Current Affairs The Far Right
- Thread starter Groucho
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Yes, of course they are.
So does that make it right that the left do it?
I'm not defending the far right. Neither extreme are good. You can be left or right but you don't need to be the extremes of either, but I do think there's more of a tendency at the moment of people on the left to try and justify or go with the actions of the far left than there has been before, and that's a worry, because it'll result in one of two things
a) people go with the far-left rhetoric and we end up in a Big Brother-esque society with mind and word police (some might call that Twitter in its current form)
b) people refute it and lean towards the far right, and you end up with that rearing its ugly head
NEITHER OF THESE THINGS ARE GOOD
so can we stop justifying/defending it for the sake of not conceding a point and instead accept that 'somewhere in the middle' is always the best place to be.
dholliday
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it's a shame our New Middle thread got locked, it nicely balanced the Far Left/Right ones.
@Bruce Wayne @roydo could we re-open?
https://www.grandoldteam.com/forum/threads/the-new-middle.102586/
Sorry Toff. You are not gonna win me over on this one. Those claiming fighting for equal rights for all are pulling this identity politics label as if it's a bad thing. Sick to death of it to be honest.
In my lifetime marginalized people from many groups have gained a much more equal foot in the world because of identity politics that you and others rail against. If that makes me a lefty extremist then so be it.
Is that really why they have gained an equal footing?
Or is it that brilliant people have made a stand and helped change the world? Because of changing trends and the fact that people have - thankfully - altered their thoughts over time.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
Well I'm sorry, but in my mind identity politics is literally the opposite of that ^
And no, I don't think you're a lefty extremist.
But why is it okay for white males to now be labelled as 'automatically racist'.
Why is it okay that some of the U.S' top universities are starting to deny Asian students places on the top courses so that other 'groups' are represented, not because they're the best people for the course, but because of their race, gender or religion?
Why is it okay for people to be labelled as 'alt-right' (a term that should be reserved for the kind of freaks that stand outside churches and wish death on gay people) for merely daring to question this?
Why do we tolerate this?
We, rightly, should never tolerate the right-wing extremism. Anyone who thinks that is acceptable is a disgusting person.
Racism is wrong. Sexism is wrong. Discrimination on all levels is wrong. So why do the far left encourage it and why should people that are in the middle tolerate that? Isn't there a better way?
dholliday
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That's why the Left call it 'positive discrimination'...Orwell wrote at length as to how language can be used to shape public thinking. Here, the word 'positive' will automatically have most people trusting of whatever concept is thrust after that word.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is truth.
It's still identity politics and if you take a 10000 foot view of it. Folks on the other side railed against MLK.
In more recent years gay marriage was a battle finally won. It took over 30 years of litigation to make this happen. Some folks chose to be on the right side of history, and conservatives have begrudgingly accept defeat. That was 100% a ridiculous identity politics war.
You call it right and just some of the landmark moments of civil rights granted in my lifetime. They were all identity battles.
Conservatives still have a sting over gay marriage as an example. Most good folks accept it...some begrudgingly...but there are conservatives out there who will continue to try to take that right away. Much like legal abortion.
The Alt-right label? I think that is the edgy term folks like to bandy about as some sort of new way of looking at things when in fact it's just regurgitated bigoty under a slightly different barf flavor.
Steve Bannon was one of the original founding board members of Breitbart. When the founder passed away Bannon took over as the Executive Chairman. He steered the organization into a further right of center stance and labelled Breitbart the platform of the alt-right.
Not long after he was the White House Cheif Strategist. Trump made the alt-right mainstream.
Perhaps it means something different from across the pond, but the simple fact that Trump would hire a fella like Bannon to shape his policy says it all really. The alt-right movement got Trump elected make no mistake.
dead_soft
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Or because it is seen as a positive step to change discriminates against minorities. Do you genuinely believe that different groups don’t face different challenges? If they do, why wouldn’t they have different policies aimed at helping them?
dead_soft
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Boggling if you genuinely believe that people being wary of the use of certain language on Twitter is a Big Brother style system. Or are you just taking this to a ridiculous extreme?
At least in the UK, it's not just 'conservatives' who were against gay marriage. I think your normal 'person on the street' in the part of the UK where I'm from at least is a labour voter. The constituency I am in will always be a labour stronghold. Yet I'm pretty sure it voted out in the election.
So this is again, to me, a proof of what balls identity/groupthink politics is. Because not everybody who votes for a left(er) party is actually a liberal, and not everyone who votes Tory is strictly conservative. In the case of where I'm from, Labour will always win because of what the Tories did to the area back in the 80s. Much like Liverpool, it was decimated during that decade when all of the pits were shut down.
Reading further down, I am assuming you're referring the US, so yes I absolutely agree with you on those issues of gay marriage and abortion. I don't know why they're issues. What I would recommend though is, if you haven't already, watch Ben Shapiro on Dave Rubin's show a few weeks ago. Rubin and Shapiro both get tagged with this ludicrous alt-right label, and even though I don't agree with them (Shapiro more than Rubin) on a lot of things, they aren't alt-right.
Rubin is a gay, married jewish-born man. I believe he is an atheist now.
Shapiro is a conservative, orthodox, deeply religious jewish man. He is against gay marriage in the sense that views it as a sin because of his religious beliefs. However, his political/social belief is that people should, by and large, be able to do what they want without caring what he or whatever anybody else thinks.
Now, I don't agree with him not agreeing with gay marriage, but he has his reasons. Yet him and Rubin have these lengthy discussions about all types of issues and, while at time it's a bit sycophantic, it shows that people can talk about these issues without it getting overridden by anger and emotion. Personally, I don't know why it's an issue. To me, it doesn't matter if your gay or straight or bi or whatever, you can do what you want. But, I respect that other people don't agree. The issue is whether the disagreement comes from a place of hate or not, and if it comes from hate or results in hate then that is absolutely wrong on every level.
And it's back to Trump.
I'm just not buying that Trump is 'alt-right', and I'm not buying it was 'alt-right' that got him elected.
What got Trump elected was tapping into middle America, from the outside looking in. We had Brexit what, four months before? The build up was pretty much the same.
One party overconfident, not actually focusing on the strengths of their argument but instead focusing on belittling the arguments of the other.
The other party, playing the underdog card without ever actually being the underdog, tapping into the issues that, like it or not, most 'normal people on the street' would bring up as issues that they cared about politically, and having the money and arrogance to pull it off.
From that point of view, the result was entirely predictable. So I don't think Trump needed any 'alt-right' backing. Did he get it? Probably. But it's not what won him the election.
I'll have to do a bit more research on this when I have the time, but I'm pretty sure that it was a director from one of the big Marvel films (or one that is slated for release/production) who lost his job because people dragged up some tweets (a distasteful joke) he had made some years ago. The studio fired him, with no questions asked.
I'm pretty sure that in the same week, a writer got hired by either the New York Times or Washington Post who encourages hatred against white people. I can't remember her name, and I don't know her race/gender identity or whatever else.
People dragged up tweets that she'd made in the weeks building up to her getting that job, where she'd actively spread race-based hatred. She kept her job.
We've seen it - on a much less extreme scale - with the Holgate incident last year. People able to trawl through comments made by a 14-year-old and demand he be banned from playing a sport.
It's a weird weird society we live in. I'm not saying it's complete censorship, I think that's going overboard. But there's definitely a case of whatever you've ever said now being in the public record and god forbid if something happens (good or bad) in your career/life because then it will all be dragged up, relevant or not.
So no, I don't think it's 'boggling in the extreme'.
What I think is boggling is sensible people turning their heads to issues that are clearly present, just in the interest of 'being liberal'.
And again, I'm just putting my thoughts out here. I'm not saying you have to agree, but this is what discussion and debate should be about. Was saying it's Big Brotherish a bit OTT? Yeh, probably. But it was just an example that popped into my head while I was writing that. It was spur of the moment, as most things are in life.
I have to sleep. Please take a few moments to dig into the identity politics Breitbart and other right wing media sources played in 2016 here in America.
I abhore the idea that the right wing has made the term "identity politics" a term to beat those on the left with when their agenda is just as identity politics driven.
I will take time tomorrow to look at what you wanted me to. (I have listened to Shapiro on conservative radio many times so I will struggle with objectiveness).
The clue is in the name, it's still discrimination.
And what different challenges to black people in the UK currently face to white people? This is not about challenges in the past, because obviously, nobody would deny that there have been challenges, but right now.
Because as far as I can see, a black person who I went to school with had exactly the same opportunities (in terms of rights to an education, right to work, right to have whatever religious belief they want/don't want, right to be gay or straight, right to have children or not, right to get married or not) that I did.
Will our upbringings have been different? Yes. Will that have been down to race? No. Will race have played a part in it? Maybe a bit, yeh.
Will we have gone down different paths in life? Yes, probably, unless we happened to share exactly the same interests. Will that have been down to race? Again, no.
Is it fair to say that, generally, black and white people (sticking with this example) may have different tastes?
Should we actively encourage young white men to be more prominent in the grime music scene? Should record labels stop taking on black artists until there's an equal representation of all the other races, and then should we switch it so that it's not just the races that are represented, but all of the genders as well, and then well, why stop there, we should make sure that every age group is equally represented shouldn't we?
Discrimination of any kind is wrong. Positive discrimination in favour of one group is negative discrimination against another. Whether that be hiring a white person over a black person or the other way around.
Will take a look mate! I'm happy to learn where I can. Readily accept there's different issues across the pond that there are to here as well!
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