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Comment by antris | Hacker News Reader

>both extremes

Oh come on

We know this is a thing from the Mueller report. The Russians had their hands in everything from LGBT and black advocacy groups to the Tea Party movement.

Indeed. Amplify the most divisive messages. Anyone planning advocacy for anything nowadays has to figure out how to deal with the worst messengers for their cause getting the biggest platforms.

I think we're also witnessing influence a meta level deeper, where accelerationists' stochastic terrorism ideologically seeks social rift and chaos, directly. Individual acts won't be explainable by a grand conspiracy, but rather I presume these communities are fed and pushed to birth random acts of terror with ambiguous or misleading messaging.

Quite frankly, I think too many cooks are benefiting from outrage and disarray. Look at the Charlie Kirk case, where "respectable" reports of "transgender ideology" inscribed on bullet casings spread immediately, although that's been a complete fabrication, which was later redacted. How vile a thing to do, for any supposedly journalistic platform. That's not bots, it's people who are to blame. I don't even think, it's much instructed, but rather sociopathic individuals/groups seeing opportunity for a minuscule gain, even if it's destroying the social fabric in the process.

Those “repeatable” reports were leaked directly from the two podcasters who run the FBI.

They did—but their purpose was 100% to lend support to the American right wing.

I think it's fairly disingenuous to characterize that as "fanning the flames on both sides of the political spectrum."

They actually simultaneously were promoting the Bernie Sanders campaign. Seems likely these candidates were chosen as the ostensibly most divisive and disruptive elements in American politics.

This is what happens in the EU, even more noticeable since 2021. Hell, it's basically the horseshoe theory put into practice. In some subjects similar ideas are supported by both extremes, mostly just for political gain in the moment. You know, populists are like that.

Take a look at France. That's what has been happening since political interests took over the gilets jaunes protest (which didn't really end in 2020, mind you), and continues to this day in one way or another.

(Edit: clarify, and add context)

In This case, gp should change to 'all extremes'. The extreme center is a thing. Boulanger is the origin, but he has adept, the most known in the Anglo world is probably Blair, but the closest ideologically is Macron (just read 'how democracy dies' if you aren't convinced yet, or read about 'retenue institutionnelle' if you want to dog into the concept of democracy more deeply).

There are no doubt many ways one can define what is and isn't extreme. The definition of extreme I apply is in the context of the comment I made is something like political viewpoints or groups on the outside or on the fringes of the political establishment.

Figures like Macron or Blair may be or have been extreme in some regards, but not in this one.

Retenue institutionelle is in fact dangerous.

But let's be honest, if you are hinting at that time Macron used anti-obstruction of parliament measures to combat the stupid high number of ammendements the opposition proposed [1], I don't know what to say. Seemed like the only case where one _should_ use such measures.

Either way, point stands that by fuelling appeasement to both extremes via bots in social networks, a state actor can destabilize a country much more effectively.

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/cuisines-assemblee/2020/02/19/re...

No, the time when he took two months to choose a prime minister, because he could, that's legal. That's also against the spirit of democracy. When he chooses a prime minister from the 3rd largest group, that's also legal. Had he chosen from the RN, which I think is worst, I would have been happier, because at least the spirit of the law would have been followed.

But that's not the first time he did away with either the spirit of the law, or with returning on his words.

The CCC: 'i'll propose all your suggestions as laws if they're correctly written, without filters', then later 'except 3 jokers', then he proposed a small part as is, a bigger part modified, and 19, not at all. That's legal, he can go back on his words as he wants, a president words don't mean anything. Usually, a candidate words didn't mean anything, but politics exercising power words used to be believed. But that's only convention, not law.

The 49-3 for the retirement reform. Waiting for the parliamentary discussions to happen, at least a month or two, would have been a lot less brutal. Even for those who agreed with the idea, the way it was done was authoritarian.

And the recent 'motion de rejet' against the law Duplomb they wanted to pass, to prevent _any_ discussion in the parliament, that's was the chef kiss imho. That has to be the most illegitimate legal thing they did. Totally against the spirit of the law. Classic. Hindenburg and Bruning then Von Papen used similar tactics for almost 5 years.

Bruning is also a perfect example of the extreme center by the way, even if less well-known.

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