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Comment by pessimizer | Hacker News Reader

People don't present themselves as extreme. I think what happened is that a lot of people ran this "thought experiment" and it made a lot of sense to them.

edit: The New Republic was passed from a famous racist to a founder of facebook to a Democratic party bagman and banking heir. Characterizing it as an extreme left outlet is bizarre, because at times it wouldn't even count as center-left.

From the first paragraph of wikipedia: "Through the 1980s and 1990s, the magazine incorporated elements of the Third Way and conservatism."

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So first of all you're responding to what you want to read, not the actual content of my comment. I said that the friend of mine in question was a self described hard Leftist, and that he was big in leftist oriented Twitter. I made no statement about New Republic...which is in fact a hard left publication. When you were looking at Wikipedia, did you skip the part where they were owned by that guy in the 1980s because it came out that the editors and owner were spies for the USSR, EDIT and they were trying to revamp their image /ENDEDIT? Or the bit about their return to their leftist roots since their sale in 2016?

Furthermore looking at who owned an institution 30-40 years ago doesn't really add any value to the conversation about what they are today.

Dude.

The New Republic isn't a GOP outlet, sure. It might even occasionally slightly hurt centrist sensibilities, which would put it left of the NYT. But if you think that's "hard left", you haven't seen hard left, or even moderate left.

Try something like wsws.org, or The Jacobin. The New Republic isn't remotely that.

> I made no statement about New Republic...which is in fact a hard left publication.

What are the actual ends of the spectrum on which you identify the NR's position as "hard left" ?

I’ve seen Breitbart comments accusing the AP of being communists.

They’re about as milquetoast neoliberal as you can get, but they typically skew towards diversity and democracy which is probably enough to make you a steenkin pinko to some people.

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