It's also disingenuous to suggest the extreme left isn't dominating the messaging from the left.
The extremes tend to dominate the messaging on both sides. And frankly, the internet being dominated by younger people, there is a good case to be made that the extreme left's voices are louder.
>It's also disingenuous to suggest the extreme left isn't dominating the messaging from the left.
Except it's not disengenuous to say that at all. We can see that by the candidates each party has supported. Biden is considered a pretty centrist democrat by pretty much any metric. Trump, however, can't be considered a moderate. He's enabled fascist White nationalist supporters. Biden hasn't done the same.
Also, for the record, BLM and SJWs aren't equivalent extremist left compared to literal Nazis - the left wing extremist equivalent is Communism and the position to kill and eat the rich. That is the level of extremism that Trump has facilitated in office. If Biden also enabled people who explicitly call to overthrow the US government, I'd say you have a fairer point.
The 2 extremes are indeed closer to each other than they are to the center, the Horseshoe theory. Of course, extremists on either side would hate to be bundled together, their ideology is different but their extremist approach is not.
But I can't help but think this is a very asymmetrical horseshoe where the right side extends much further then the left side ever did. The problem is not even necessarily the particular ideology but rather that the right side is willing to be far more extreme in their views. That in itself is exceptionally dangerous no matter what the views are because it implies a very, very unpleasant life for those who don't share them.
It's the reason why today the US is so divided, there's no more overlap, the 2 sides each sit in their corner. The only possible response to increasing extremism on one side is increasing extremism on the other side until one has enough power to quash the other.
> The only possible response to increasing extremism on one side is increasing extremism on the other side until one has enough power to quash the other.
I think this statement is wrong. There are a lot of other possibilities. For example: "A minority that is agressively vocal for extremism in one aspect could be cushioned by a strong general consensus for a political culture of reasonable cooperation and discussion."
There are extremists on the left, Biden disavowed them publicly.
There are extremists on the right, Trump disavowed them publicly.
Nevertheless, media commentators on either side try to portrait these candidates as if they supported, or at least "enabled" extremists.
Can you be more specific on how either of these candidates "enable" or "do not enable" extremism? How would you falsify an accusation of "enabling" something?
What you are pointing out here is fundamentally true and verifiable. I think I find myself, along with many other americans, in a bizarre position where we see comments like this which we know are accurate get barraged by downvotes or whatever system in Internet commentary exists to decrease the visibility of the comment, and I find this troubling. This mostly happens, from what I've seen, if there is any suggestion within the comment that the right is in some way defensible. I think many internet forums have tried to use downvotes as a signal for validity, but so frequently that signal is obviously misapplied, making it almost entirely meaningless. In fact, it is has become a signal for the direction of the political leanings of the majority, rather than anything having to do with the usefulness or appropriateness of any given comment.
Genuinely interested when/where Trump disavowed right wing extremists. I've seen him refuse to denounce white supremacy in the first debate but I haven't seen him denounce anyone who might vote for him
> I've seen him refuse to denounce white supremacy in the first debate...
That was clearly a missed opportunity to clear things up, but the counter-question "Who do you want me to condemn?" is a fair one. It's easy for Trump to condemn the KKK, not so easy to condemn militia groups in general. Similarly, it's easy for Biden to condemn rioters, not so easy to condemn Antifa in general. Effectively, both candidates dodged that question.
> ... I haven't seen him denounce anyone who might vote for him.
That's moving the goalpost a bit too far for my taste. Trump has condemned white supremacists, that at least is on the record.
"to condemn Antifa"
Antifa is a construct from Fox News to designate a broad category of mostly young people that range from anarchists calling for direct democracy to people who are against racism and intolerance that have in common that they are not against clashing with police forces. So condemning Antifa does not make much sense. Maybe he could have condemned violence in the protests but anyone who has been in a demonstration knows elements in both the protesters and the police are looking for the clash. But the police always has the upper hand and violently crush what is mostly damage to property. Just tell me how many people have been killed by so called "Antifa"? Is that comparable to the number of people that have been killed by right-wing activists? Why is it always the progressive leaders that get shot? Right wing activists always say they are here to "defend" against something but they are the one attacking.
> Can you be more specific on how either of these candidates "enable" or "do not enable" extremism? How would you falsify an accusation of "enabling" something?
I can indeed do this, but the question itself seems to be asked in bad faith. How on earth do you need me to report to you on Trump's behavior and words even into the final debate?
> It's also disingenuous to suggest the extreme left isn't dominating the messaging from the left.
Except they're not. Your country has drifted so far right, every opposing voice may look like "extreme left", but it's not. Nowhere close.
If you want to argue about the actual extreme left, go right ahead. I'm as left-leaning as they are, but I'll probably agree with you. There's some idiots.
But the extreme left isn't really that vocal at all in the US right now. It's the moderate leftists trying to restore some sense of normalcy.
Wearing a mask is just a simple precaution that everyone should take. Using pictures of you wearing a mask rather than not, is just leading by example.
> @moderators: have I earned the automatic downvote? Whatever I post shows zero points as soon as it is posted.
Not a mod, but I'll take an educated guess that this is what ires someone:
> What is called far right in USA is the same thing we call neo-fascism anywhere else
The rest of your post is spot on IMO but I hesitate to upvote because of that part, and not because there isn't a point but because it is a whole lot more nuanced:
Yes: a number of wackos exist on the "far right" (I hate that term as it frames conservatives with totalitarian ones.)
But there has also been a tendency by media to abuse the term as a rubber stamp for "anything conservative we don't like". It's either that or a large number of facists are the ones to defend the jews this year, and despite 2020 being odd I don't think that will ever happen.
(I collected a fair number of downvotes myself last election season, seemingly from both sides, which is why I feel somewhat qualified to explain ;-)
To be honest I don't care if someone is ired or not, being ired is a choice and usually doesn't depend to what other people do, but how we react to them
It is my understanding that over the years people have developed various software to follow threads and users' comment streams so it is conceivable that some bored zealot took it upon himself to police every single thing you post in real time. Or set up a downvote bot as others suggested. There are some genuine weirdos here.
I haven't been here for a few years (green account again, yay), but at least back then, moderators weren't know for f...ng with anyone like that. Warning, maybe another warning, shadow ban and good bye.
At any rate, posting "@moderators" in the middle of a 4000 comment thread will get you nowhere. There is a contact email at the bottom if you want to ask for investigation.
I've never heard or seen anything like what you suggest.
It has been admitted I think that one is aware of certain bots (not affiliated with YC) that vote in certain directions.
I think I have even seen one popular HNer admit that he thought there was a bot who would upvote all his answer irregardless of who low quality they were.
Maybe someone has something like that and have pointed it at you.
More likely though you annoyed someone and they went in to your profile and looked at your other answers.
Edit: I looked into your comments and here are two notes.
1. Your comments are a mixed bag. Saying Trump brought war to American soil for example isn't anywhere near true and also inflammatory.
2. Some of them are insightful but ires one side without delighting the other. The result is you get a downvote from those who are annoyed and no support from the other side.
> What is called far right in USA is the same thing we call neo-fascism anywhere else
The US far-right includes camps that don't exactly fit that definition (though there is plenty of overlap), like christian dominionists, corporatist right-libertarians, and the misogynistic PUA/incell/MRA crowd (which is more of a feeder system than a political philosophy per se).
That used to be the case, but it has changed. The last 10 years the extreme left in the US has shifted left, passing even the European left, at least according to Pew[1]. I don't think this particular report mentions the European part, can't find that right now, but they mentioned it in another report on it.
I would like to add that the Critical Race Theory (where DEI originates from) is only recently starting to get traction in for example The Netherlands, traditionally an already pretty left-leaning country.
> The last 10 years the extreme left in the US has shifted left, passing even the European left
Whether or not it's true, the “extreme left” in the US that may or may not have shifted that way is politically irrelevant.
Meanwhile, of the major parties the Democratic Party has been stable for decades while the Republican Party has shot to the extremes, a process that has continued at a rapid pace over the last decade.
What page in [1] do you refer to? While I believe it could be democrats are more left than european sozialdemocratic parties, I would doubt they are left to succesor party of the communidt aera.
But that doesn't mean that the Democratic party message comes from the far left.
Biden can't pronounce the word "free healthcare" for fear of losing votes.
That's what I was contesting: far right is right at the centre of the political scene side by side with Trump, far left is not because it has no direct representation in the political system.
Unless you consider someone like Sanders a far left extremists, which is not.
> @moderators: have I earned the automatic downvote? Whatever I post shows zero points as soon as it is posted.
Hacker News tends to be pretty good about people not just downvoting posts because they disagree with them. However, that goes out the window when the discussion gets political.
I'd be really interested in seeing the numbers for upvotes and downvotes on political topics vs other topics. I wouldn't be surprised if you could train a classifier to spot political articles based on this distribution.
Down voting is a very blunt tool. Enough down votes can hide a comment. This means you aren't just saying "I disagree" but "this is so wrong no one should read it." It has its place but there's a reason you don't get to do it until your account has received enough upvotes.
The extremes tend to dominate the messaging on both sides. And frankly, the internet being dominated by younger people, there is a good case to be made that the extreme left's voices are louder.