Comment by jyrkesh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jyrkesh | Hacker News Reader

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I was really hoping I wouldn't get this kind of response because I'm really not trying to be combative or make any kind of point about the relative volume of calls for violence on different sides of the political spectrum. And I have no interest in screencapping a zillion messages over years of having been an internet degenerate to try and prove to you that some non-zero amount of it exists, via a tit-for-tat conversation on what's fake, what's an isolated instance, what's a false equivalence blah blah blah. It's tiresome, and I've watched it play out more times than is probably good for my mental health.

Plus, none of it is relevant anyway because there are so many people poisoning the well with fake personas that are misrepresenting their political enemies for more "evidence" that their group is in the right.

(Ugh, this is bringing to mind a Reddit rabbithole where some person claimed to be ex-AHS-ingroup, and that AHS people were posting CP under fake conservative accounts on conservative boards, and then AHS people claimed that this person was never in the AHS Discords, or that they didn't exist, or the screenshots were fake, and that ACTUALLY it was conservatives posting CP under fake leftist accounts on leftist boards, and OMG HOW DO THESE PEOPLE SPEND EVEN MORE TIME ON THE INTERNET THAN ME I NEED TO STEP BACK FROM THE COMPUTER. And no, I didn't walk away feeling like I had any idea what had actually happened.)

In any case, it's my belief that all ingroups have people within them that aren't operating under their purported values (religion, politics, public servants, etc.). I also believe that the people who have the most power to effect change are the people willing to call out those within their own ingroups who are violating their group's purported principles. E.g. cops gotta call out cops, men gotta call out men, Israelis gotta call out Israelis and Palestinians gotta call out Palestinians. And yes, leftists gotta call out leftists.

I ALSO think that we need more coalition between groups with overlap on certain high-value beliefs and initiatives, and that it's easier to form that unity when people aren't using bad faith arguments to defend the more toxic members of their ingroup.

> And I have no interest in screencapping a zillion messages over years of having been an internet degenerate to try and prove to you that some non-zero amount of it exists, via a tit-for-tat conversation on what's fake, what's an isolated instance, what's a false equivalence blah blah blah. It's tiresome

But... you brought it up. We're here discussing KiwiFarms, a site with a long and documented history of violent behavior and extremist rhetoric. And you invoked the idea of "extremism on both sides" as part of an argument for something about censorship. And the clear truth is that there is simply not a similar kind of discourse going on on the left. There isn't.

It's a bunch of hippies being mad about social justice, and occasionally pining for someone to seize the means of production. That's not SWATing, it's not doxxing, it's not harrassment. It's just not.

> And the clear truth is that there is simply not a similar kind of discourse going on on the left. There isn't.

I have personally seen more left wing calls for violence against their politcal opponents than right wing ones. By a factor of about four.

As far as I can tell your assertion is baseless.

And your anecdotes are worthless.

Proving the negative is impossible. The internet is too vast. Proving that it exists is effectively impossible, because there's always bar-moving on

But between the volume of what I've seen myself, and the high likelihood of SOME crazies existing in almost any kind of group that exists (not just politics, but companies, churches, courts, etc.).

Now is there a literal leftist equivalent of Kiwifarms out there doing exactly the same stuff? I genuinely have no idea, I'm not making that claim. It certainly helps, though, that people on the left are a LOT more technically inclined, and probably smarter in general, on average. They're all on Signal or Discord.

Again, I'm NOT right-wing, or defending KF. I'm just saying that violent rhetoric on the internet isn't an "us vs. them" problem.

> Proving that it exists is effectively impossible

An existence proof is a thing, I'm not following your point. It seems like it's pretty easy to prove that KiwiFarms, in this particular case, engaged in targetted harrassment and has for quite some time. QED, right?

The point upthread is just asking for where your equivalent existence proof is for these left wing groups engaging in similar hateful activity. And you're not finding it. And I for one think that might be a good opportunity to revisit your priors about the kind of "extremism" that exists on the left, vs what you believe must be the case.

>> But I do tend to peruse extremist circles on both sides to understand the radicalism a little better

> Genuinely curious about what "extremist circles" you're perusing on the left that seem to fit into this category?

>> ...far left filter bubbles--with calls for violence, personal attacks, doxxing, and all the rest of it

...

> But... you brought it up

Did I? It seemed like a minor throwaway aside as part of an argument I was making that didn't need the "both sides" part to be true that you said you were "genuinely curious" about.

I maybe did a poor job of elaborating that I've personally witnessed a non-trivial amount of people claiming to be from all corners of the political sphere who engaged in internet speech that most of us would find unacceptable, including violent rhetoric. Hell, I just saw a whole Twitter thread full of (maybe/maybe not) leftists on whether or not it was okay to counter-SWAT to some KF people (because ALLEGEDLY some were trying to organize it).

Of course, there's no way I'm going to be able to pull it up now, it was in the infinite scroll, and there's a good chance it's been deleted or moderated by now. Am I going to become some full-time forensic screencapper of all these things? No, I'm just doing it half for fun and to half to try and understand the mindset of people that I actually deal with in real life. Which, by the way, I have close personal friends who have said stuff like what I'm describing out loud in the past, with varying levels of irony. I don't think they're bad people for it, they're just...passionate.

Plus, screencaps would be worthless...I mean, at this point we're all trading AI-generated Dall-E stuff, even photos are basically worthless at this point. (I ALSO just saw a bunch of "insignia" CLEARLY photoshopped onto a rally photographs, and I'd bet good money your first guess was wrong on which way it went. Except it was also totally working, with both sides taking the bait, Photoshop callout was hidden in "Load more tweets".)

Oooh, but now that I think about it, you should check out r/StormfrontorSJW. That one's a good ol' time.

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