Shapiros history of consistent homophobic, transphobic, islamophobic vitrol sure do seem consistent with everything I hear from people in the alt right movement and validates them.
He also claims he is not alt right, not homophobic, and not racist. So there is that.
You know, it's not OK to be racist, so I'm not sure why you are proud of self-identifying as such. It's not OK even if, as you claim, you grew up with a silver spoon. You know what's in your heart of hearts, so please work on whatever it is that you identified in yourself that makes you hate others for things that they cannot control.
I think every person with privilege likely contributes to harming other demographics in ways they don't fully understand. I built my current life from homelessness and used to think I came up from nothing... but it wasn't nothing. On my worst day I was white, cis, male, straight, and healthy. That is basically a cheat code in this game. I had to step back from patting myself on the back as much because I won a race built for me to win at the expense of others.
I will forever be a work in progress when it comes to extending my privileges to others to stop the cycle. I would rather commit to the mindset that I am always a little bit unconcioisly bigoted and contributing to the problem than thinking I have reached some plateau of perfect ethically balanced harmony with others. My male blood relatives all have confederate flag tattoos, and boldly claim they are not racist in spite of openly admitting they only trust other white people.
I try to never let myself reach the denial stage anymore. It is a trap.
>I think every person with privilege likely contributes to harming other demographics in ways they don't fully understand.
I think you should focus on yourself. Like I said, I don't know what's going on in your heart-of-hearts, but you do, and you see hate for others in there. I don't understand why you're like that. That's something you need to work on before you project what's inside you onto others. And let me tell you: The hate you feel for others not like you, is not normal.
>On my worst day I was white, cis, male, straight, and healthy.
Outside of health, who says those are the most important characteristics? What Scientific peer-review data says that?
None of those things intrinsically confer benefits. A poor white kid from a broken home isn't going to get any benefits in life just because he's white.
It's such an evil thing that is done where you single out children of a specific race who come, for example, from poverty and say to them: you're privileged because you're white.
What a terrible and evil philosophy you follow.
Study after study shows that success in life in modern democracies are dominated by factors other than things like race and gender. Things like:
- Height
- Attractiveness
- Age
- Immigration status
- Sense of Humor
- Verbal skill.
- Ingenuity
- Leadership qualities
- Sociability
- Upbringing
- Class status
- Imagination
- Cleverness
- Intelligence
- Education
- Athletic ability
all provide their own benefits and privileges. Many of those things I listed are a product of genetics and environment. I didn't choose to come to this country as 10 year old with parents who had no education, and 0 English, who then worked multiple blue-collar jobs, to then have you and others like you just see nothing but my skin color and say that everything was handed to me and my family because YOU had easy in life. Thanks but no thanks. And of course, the idea that only certain kinds of race or certain kinds of gender provide a benefit in very situation is insanity.
So please, you and I may share skin color hue but we are nothing alike and you don't know anything about me, so stop pretending you do.
I think you have misunderstood me. I don't feel any hate for others and wish for an integrated world where genetics don't give people advantages.
I do think I am sometimes ignorant and am unintentionally offensive and am in need of correction. Sometimes bigotry is baked into our very language and social norms but doesn't nessesarily have hate attached. I also think my lifestyle and sometimes laziness likely contributes to making the lives of others harder and I think a lot about how to set that right.
Also yes, in some of the very racist small towns I grew up in, I got jobs because I spoke good English and because I was white, while others that worked harder didn't.
I even literally had an ex tell me a motivator for dating me was because her parents didn't approve of her ex because he was black.
That sort of thing is pretty messed up, but not being a part of any oppressed groups gave me priority treatment sometimes without question.
This was especially apparent when I would go to court for traffic tickets and get off scot-free every time while black and Latino people in front of me would get the book thrown at them for offenses more minor than mine. Many studies have shown black people get harsher sentences on average and I have certainly seen evidence of this.
I don't think white people -should- have an advantage and I agree it is evil that they do, but dominant racism in our country creates that advantage.
Also I never once made any statements or assumptions about you however you keep making them about me, like assuming I had an easy life. Not sure why.
What utter nonsense. Shapiro is just a conservative pundit the only thing that sets him apart is that he is very smart and, relatively speaking, intellectually honest. His greatest crime is not kowtowing to the left orthodoxy that is so dominant in tech/academia/media. And that makes his voice particularly valuable.
What’s valuable about homophobia? What’s intellectually honest about hating people for their sexual orientation and advocating for discrimination against them?
If the left orthodoxy means treating people equally, sign me up.
> very smart
This is the guy who endorsed Trump in October 2020 for another four year term because “he’s already done all the damage he can, he can’t do anything more”. Genius.
>If the left orthodoxy means treating people equally, sign me up.
If we all understand that this is actually (under the law) what MOST people want we'll be able to get along.
>What’s valuable about homophobia? What’s intellectually honest about hating people for their sexual orientation and advocating for discrimination against them?
I just started looking this up to write this comment. I was curious about it and I wanted to be as correct as I can. Ben Shapiro believes that contractually, under the law, homosexuality should be allowed. Full Stop. This is a very libertarian perspective. It's the idea that no matter what I personally believe due to my religion, you can and should be able to legally do what you want as long as it doesn't affect others (throwing that in for the abortion argument).
Personally, Ben Shapiro is a homophobe. Politically, he is not. He's pro-equality of opportunity and recognition under the law.
As someone who grew up really religious, I can understand how he justifies this idea. You are indoctrinated to hate the sin and love the sinner. This does not always come out the way it's supposed to, and leads to homophobia which I believe is evil and a reason I left religion. However, this dualism allows for one to strive for political equality, while still spouting homophobic ideas.
This is a very fine line to draw on a topic like this, but I think it's important for us to recognize if we're ever going to get less divided hateful towards each other. Most people, even bigots, racists, homophobes, etc. want equality. They want the government to give them the same rights as anyone else and to be left alone. They want their rallies, protests, sermons, etc. In order to get that they recognize (at least people like Shapiro do) that they need to fight a cultural war instead of a political one on this stuff.
It doesn't mean that those ideas are ok for people to personally have, but it does mean that we can work together to agree on a lot of shit, make progress.
tl;dr; Don't hate people on the other side of politics, talk to them.
I’m not sure I would characterize his angry word vomit as “smart” or “intellectually honest”. He’s a male Ann Coulter; a loudmouth who loves to stir up controversy.
> What does 'alt' mean when added as a prefix to left or right to you?
Not the GP, but the 'alt' prefix to me seems to invoke the similar usage in the term 'alternative' music like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc, which were an 'alternative' to pop music from the 80s and 90s. The prefix suggests a change of type and not just a change of degree. They aren't just "more conservative Republicans".
This is why it applies more to the right than the left in today's social discourse, since the spectrum on the left is still more a matter of degree than kind.
In the context of the right, this change of type means abandonment of traditional establishment Republican stances like free trade and foreign interventionism in near totality, and the promotion of previously fringe movements within the right like ethnic nationalism (often under the guise of 'economic nationalism').
I do disagree about a change of type not happening on the left. I see a very large rift developing on the left around whether to honor classically liberal values or not.
I do think the trends in 'alt' usage are predominately aimed at the right as more of a pejorative towards the outgroup, and less of a descriptive term. You can see a snapshot of the vast disparity in usage here: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=Alt-right,...
What I imagined years ago is that the Occupy movement and the 99 percenters would become the Democratic's version of the Republican Tea party. You can kind of see this to a degree in AOC and Sanders, if I understand everything correctly.
I think you are correct in your definition. But if you are many people use it incorrectly. It's thrown at most conservatives. While most conservatives find ethnic nationalism appalling. That said nationalism is appealing to a large percentage of conservatives.
There isn't a single term used for a political group that you can break down into sub-components and root words to understand what it means. The best you can get will be the origins of the term, but that might no longer be related to how it's used today.
Yeah, my impression is that it's predominantly not used to accurately describe the political leanings of a person or group of people, and it's just a quick modifier that can be used by people to paint the target as an extremist who holds anti-social views.
If I were to wager a guess, I'd guess that the targets of the term 'alt-right' would rarely accept that description of their politics. Whereas 'right' or 'conservative' or 'social conservative' or similar terms would have a high acceptance rate for those that are being called it. 'Alt' has become a pejorative in everyday use (at least in the liberal circles that I run in).
You're still (intentionally?) missing the point. There is no such thing as an "accurate descriptor of political leanings". There are words useful to describe groups of people from the outside, words useful for groups of people use to describe themselves, and sometimes they overlap.
I disagree that it isn't possible to accurately describe one's political leanings.
I am a proponent of aiming for accuracy when trying to describe other people's politics, and being charitable whenever possible.
If I see a group of people using words to describe another group of people in a way that purposely misrepresents them, particularly in a negative way, I think that's something worth calling out.
I don't have the nihilistic take that "if you can't 100% accurately describe something, then it's okay to not even try".
alt is not an independent modifier you can assume would play a similar role in a different context. Alt-right is just an alternative rightwing movement.
My personal take would be that alt right is a rightwing suberversion of traditional american conservatism. In addition to largely white identity politics, there's also a strong push for anti-establishment, and indifference to traditional norms.
> The term is ill-defined, having been used in different ways by various self-described "alt-rightists", media commentators, and academics. Groups which have been identified as alt-right also espouse white supremacism, white separatism, right-wing populism, anti-immigration, racism, anti-communism, anti-Zionism, antisemitism, Holocaust denial, xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, antifeminism, homophobia, and Islamophobia.
I disagree, I think the usage and meaning of 'alt' is in fact complicated. I've asked many other people this same question and they've all given different answers.
The core underlying theme is that 'alt' gets used as a pejorative towards your outgroup. Your descriptions of the right here are quite uncharitable, which is a strong signal of your biased thinking.
You also conveniently didn't answer my question about % of the right you'd classify as 'alt-right' and the % of the left that you'd classify as 'alt-left'. I suspect the reason you chose not to is because of that same bias. It would make clear that you use 'alt' as a pejorative selectively towards your outgroup.
This is about as needlessly hyperbolic as claiming that everyone on the left wants to see the US turn to socialism complete with "reeducation" camps for anyone right of center.
Whatever Ben Shapiro is, alt-right or just right of center, he holds views typical of most conservatives. If that means all the U.S. conservatives meet your definition of alt-right, so be it.
This. None of these are static categories, and even if Shapiro's litany of X-phobic views were previously 'alt-right', they are now part of the mainstream political right (and its manifestation in the Republican party). As a result I think it's genuinely hard to be a non X-phobic conservative these days.
This kinda parallels the alt-rock of the 90s as mentioned in other comments. Back then it was called that because it was "alternative" to what was mainstream rock, but over time it eclipsed the mainstream and now most new rock music falls under the "alt-rock" umbrella.
To continue with alt-music analogies, I am a big fan of alt-country (bands like Wilco, Son Volt, etc) who were the alternative to the dominant pop-country genre. IIRC in recent years that genre has influenced pop country but never really merged with it.
Read his own words. One tweet [1] is still up about how Israelis “like to build” (settlements) while Arabs like to “bomb and live in sewage”. For your own information, the context is regarding the settlements that Israelis like to build in Palestinian territory. The Palestinian area is depopulated by uzi-wielding settlers and military bulldozers. All countries of the world (including the US) consider these settlements a violation of human rights and international laws. What’s more racist than that?
I’m not throwing the fascist label because he is a right-winger. I’m throwing it because he supports a military which rules over a subset of the civilian population with the merciless boot. And that military rule is the Israeli rule over Palestinians in the occupied territories. That’s why I called him a fascist racist.
Also given the fact that Trump's rallies were attended to in extremely larger numbers compared to that of Biden's, and the new White House videos being downvoted heavily in YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhiteHouse/videos
*edit: Responding to a comment below,
> I very much doubt he even won the election
We have to be extremely careful when alleging election fraud. I think that may be perceived to be divisive. It would be more fruitful to directly link to the individual allegations instead:
I'd argue you could have said this in a more constructive way.
If this were a sports game there would be yellow and red flags all over this incident.
-No talking politics
-No overuse of anonymous accounts
-Be Kind,
-Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive
I really like that last one.
As I'm not a moderator please just consider this a friendly reminder that there is always a human on the other side of the keyboard, even the anonymous ones.
And SCOTUS has planned to look at the cases in two days:
> The United States Supreme Court will be looking into election fraud lawsuits during its Feb. 19 conference. These lawsuits include two cases filed by the Trump campaign and one case, each filed by Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and Republican Representative Mike Kelly.
It's always hilarious and absurd to me how people use Trump's rally size -- in 2020, during a pandemic -- as some sort of proxy objective measurement for popularity. I mean, Trump held rallies to the shock and horror of local and national and international government health departments because he's an entertainer and he knew it would be good for business, and in many cases even shamed people for wearing masks so as to attract _more_ people to his rallies. ("Everything's perfectly fine here you beautiful people!") Biden followed protocol to a T, because it was necessary to protect public health.
I don't think some random letter signed on some random day by a bunch of random healthcare professionals upset about police brutality is in any way evidence that so-called "science" is a political tool used by democrats in order to advance particular aims.
And I don't think I need to state the obvious, but maybe I do: an open letter signed by 1200 healthcare professionals does not speak for the entire medical profession, in any way whatsoever. Healthcare is one of the largest employers in the US. And it certainly doesn't speak for scientific objectivity.
Little bit of column A, little bit of column B. More people packed the streets for BLM than either candidate. But does anyone really believe that Joe Biden would have had popular rallies even without a pandemic to hide behind? I very much doubt he even won the election but we’ll probably never know!
> But does anyone really believe that Joe Biden would have had popular rallies even without a pandemic to hide behind
There's a two party system in the US. Like every presidential election literally ever, both parties attract a lot of popular attention because.... there's only two parties.
Except for the 1992 presidential election, in which 18.9% of the votes went to 3rd party candidate Ross Perot. He didn't win any Electoral votes, but he did throw the election to Bill Clinton by denying George H.W. Bush an electoral vote majority in certain key states.
This is bullshit. There is a much smaller number of conservative news websites or tv channels compared to democrats, though the population is roughly 50/50, so of course the few conservative outlets individually attracts more traffic hence appearing more often in top links, but not in aggregate.
I'm imagining a alternate version of git where you do `git log` or some such other subcommand, and the output comes from the aggregate of every local clone that has ever existed.
So someone writes an alarming story that 68% of the kernel code is in such a broken state it actually doesn't even compile correctly. Ok, but what would that mean for such a weirdo, broken piece of software? That most users download, tinker, get frustrated and never come back? That Linus is incompetent? That there's one troll out there continually cloning master and breaking it to write a story about? That there's N such trolls?
To me, the only information to glean from that would be that this alt-git would be a massive pile of garbage.
The difference with Facebook is that its userbase doesn't have the competency or necessary source/data access to, say, leverage a hash to grab the goods and fork the thing into a non-stupid, workable piece of software. A non-negligible number of their users keep using it as a source of news.
The Qanon bullshit is basically a pentest that shows the content of this headline could literally be anything at all when it comes to Facebook. It'd be absurd to spend time discussing what exactly it is about Tom Hanks that makes people think he eats babies. The topic should be how the hell we are going to stop FAANG from enumerating through every socially destructive set of lucrative dark patterns before this stops.
Facebook's audience does not reflect America's population. It is older and more conservative so I'm actually surprised by it's only 68% of the links.
Young people stay away from Facebook by the droves... that is until they get married and start having kids. By then they're older and <gasp> more conservative.
I think its much more likely that people who are on Facebook with young kids right now are simply the people in my(30s) cohort who never deleted their account they signed up for back in the late 2000s.
In what way? The US is proveably 51.3% Democrat, 46.5% Republican. I was reducing significant digits because I don’t know the specific split for people who didn’t vote.
> If it doesn't, it would be one of the few media sources that didn't. Why wouldn't it?
Trump probably got close to 95 million votes, the mainstream media and the activist ballot workers/officials are great at deception and most Americans aren’t dumb enough to have thought Joe Biden would make a good President, especially after how great Trump was doing. It’s pretty obvious what happened in 2020 was more than just a perfect storm, the swamp drained Trump while saying “we can’t allow anyone to audit election integrity”.
> Overall, 18% of Americans name Trump, 15% name Obama, 6% Biden and 3% Fauci.
I do find it a tad bit curious that Biden, with a mere 6% approval rate, was certified to have won the election and Trump apparently lost it when he had thrice Biden's approval rate.
That's a remarkable misinterpretation of the survey.
> Eighteen percent of the survey's respondents named Trump as their most admired man, compared to 15 percent who named Obama and 6 percent who named President-elect Joe Biden.
Going from "named the most admired by a plurality" to "the most admired" is exactly the same flaw as in first-past-the-post voting.
Good point there, split between Obama and Biden.
But there's only one like trump, and his fans are very passionate. That's what worked for him in 2016 too.
