property and people. It seems to me like a fundamental aspect of human culture and it shouldn't be surprising that someone who feels cornered or unjustly treated will somehow resort to violence, nor should it necessarily be considered sick behavior. Humans have always used violence as a tool to drive change (or maintain the current state of affairs), to assert their power and to communicate what is right and wrong. We should be extremely wary of the fact that normal, healthy people will resort to it if they believe it's necessary.

> Maybe our belief that we are morally right is not as great a motivator of action as we think it should be?

I rather think that our beliefs in what is morally right is fungible and circumstantial. We can create a moral framework for ourselves in which meeting our needs and wants at the expense of others' is justified, and we don't always have the capacity to see how our needs and wants can be met. Someone else can even create it for us, more easily if they can construct evidence for our convictions. That's how you get people to agree to shipping their neighbors off to concentration camps, how "yes" is an acceptable answer to "should we send a bunch of 20-somethings halfway across the glove to kill and cause havoc, stabilizing our oil prices?" or how freeing slaves might at one point have seemed as excessive and extreme as freeing birds.

When these types of conversations come around, I'm always a little concerned and disappointed that more people don't hold/verbalize this or a similar attitude. Instead there's a weird amount of armchair moral confidence that I can't understand.

Especially when there are clear politics, we seem to be asking "What makes those people the way they are?" and not "What would it take for me to become one of those people?"

from someone who has had the opportunity to talk to such people, they share: 1. lack of ability to separate fact from fiction in information they consume. 2. lack a desire to build, create, or problem solve in general. 3. Parent and society issues in that they carry open emotional wounds in general mental terms.

Also note, that extreme-ism in dogma whether it's religion or political philosophy seems to attract such damaged people.

Mt own HO is that we suffer in certain parts of the world from more of this due to lack of real mental health infrastructure to alleviate such things.

Common traits might be (off the top of my head) low in conscientiousness (not bound by rules, formality, low in impulse control etc.), mental instability (e.g. anxiety), high in-group loyalty (related to religiousness, and a sense of purpose or destiny).

Other things might include mood/anxiety disorders and paranoia or just personality traits associated with them.

it's not difficult to understand how he feels. he feels unfree and under control. he can't express himself and get heard. so the only remaining way to get in control of his own life is violence.

“I’m not a dumbass suicide bomber"

is exactly what a dumbass suicide bomber would say...

The US army must be full of these “crazy” people then, no?

And the same with Silicon Valley, which keeps talking about disrupting industries, without regard for the people working in those industries.

>And the same with Silicon Valley, which keeps talking about disrupting industries, without regard for the people working in those industries.

It depends on what you mean by "disrupt". If you're talking about gig economy startups, I'm inclined to agree. However, if you're talking about "disrupt" in the sense of "providing a better product/service than incumbents", I don't see what's crazy about that, even if it does cause some people to lose their jobs. We shouldn't have to cling on to a worse way of doing things just so we keep people employed[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

That's the problem with crazy people, they don't realize their ideas are out of bounds.

That's very true. It's quite scary to see two very extreme sides both trying to achieve hopelessly impossible and utopian goals through either a violent 'revolution' or an 'insurrection' because it is the result they didn't like or get.

Maybe there are some that are so crazy that they see Nazis everywhere on the internet or with someone that they disagree with and call for a medieval-like banishment from society i.e cancel culture. Possibly suffering from VR sickness from playing Wolfenstein VR, but who knows.

Now you have another extremist that 'allegedly' planned to attack an AWS data-center for whatever reason and ultimately was willing to die trying. Perhaps some of these crazy people just believe anything they see on the internet through a mysterious Q person conspiracy theory and go down that rabbit hole and here we are.

>Maybe there are some that are so crazy that they see Nazis everywhere on the internet

>Perhaps some of these crazy people just believe anything they see on the internet through a mysterious...

The sad part is that those who see Nazis under their bed aren't listening to Internet disinfo, but official sources like WaPo, MSNBC or CNN.

I recently got the book "High Conflict" - it goes into this question in some detail.

> there must be something that goes haywire in the mind to think that "this is so right that I am justified in destroying property, people to get it done"

I’m not sure that this guy is mentally unstable, simply because he made a very bad decision.

I think there's crossover but I don't think those two groups are motivated by the same thing.

My observation is that far-right activists tend to feel that they're being deliberately stabbed in the back by the powers that be, rather than seeing themselves as collateral damage. They're also significantly more likely to be paranoid, and they perceive their targets as you would an invading army.

Far-left activism isn't like that. They don't perceive The Man as sadistic, they perceive him as disinterested. "Nobody cares about global warming" vs. "they're deliberately raising the temperature of the earth to hurt me." I also get the vibe far-left activists often engage in activism for fun. It's an exciting mission to break into the farm with your friends. They almost always do it in groups, whereas you're more likely to see jilted right-wingers plan solo attacks like this guy.

(I'm not trying to paint the far-left as better here. I think they're often quite dishonest about their motivations, whereas the far-right is extremely up-front, pied piper gurus aside. I think that's one of the reasons paranoid schizophrenics gravitate more toward the far right, although it helps that their narratives are more about conspiratorial persecution.)

The demographic distributions are also different. Almost all far-right activists are male, whereas vegan & climate activists are mixed.

> They don't perceive The Man as sadistic, they perceive him as disinterested.

This doesn't fit with the whole oppression thing where essentially everything is done to hurt $class, $minority, or $cause.

The social thing seems accurate. There are far right networks, but their violent extremists appear to be mostly loners, which seems to be extremely rare on the far left. The gender distribution is a good point as well. Would the far right act the same if half their members were women?

The left-wing narrative is usually "[group A] is hurt by [issue and thus group B]", whereas the far-right is, "[group C] will hurt you, if you let them." I think it's a deliberate difference. The far right would never say Jews were accidentally conspiring against Americans, it wouldn't help them. But it helps the far left to say their issues are inadvertent, that [villain] can't help his bias, or that he doesn't have to do it deliberately.

Left-wing narratives are often decoupled from intention (e.g. systemic and unconscious bias) because it makes them easier to propogate, whereas right-wing narratives are the opposite - intention is ascribed whether or not it's there, also because it helps the narrative propagate. They're selling to different human tendencies, I think.

Watch the far-right protest. Their eyes usually convey fear or animalistic aggression, even when they're dominant. Far-left groups carry very different emotions, even violent ones like Antifa.

I'm not sure, class warfare isn't a thing that's accidentally happening according to those that subscribe to the theory, it's intentional. Not as a genocidal "let's annihilate the lower class" war, but to perpetually oppress, enslave and exploit them.

The Great Purge didn't consider its targets as accidentally doing harm, they were portrayed as a "fifth column" that sought to destroy the Soviet Union. That external enemy is what creates group cohesion and strengthens the resolve of members. "They're just people like you and me, but the circumstances make their behavior harmful to those people over there" isn't what you mobilize with, so we get White Supremacy behind everything or Patriarchy conspiracies that read like The Protocols.

I get what you're saying but Marxists don't bomb the homes of billionaires, or shoot them. There's no actual warfare, genuine violence is directed at the right, not the rich. They do make a show of constructing a set of gallows in front of Jeff Bezos' house but they don't actually do anything to him, and that's a big difference. I think it's because they don't have the fight-or-flight terror that drives far right-wingers to push the gas pedal of their car into crowds of protestors. They might, in a different system. But I think then the ideology would be different.

In the 70s there were genuine left-wing terrorists like the Weathermen, which might be a good comparison, but the vibe I get is that they liked violence first, and fell into a movement that gave them a justification to perform it. They didn't seem scared to me. The far left rarely seems genuinely scared, but the far right seems very scared.

The difference to me is that nowadays, left-wing threat narratives tend to exist to justify behaviour they already want to engage in, whereas right-wing threat narratives exist much more to be scary. Toward the center things are similar but the differences are quite stark at the fringes.

I don't mean this as a technical argument or anything. I could be wrong, I'm just trying to describe my instinct.

> The Great Purge

Was a genocide by people who attained power, not the fringes of society acting out for weird psychological reasons. I wouldn't really compare the motivations. Dictators are dictators, right or left, and the support they get is much more transactional. I'm also skeptical that Lenin was genuinely motivated by Marxism. I think Marxism was an excuse he could use to gain power.

It wouldn't be post about far-right extremist attacks without someone in the comments trying to "whataboutism" it about leftists.

Because leftist used revolutionary terror to achieve their goals as well.

It's not whataboutism if they have a history of doing it.

Whataboutism doesnt mean that what was brought up is not true, just that it distracts from the original criticism. The classic example is “Soviet Union has problems? Well, look how the US is treating black people.”

If someone is criticizing you in bad faith, and from a position of utter hypocrisy, it is fair enough to point that out. There is nothing to gain from battling an adversary like that on their terms.

Sure, I am just commenting on the statement that it is not whataboutism because it is true.

It was in context of possible mindsets. That's not whataboutism either. Because it talks about possible mindsets not current state of affairs.

No one was talking about current far right or far left politics in US until the message I replied to.

Or someone else making snarky comments like this in response. Let's not pretend that the problem of people being brainwashed into extreme beliefs and even acting on them inside the various echo chambers of the internet is limited to any particular demographic. It's one of the elephants in this increasingly digital room of ours that achingly needs addressing.

We need to be clear that domestic terrorism in the US is evenly split between pseudo-Islamic extremism and the far right. Terrorist action from the left currently counts for a tiny amount of this violence.

While the riots of last summer were not characterized as terrorism, they were instances of political violence resulting in massive property damage and multiple deaths.

https://www.google.com/search?q=fiery+but+mostly+peaceful

There's a palatable element of partisanship distorting the presentation of these issues. Instead of looking for equivalence or ranking which side is worse, perhaps we should blanketly condemn political violence.

> While the riots of last summer were not characterized as terrorism,

You can see how this destroys anything that you're about to say, right?

To try to engage with your point: there's a difference between a demonstration (BLM) and bombing a church (far right). There's a difference between riots (BLM) and mass murder at a synagogue (far right). There's a difference between organising a march (BLM) and driving cars into protestors at that march (far right).

Stop trying to draw equivalence between these things. They are not the same.

> There's a palatable element of partisanship

The FBI isn't a partisan organisation and they're very clear: the current domestic threats are from the far right and islamic extremism.

It is hard to have this discussion here. It is almost as if you didn't read my comment at all. Instead you go straight for inflammatory.

https://www.npr.org/2018/01/26/580677742/the-massive-case-of...

From NPR (2018), widely regarded as having a left slant, "The Massive Case Of Collective Amnesia: The FBI Has Been Political From The Start"

When someone talks about mass shootings in churches (Charleston - 9 dead), and synagogues (Pittsburgh - 11 dead, 6 wounded; Powey - 1 dead, 3 wounded) or cars being driven into protestors (Charlottesville - 1 dead, 19 injured) and you pop off to say [okay I know these aren't terrorism but how about these examples of property damage? The left is just as bad] you are being inflammatory.

You posting that NPR link is incoherent. For that to make any sense you'd have to be claiming that, during the Trump administration, the FBI was deceptively hiding terrorism by the left and by islamicists and pushing excessive focus on the right.

> Instead of looking for equivalence or ranking which side is worse, perhaps we should blanketly condemn political violence.

>You posting that NPR link is incoherent

From where I stand your entire reply is incoherent and inflammatory. You accuse me of seeking equivalence before citing the most inflammatory examples of political violence by one side. This despite the fact that I explicitly suggest that equivalence or ranking isn't interesting to me.

Historical context of the FBI's evolving political agendas may help to illustrate that we may in fact be inside of a bias bubble. Especially if you are asserting that the FBI is apolitical. The mainstream presses' presentation of political violence last summer may also be instructive.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure why it is important which flavor is more terrorist-y. It seems like an irrelevant partisan distinction. I'd like to avoid that debate, thanks.

at the end of the day, it is important which flavor is actually terrorism, and the fact that it tends to be concentrated in neo-islamic and neo-fascist right wing people is a tool that we can use to help fix the problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/discriminatory-p...

1) Given that those succumbing to group think and confirmation bias are generally unaware of their biases, how would we know that we are not experiencing something similar now?

2) What are the implications for civil liberties, if the state targets political opponents of the current administration?

3) Could these issues be resolved targeting political violence generally, instead of making partisan pleas and accusations?

4) If political extremism & intolerance are issues driven by the contentious political environment, are these partisan blame games contributing to the climate of toxic political divisiveness or helping to resolve it?

what are the implications for civil liberties, if the state targets terrorists? It's probably not great. But it's probably better than having more Oklahoma City bombings or capitol building attempted insurrections.

Could 'these issues be resolved targeting political violence generally, instead of making partisan pleas and accusations'? No -- in factual reality world, there is an ideology which is responsible for the problem, and so it seems sensible to focus on that ideology. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/22/white-supremac...

"are these partisan blame games contributing to the climate of toxic political divisiveness"? I'll tell you what's contributing to the climate of toxic political divisiveness -- overwhelmingly, the right wing, its conspiracy theorists, and their enablers; see, for example, qanon/8chan, the count of trump's lies while in office. These are radical outliers. Let's worry about that before we start worrying about the impact of us complaining about that.

>> While the riots of last summer were not characterized as terrorism,

>You can see how this destroys anything that you're about to say, right?

Not so much, unless you would like to dispute that riots count as violence. Or that terrorism is politically motivated violence. :)

The problem is that far-right extremism is by far the biggest violent threat, a multiple of Islamist extremism or far-left extremism. This applies not only to the US but most of Europe as well.

Feel free to check out any of the pieces below

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/27/in-ameri...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/us/domestic-terrorist-gro...

https://cco.ndu.edu/PRISM/PRISM-Volume-6-no-2/Article/839011...

https://www.europol.europa.eu/activities-services/main-repor... (p. 11)

For the US, that's likely. For Europe it heavily depends on how you count. Is a far-right loner murdering a politician the same as a group of Islamists murdering 200 people in Madrid? That is, are you counting events or impact? By events, the far right might (which is hard to calculate, because it's fuzzy, e.g. Turkish Grey Wolves are considered to be a far right group, but are Islamists) be more than Islamic terrorism, by impact they certainly are not in the last decades.

People are violent in general. There is petty criminals, white collar crime, there is systematic oppression by the people in power towards those at the bottom, there is young people just letting out steam, psychopaths and so on and so on.

Non radical people simply don't have the need to use violence because they are happy with they way things are. They have the police and the military doing the violence for them.

The use of violence is not inherently good or bad and yes you can use violence to achieve a state of less violence. That would be in fact the idealized view of what a police force should do.

The rejection of right wing radicalism should not be on the point that they use violent means but of what they want to achieve. That is to oppress and/or murder anyone not sharing their political views, race, faith, sexual orientation, nationality and so on. Every rational human being should appose that.

Right wing terrorism is a real and current threat. If you prefer to cry how bad the left is, you are part of the problem.

I don't think it would be a hugely wrong to say both ends of the spectrum think they're "outside" of the normal world. Their world has different rules and morals and thus they would be executing along those.

In their world, you're the one who needs to ask if you're crazy agreeing living your life while agreeing to conditions X,Y, and Z.

[amrchair psychology disclosure]

The willingness to use violence against people or property seems like it would be a further leap. Operating outside of the mainstream ideologies isn't necessarily a slippery slope. Reasonable people should be able to disagree without using violence.

Do you believe, by extension from this, that states are governed by unreasonable people, and that if they were reasonable war would never be necessary?

Unreasonable or perhaps immoral?

If we start from the premise that the state is defined as an institution monopolizing violence, then it stands to reason that one or the other is true.

If the ends justify the means and the morality of the methods used are irrelevant, then perhaps we can say that the state generally or wars specifically are rational.

These are questions of absolutism, which is fine in theory, but in practice we need to make room for pragmatism.

But back to the specific context of the article, the use of violence against an Amazon datacenter seems unreasonable. It fails a basic sanity check. The individual undoubtedly could have chosen other non-violent methods to express himself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com