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Comment by enragebait | Hacker News Reader

The vacillation between extremes, with an apathetic middle who trudges on in dejection of all sides but their own comfortable convenient complicity.

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People keep saying this but the "extreme left" in the US isn't even that extreme. One one side you have conspiracy theory poisoned neo-Nazis and Christian nationalists and on the other... people who want affordable healthcare.

What do you think of Darializa Avila Chevalier‘s rhetoric? She’s very extreme.

She does seem like an actual leftist I'll give you that. But rhetoric doesn't count for much, what has she actually done that's radical?

I can only judge from her Wikipedia page but under political positions it says "Her platform has included universal healthcare, stronger tenant protections, funding programs for children instead of funding war, abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), banning large super PACs from elections, and prohibiting members of Congress from trading stocks." And she opposes Israel. I'm sorry but that doesn't read as extreme to me. Maybe abolishing ICE.

What has AOC done that's "far left," or Mamdani? They can say what they want but none of these people actually threaten the status quo of American capitalism and imperialism, which (in my mind) anything worth calling "far left" must do to be valid. Bear in mind the standard on the other side is an attempted coup with a gallows on the Capitol lawn. BLM at least took over a police station and started a separatist autonomous zone. That's what "far left" looks like. Not "we need rent control."

Actual far left movements like BLM and Occupy get co-opted and undermined before they even have a chance of affecting change. If any of these people even so much as glance towards the White House they'll be crucified by the Democrats, because the biggest problem with leftism in the US is that the only even ostensibly "leftist" party with any real power hates the left almost as much as the right does.

I wish the DSA luck but I expect absolutely nothing of value from them. Wake me up when they're hanging billionaires from lampposts and then tell me about the "extremism" on both sides.

Such radicalism never materializes from a vacuum. All extremes come as an iterative increment until a critical mass compels the middle over a ledge.

Nothing happens without mobilizing and catalyzing the middle. All “sides” know this.

Except the thesis is that the mainstream left (which would be the Democratic Party) is already just as extremist as MAGA (which has become the mainstream right.) When people resort to calling Joe Biden a communist, or even Barack Obama, because there's no one in power on the mainstream left to whom the label "far left" could reasonably apply, it's an obvious false equivalence. The "Nazis" are saying Nazi things and doing Nazi things while the "Communists" are at best European style Democratic Socialists but are framed as hardline Stalinists in order to make the "pendulum of extremism" narrative work.

You're correct that the increasing radicalism on the left didn't materialize from a vacuum, it's a result of the populist left being disenfranchised by how not leftist the Democrats are in practice, it isn't a result of iterative radicalism within the Democratic party itself and it wouldn't exist if the Democrats were anywhere near as extreme as the Republicans make them out to be.

If you're looking at both parties and seeing two equal and opposing ideological forces then I think you're deluding yourself. Maybe in a few years that changes if the left can do to the Democrats what MAGA did to Republicans, but at the moment it doesn't reflect reality. What we really have is a far right party and a center right party.

Some of what you say is noise prattling around the echo chamber of minds and not reflecting true dispositions in reality.

Anyone can “call” or “say” anything in this age of amplification. Sides will always make excessive generalizations of the other.

Everyone sees the “other” side as a collective singular body of “them” and their own side as a collection of distinguishable individuals like “us.”

> The "Nazis" are saying Nazi things and doing Nazi things

Are you arguing that the GOP and the replican voters are nazis?

I suspect the position is that the GOP and Republicans of the past half century no longer hold power, and that many of the players and supporters of the current US administration are effectively Nazi equivalent.

The unarguably actual White Nationalists turning out in Washington for the 250th celebration of "the first White POTUS" certainly agree.

* https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2026/7/5/aje-onl-nf...

* https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-fir...

What else would you call people who believe in Nazi conspiracy theories, court Nazi influencers, display Nazi symbols, parrot Nazi propaganda and spread Nazi memes?

At some point you have to face facts about the nature of MAGA and what American conservatism is actually turning into.

The problem is that people tune out when you call them Nazis. If you want them to vote a different way, you've got to engay with them and have a talk with them. Yelling Nazi online and mic dropping isn't going to get kids out of ICE concentration camps. Neither is this comment, unfortunately.

The problem is you're blaming me for the actions of Nazis because pointing out that the Nazis are Nazis makes Nazis feel bad, rather than blaming the Nazis for being Nazis.

What exactly do you think they have to say that I need to hear? The specific reason why I deserve to be put against the wall with rest of the degenerates? No thank you.

Maybe you should blame them for putting kids in ICE concentration camps, and not me. I didn't do that, and I didn't vote for the people who did.

I'm pointing out that hey, if you want people to vote your way, that calling someone a Nazi isn't going to convince them that you've got anything worth listening to.

And I'm pointing out that those Nazis were never going to listen to me or vote my way to begin with, because "my way" is antithetical to their worldview.

And Nazis is what they are. That's what you call fascists, white supremacist bigots and anti-semites. People who believe in race war and white genocide. That black people are genetically predisposed to low IQs and that Islam is a "religion of evil." That immigration from non-white countries is a plague and a threat to "western civilization." 14 words and all that.

There's nothing wrong with calling them what they are. Nazis don't deserve to live comfortable lives. They don't deserve to be treated like respectable people who simply have different but otherwise perfectly valid political views.

> who believe in Nazi conspiracy theories, court Nazi influencers, display Nazi symbols, parrot Nazi propaganda and spread Nazi memes

Name three people who fit this profile that you would call a Nazi and are in a position of political or economic power in America.

Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk.

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