It’s not funny anymore. Far-right extremists’ use of humour
ec.europa.eu
ec.europa.eu
But be aware, this is maybe the first sign that "humor" will be the next victim of the "cancel culture" and the current trend in "free speech censorship"...
It affected shitton of people about covid/vacciness related stuff
It's one of the biggest challenges nowadays
So what? blame the implementation detail and people behind it then
It just shows that the argument stands, becaues it's an actual problem and I'd rather do not have to argue with my parents about Bill Gates creating covid to inject 5G chips
and no, it's no joke and it's sad.
Coping with that bomb isn't voluntary. There are proverbs something along the lines of "a penny of prevention is worth a pound of cure", they didn't become proverbs by lacking truth.
If there was less tax and people would have more money to spend, the "far rights" extremists would have less supporters and followers.
If the European institutions and national government would give a better use to the money, like improving citizen everyday life and issues or education, there would also be less "far rights" extremists.
And the funniest and worse point, is that a common complaint of some "far right" extremists is especially that European and international institutions are a waste of their money, and providing in exchange just limitations to what national governments can do. So, on that count also, better spending of our tax money would improve the situation more than this bullshit report.
The extreme left needs an enemy and tries to find evidence somewhere else, they behave like conservative on the 50s did.
The left made up with communism and matured, focusing instead on social justice. The right didn't do the same with nazism. When the white majority feels cornered by progressive ideals, white supremacy grows.
We just mourned the 10 year anniversary of the Utøja massacre where a radicalized nationalist killed at over 60 children. Their only crime was being socialists. Several phychologists had to work him until they realized he wasn't crazy. He just believed the far right conspiracies like cultural Marxism, eurabia and white genocide. This is not a game.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-u...
Islamic terrorists who want to push a caliphate want Arabic socialism like other African countries already enjoy nowadays with not much economical success or individual freedom. The same could you see in Spanish ETA who identified themselves as left wing “liberation” army that cost thousand of deaths and hundreds of thousands exiled. And I could continue for hours: even if exceptionally you may find right wing organizations, which do exist, these are not the majority.
And I could continue with the rest of things you said but I think refuting your main points is enough and I don’t want to speak more about politics. I made Some observations which some people seem to not share. I don’t care about the negative vote mafia organized to promote topics and ideas on HN, it happens with everything, to promote blogs, programming languages, services, functional programming…
Some people like to think by themselves and make their own analysis of the situation rather than buy the influencer opinion du jour.
This report is the typical lobby crap we see every single day in Europe, and that happens on almost any topic, then it will be later used to make a headline on a news paper connected to a political party related to the ones who financed them. That’s how politics works on Brussels recently and how some ideas are pushed to the mass, and to be honest some people is just too tired of such constant manipulation, independently of the contents or it’s accuracy which is a topic I don’t want to discuss much (in spite of our initial encounter).
I hope I made my point clear.
It is a shitload of money in my opinion.
There are around 70 millions inhabitants in France, only around 18% of households pay income tax. But, in fact, only 10% of the households are contributing for around 70% of the income tax.
And this 26 Billion, is this 'netto' or 'bruto' ?
(in 2019) https://www.statista.com/statistics/316691/eu-budget-contrib...
(in 2017) https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-...
My estimation is that my personal contribution to Europe should be between 500 € to 2000 € a year.
Sure, not all money is wasted, hopefully, but still if you accumulate all bullshit jobs and reports like this one over a year, this is still a shit load of money that you be put in better usage.
Note: I don't say that all europe jobs and reports are bullshits, are the opposite, a lot of them are quite good, and most of the time of better usage and quality than european national governments in my opinion.
France 'contributed' ~ € 7.5 Billon netto to the EU.
Which is something totally different than € 26 Billion. And it still isn't your money.
Here is a link in French, but at least you will have an evolution graph with 2021:
https://www.ifrap.org/europe-et-international/contribution-d...
The other netto of the other link is not "justified", not official documents, but let's suppose it is correct, and that it evolved in proportion, we would be at least, as of today, at 11 Billions NET.
That is still quite a number.
But you don't stop repeating that it is not my money as a French tax payer, can you explicit what you mean? because so far you just say that "as a fact" and it does not make any sense!
memes have strong power, especially if you can vote them to the front page
there has been shitton of them before 2016 election and during Pandemic they were used for both - good and bad.
From looking cost efficency perspective memes are insanely good.
edit Trump -> 2016
This is a document that describes, accurately, how the far right uses humour. That is a useful thing to document and be aware of when trying to combat radicalisation.
Think about how "internet" and "social networks" become "evil" in policy maker heads.
Now, everything that is happening is the fault of internet. So, internet has to be censored.
As said in other comments, the guys are trying to create "a case" from simple and innocent trolling.
We have seen that a lot before:
- Persons become violent because they played violent video games in their childhood: The proof? Some mass murders played video games.
- Messengers/chat are the root cause of terrorism: the proof? Some terrorists used SMS and email to discuss.
Are you willfully or unwilfully ignorant? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
* "innocent" trolling like 5G/Covid/magical cures conspiracy theories that literally cost lives ?
* "innocent" trolling like what resulted in people getting together to try and overturn the latest US presidential elections ?
* "innocent" trolling like what helped drive the point for Brexit ?
It's hard to draw a line between a shithead teenager memeing and an astroturfing or at least organised campaign that brings together terrible things.
Is that innocent trolling as well: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/17/covid-misinfor... ?
And this is very very dangerous for us, because you are not the only one like that, but a lot of policy maker push for these fake arguments as it is very convenient for them to support their policies.
There was an excellent article in HN that explains why you are wrong:
https://www.cigionline.org/articles/disinformation-its-histo...
(Discussion link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27923933 )
You're falling for the pretext that it's all just a joke. And it is, for a while. And then it's not any more.
> Thinking of far-right extremism, we might associate this with backward-looking, stiff and formal zealots who act on the fringes of the political spectrum. Yet, the skinhead image has long been overcome and, in fact, also more recent phenomena like the Identitarians have lost traction throughout Europe. As farright extremists strategically merge with online cultures, their approach changes drastically. In fact, they have learned the lesson that if — in our digitalised societies — a movement wants to be successful, it needs to be entertaining and participatory. In fact, a shared sense of humour has become an effective tool in terms of immersing individuals into extremist ideologies and, as a consequence, contributed to some of the worst acts of violence in the 21st century.
And people like Maddow claimed for months if not years that Trump was a Russian agent, and we now know for a fact that this was never the case and the rumors were started by the FBI under direction of Obama (this was at the same time the Obama administration declined to charge Clinton, mind you) based on intel they knew was false, and because of the investigation launched based on justification from the same known-false evidence
God I'm so tired of explaining this, but seriously, the biggest conspiracy theories of the last decade were promulgated on the pages of "trustworthy" traditional media, and all you have to do is look into the news stories after they leave the headlines to find out how things turned out when time passed and reality finally came to light
The issue at hand is that there's a problem with resurgent "alt-right" (or whatever you want to call them) extremist groups that have demonstrated a potential for violence as well as infiltration into trusted organizations like the police. They have taken up new aesthetics, symbologies and memes. It's important for people to recognize these new appearances and what they actually signify.
Source?
There is a meme online currently that says "My political opinions are based on who I am trolling".
As for Pepe being a far-right meme. It never has been one. That was misinformation to stir up a moral panic and push for censorship.
The Pepe has also been used by Hong Kong protesters, (IIRC) the yellow vest protesters in france and loads of other pro-democracy freedom groups outside of the west.
e.g.
https://www.ynetnews.com/PicServer5/2019/10/03/9521875/95218...
You should tell the actual hard right parties like RN, AfD, UKIP and co. that
Feels Good Man is exactly about this. ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11394182/ )
It wasn't originally, but you're kidding yourself if you think that it hasn't become one
Sure, for a while, until they find themselves in the middle of a crowd of short haired guys holding tiki torches, marching through town and shouting <you-know-what>.
"pepe the frog" showing up in weird contexts is part of "the joke". It's funny to them when people misinterpret pepe as something completely different.
A certain green website wasn't always full of racism, this was done deliberately.
If you go back further Nick Broomfield did some documentaries in the 90s / early 00s where he went to various white supremacists, even then they were saying their plan was to go mainstream through various tactics, what happened on the green website fits almost exactly with this.
Because when you pay for a report, you are asking a group of people for their opinion on the subject, so you can then read the report and get inform and maybe act. So by very definition it is indeed not their opinion, and not that ironic.
Same as extreme conservatives did on the 60s.
> Totally, counterculture nowadays does not belong to the far left anymore and after oppress popular culture with its ideas (else you are cancelled) now they are making a major effort trying to cancell oppositors from the institutions.
Why do you think the European Union cares about counterculture belonging or not to the extreme left, given that the EU has, at least now, a conservative government and a conservative parliament? If they were cancelling anything, shouldn’t they be cancelling the extreme left?
On universities, I’m not sure I understand how this is related to the topic at hand nor why I should care, but I wouldn’t assume that what may be true for a few American colleges applies to all universities all over the world.
Check the PDF, I think it is the second or third page next to the CC license they wrote that is clearly said the document does not belong or represent the European Union, it is an independent group who posted it there in order to present it.
UPDATE: That’s a common lobby strategy in European countries, to post a report and then mislead public opinion meaning that an EU commission or work group somehow supports their ideals or initiatives. It is really common in all sorts of topics.
Edit after downvotes: would you downvoting not agree that the rulers of Europe today don’t fear such movements as the identitarians, white native ethno-nationalists, who are currently the counter culture among the young?
And that's why the far left is so pissed off, after so many years of monopoly in the internet and having been infiltrated in all levels of culture, universities, media, actors, political lobbies, corporations, etc now they try to play the same cards conservatives from the 60s used in order to defend their acquired status.
But the world has changed and new young people now on what side is nowadays counterculture.