Parler’s Parent Company Laid Off Nearly All of Its Employees, Only Has 20 Left | Hacker News Reader

Parler’s Parent Company Laid Off Nearly All of Its Employees, Only Has 20 Left

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25 pointsmikece37 comments

I can’t be alone in being peeved at the misuse of “far right”. AFAIK no one on the right in modern US politics is espousing monarchy or totalitarianism (or at least they think they’re against totalitarianism). Obviously these terms are relative and subjective but it just seems a pointless characterization that makes a readers eyes glaze. Say “parlor, the controversial social media company”, and the writing is less biased and more informative.

I would similarly ignore a writer who suggested a pro-union group as “far left”. We’re all (hopefully) far more moderate (and aligned!) than we get credit for.

you'd have to compare the US far right, with other modern countries far right's i guess, to determine if it was accurate or not. You'd also need to compare the US far left against far left's in other modern countries. I'd suspect, that what goes for far left in the US is more positioned as moderate in other modern countries.

> US far left

What. The US doesn't even have a 'left'. Leave aside the 'far' kind of it.

I bet that you rate everything either 4 or 5 stars, too.

The point that OP is making is quite clear but you’re distracting the conversation with what’s essentially a Twitter quip.

My comment is accurate. The lack of any left, leave aside 'far' left' in the US is the root of all of the problems that the US has. When something isnt balanced, it topples to one side. This applies to societies too. And the US is one such society toppled entirely to one side.

Similarly, such false usage of terms like 'left', 'right' is also something that prevents the US society from analyzing the situation and making corrections. Anyone calls anything whatever they want without any concern for the meaning of actual terms. It ends up in anyone being able to create any false reality for themselves.

It definitely does. What you should be comparing are the relative sizes and almost nonexistent access to political power, which makes the difference quite clear.

If the relative size of something is extremely small and it has nonexistent access to political power, it simply does not exist.

Jan 6 says otherwise.

Okay, I'll bite. If Jan 6 really was an attempt at revolution to install a dictator, it should be seen as a laughable and emasculate event proving how anemic the movement is/was -- Alec Baldwin has successfully killed more people than an entire mob of Trump supporters so oft characterized as gun-toting lunatics.

Additionally, and this premise is somewhat debatable, the people there didn't think they were installing a dictator. They thought they were protecting democracy somehow. Insane, mistaken, stupid, laughable.. Lots of words better describe what happened there.

It's true that many of the people on Jan 6 didn't view themselves as extreme and didn't realize they were being fascist — they probably mostly truly did believe they were protecting democracy — however this does not preclude them being de-facto fascists.

Mussolini held elections, too. People can believe that the will of the people was their party winning and never acknowledge that they actually lost fairly. It’s especially easy when you surround yourself with people who lie to you and assiduously avoid contradictory sources or critical thinking.

Ok, so they’re incompetent fascists. ;)

Inigo Montoya would like a word, speaking of the cry wolf effect.

So what do you see it as then? How would you characterize storming a government building with intent to maim (hang?) and being equipped to do so?

And specifically only finally stopping when someone finally got shot while they were trying to get into the house floor through a broken window where actual, elected representatives were, including many that had received death threats from these very people.

Or the "panic" buttons in many representatives offices being mysteriously disabled!

> with intent to maim (hang?)

This is the gallows that the mob erected: https://assets.culanth.org/content/_t1528/ruddy-roye-trump22...

Seen from this angle, it's obvious that it can't actually be used to hang anyone. It is little more than a stupid protest sign.

15% revolutionary LARP, 15% intent to cause damage/mayhem, 70% self-guided tour of Congress. If it were given the same benefit of the doubt as the BLM riots, it'd be classified as mostly people showing up to a rally because their idol told them to with bad actors leading the charge after he told them "go home".

The dollar-store gallows picture is still laughable.

Trump tried to coerce several officials, including his vice president, to use illegal means and declare him winner of an election he lost. These people supported that, clearly. You can install a dictator without a single shot, your gatekeeping notwithstanding. And the comparison to Alec Baldwin is just disgusting.

The problem with citing incompetence as a reason not to worry about the Jan 6th insurrection is that there are such obvious examples in history of people who tried to overthrow a government, did it badly, got locked up, eventually got out, and then went on to.... actually overthrow the government! Like, it's quite difficult not to mention the Beer Hall Putsch. The lesson from one failed insurrection isn't "Haha! You guys failed this time". It's "Holy fuck those guys are actually going to try and line us all up against a wall given half a chance".

The movements that evolve into genuine threats are only obvious in hindsight. We know the Beer Hall Putsch because, well, it's Hitler. If we afford the same level of proactive scrutiny to every demonstration, riot, or other indication of intent to subvert the democratic process following the assumption that it will metamorphose out of control, Jan 6 would be one of a great, great many: https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/inauguration-2017/washingt...

Rioters literally sent a capitol guard to the hospital where he died due to injuries he sustained. But okay, sure

Four rioters died of various causes, and Officer Sicknick was pepper sprayed and died of thromboembolic strokes -- it was falsely reported for weeks that he was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Saying he died "due to his injuries" contradicts the medical examiner's report, court proceedings and general sense.

>it just seems a pointless characterization that makes a readers eyes glaze.

On the contrary, they're priming their audience's opinions with masterful efficiency. They're making a bet that their readers will either nod in affirmation, or if they're not in the know about Parler, dismiss it out of hand. Not a defense of Parler on my part, but the cry wolf effect of labeling everything outside the sterile walled garden of limousine liberalism "far-right" is as tiresome as it is unhelpful.

Replace liberalism with “conservatism” and far-right with “far left” and it works just as well.

Yes, the implication was that tribalism by intellectual default is bad.

The poster child groups self identify as white nationalists. How is that not a far right thing?

Parler is not moderate conservatives.

The Trump movement is a far-right movement by any definition of the word. Most of the users are Trump supporters. Saying unions are far left is not at all equivalent, considering unions do not represent a political movement that wants to overthrow democratic elections.

> no one on the right in modern US politics is espousing monarchy or totalitarianism

You're peeved, call it "misuse", and yet in the next sentence describe your ignorance. Curtis Yarvin (Moldbug) is an actual monarchist who has the ear of the #1 right wing news host, Tucker Carlson [0], Peter Thiel, and many others on the right. Marjorie Taylor Green is an actual self-described Christian Nationalist (theocracy like Iran).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_8aT3pQo_I

I mean if the people who believe those things vote Red, they're Red. You can use whatever terms you want, but if Red is the Right, then people who are Red and have views that are far from mainstream...

I don't take offense at anyone being called far left or far right because I'm an independent. If Biden loses and Blue people storm the Capitol, they'd be terrorists too.

> The Montana Republican Party has ... a state representative named John Fuller, who published an opinion column in The Flathead Beacon earlier that year declaring that democracy had “failed as miserably as socialism."

> Keith Regier, an influential state senator, said all laws should be based on Judeo-Christian principles. “The Ten Commandments were a good foundation for any country to live by,” he told me .. I told him that I’d heard other Montanans voice feelings of persecution because of the imposition of Christian doctrine. Was there a middle ground to be found? “There probably isn’t a middle,” he said. “You can’t have both.”

> On the day after the Billings convention in July, couples filed into Grace Bible Church for the morning service. [Montana governor Greg] Gianforte greeted Hughes and a handful of the other parishioners before sitting down next to his wife and near two notable visitors: the Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts and Trump’s former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who were in Montana for a gathering of the Republican Governors Association.

> Hughes yielded the stage to a visiting pastor named Brad Bigney, who dedicated much of the sermon to reassuring parishioners that, though they might feel uncertain, they had to believe that God was in control of their destinies. “We seem like a remnant,” Bigney said. “We seem weak. We seem like we don’t have enough resources. We seem — Hello, read your Bible! It always looks that way! I hear people saying now, ‘My America, I don’t even feel comfortable in my America.’ I get it. But this isn’t our final home,” he continued. “He’s testing us, you guys, and I’m sad to say we’ve got some believers that are failing the test. It looks like they never truly trusted in God and that’s being exposed now."

> " They trusted in their country.”

Nope, definitely not espousing anti-democratic, totalitarian ideas. Definitely not wanting to infringe on other's rights to ... well, what is their goal exactly?

> If you want to live here,” Karla Johnson, a chapter president of the Montana Federation of Republican Women, said, “be a Christian.”

Oh, cool then.

( https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/magazine/montana-republic... )

I really don't think NY Times is interested in describing this particular gathering in anything but an intentionally negative light, yet even with that presumed bias I see only one statement there that seems even slightly offensive ("be a Christian") and it is presented in such a way that context not mentioned may or may not reduce the weirdness of it.

Only somebody already dedicated to hatred of people espousing these beliefs would find those quoted bits to be "anti-democratic, totalitarian ideas".

Take a step back, do some mad-libs and replace nouns with ones you'd prefer. It's a good exercise to see if maybe you're overreacting irrationally.

How would you describe someone who wants to discard the Constitution deport 50million natural born citizens just for not believing in their god?

I'm not a huge fan of arguing for or against the sort of straw man you've hypothesized here, but, if pressed, I'd describe that imaginary person (who I must stress is indeed a weak straw man indeed) as someone not fully familiar with any aspect of history or humanity beyond undying loyalty to their beliefs (which are also a cumulatively developed secondary straw man generated in this hypothetical scenario which is, to my knowledge, not held by any actual person regardless of the assumed intent you may impart), and who may or may not be persuaded to reconsider otherwise when faced with even the slightest bit of welcomed antagonism.

That is to say, I don't know how to play in your fantasy world, since you have not developed it very well.

Well said. "I don't know how to play in your fantasy world, since you have not developed it very well" is perfect, consider the saying stolen!

Thanks, not really looking for critical reading advice from someone who thinks those quotes are just standard political discourse.

That’ll show those heck’in chuds. Meanwhile Twitter is hiring more far lefties than ev-

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