[santoshalper]

I noticed that as well. I find it interesting that the alt-right has started to embrace so much of modern feminist/liberal terminology and tacitly accepted so many of the premises.

The modern alt-right conservative: "I don't believe in safe spaces, but please stop bullying me!"

[twh270]

This is incredibly disingenuous. Much of the left considers simple disagreement to be micro-aggression, while at the same time finding it perfectly acceptable to launch hate-filled screeds of animosity and hatred at anyone who doesn't toe the line, e.g. "You're a fucking animal that deserves to be put down!!"

Your comment implicitly supports this sort of misbehavior, implying that any complaint by an "alt-righter" is just whining and carries no legitimacy.

Both the far left and alt-right have adopted extremist positions and in general have nothing good to say about each other. Please don't legitimize hateful, unacceptable behavior from the left just because the alt-right has learned to play some of the same games.

[freshhawk]

As an actual leftist, and the type of person who is on HN, I'd like to say that what you are describing is not "the left" or "far left" by any reasonable definition. You are describing neoliberal centrists, which can still contain extremists (are we calling this the "alt-center" now? I'm not sure, it's kinda dumb). Political spectrum and how extreme the tactics one uses are orthogonal.

[smhost]

> This is incredibly disingenuous.

> Much of the left considers simple disagreement to be micro-aggression...

Tone down on the hypocrisy. If you want your side's arguments to be evaluated fairly, don't make ridiculous oversimplifications of the other side's positions.

[smsm42]

Reading the lists of micro-aggressions, like this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... one can not fail to notice that some of them are clearly political disagreements and that disagreeing with the left tribe dogmas is declared to be micro-aggression there. I can agree that this is ridiculous, but apparently whoever wrote those lists does not think so.

[DalaiObama]

Have you tried actually disagreeing with leftists?

Many can handle it fine and have a decent discussion. But many will explode in self righteous rage and do all the things people blinded by hate do.

[LyndsySimon]

This is my experience as well. On the right, extremists tend to sort of "clam up" and just stop engaging in meaningful dialogue. On the left, they tend to attack the person challenging them.

I say this as as extreme libertarian, so I have my share of disagreements with both.

[twh270]

It's hardly a 'simplification' when people on the left regularly use the kind of speech I described to attack people who disagree with them. The right is just as guilty, but the comment I responded to was giving the left a pass on it, which is what I object to.

[rhizome]

They weren't giving the left a pass on it, they said the offended-right was using the same language.

[humanrebar]

To be fair, it was a reply to a comment pointing out hypocrisy with at least a bit of snark.

[freshhawk]

I'm not surprised by it at all, because I think it's not that they have started to embrace the premises but always did and used them as the foundation for their ideology.

It is, to generalize, a group of white, middle class people who were raised in this modern feminist/neo-liberal framework that struggled to translate very academic ideas into a pop culture suitable form. Those poor approximations got mutated by internet forum culture (tumblr and 4chan most famously, but it happened everywhere).

The alt-right people looked at this incoherent pop-ideology and, not totally unfairly, saw it as saying that race and culture are the same and are very real, unless you are white. Sex and gender are the same, are real for men but a constructed form of oppression for women. It's not a fair description of the actual ideas, but the pop-ideology was and is an incoherent mess. So a group of mostly middle class, mostly white and mostly men rejected the parts they didn't like and used the incoherent aspects that benefited them as weapons. The parts they did like remain unexamined, so while they ridicule the language used by their "enemies" they still think inside that ideology.

[sjg007]

Could you explicate the last part a little more? I'm interested in understanding the argument but I don't quite follow.

[humanrebar]

I just commented about this elsewhere, but my take is that some people who previously resisted identity politics finally threw up their hands and decided to accept it, as someone being attacked. So the hypocrisy and contradictions are better understood as protecting their own people from aggression.

As in, the substance of the argument is less important than the parties involved.

As in, "So women have special interest groups and dedicated clubs? Fine. Then it's OK for men to work to get their seat at the table, too." This explains a lot of the eagerness for leaders who know how to "fight". It also explains the lack of caring around ideological hypocrisy. It's like lawyer logic on some level:

"My client was not in town that night. And if he was in town, he did not borrow the mower. And if he did borrow the mower, it was with the consent of the plaintiff. And at any rate, the mower was already broken. And if it wasn't already broken, it broke itself."

...the important part of the argument is the defense of that particular client, not the logical coherence of the narrative.

[freshhawk]

There is that disingenuous aspect to it for sure. But there are true believers as well.

To take racism as an example, if you grew being told that racism means race-based prejudice and it is wrong and that one can be racist against anyone but a white person, you say "that's ridiculous".

The actual idea behind that is that racism is more than simple prejudice and crucially includes a societal power differential between two groups. And that race is a constructed concept and very important because society is structured around it, valid or not.

The pop explanation implies we are engaging in collective punishment against whites and men because of current and historical wrongs. That's wrong, but a lot of people on every side believe it. You almost couldn't have designed a situation better to create a new white nationalist and anti-feminist movement if you tried.

[freshhawk]

Fair point, I was trying to keep it short as no one wants to read essay length comments. Which aspect of that last part? The messy pop-culture version of academic discussions of race/gender, the alt-right use of them, both?

[humanrebar]

> I find it interesting that the alt-right has started to embrace so much of modern feminist/liberal terminology and tacitly accepted so many of the premises.

The alt-right, to some degree, is a movement that has accepted the framework of progressive identity politics and has decided that they better start fighting for themselves, too. The complaint about safe spaces is an argument about equality and power ("If I don't get safe spaces, nobody does!") than an argument from principle.

I find the whole thing distasteful, but I can understand why if someone finds identity politics a foregone conclusion why they would start fighting on the battle lines they think were drawn for them.

So I'm not sure how to get out of this mess, but I think a first step is trying to understand people, even if they're wrong.

[smsm42]

There's a difference between asking not to be fired because somebody overheard and misunderstood your conversation as being "microagression" and asking mentioning anything that might upset you to be proscribed. In fact, the persons doing the latter are very likely to be the perpetrators, and not the victims, in the former. So it's completely logical - what they are saying is "we do not believe in declaring everything that we disagree with is violence and should be purged from existence, and we do not want to be purged from existence because we think so". I think there's nothing wrong in such opinion.

[LyndsySimon]

Many on the right now use that terminology to implicitly underscore contradictions in those belief systems.

I think it would be a mistake to believe that they subscribe to those viewpoints. Rather, a core characteristic of conservativism is a desire for rules to be followed and equally enforced. Pointing out places where the left is inconsistent is their way of discrediting those views.

[throwanem]

What surprises you about this? Historically speaking, it seems high time for a synthesis to arise.

I'm not sure what you find incompatible in "I don't believe in safe spaces" and "please stop bullying me". Hiding from bullies is a tacit concession. Confronting them is not. You might confront a bully and lose, but you might confront a bully and win, too.

Many at least - I think most if not all - who embraced the "alt-right" label, before its cynical and unjust equation by their enemies with Nazism, perceive themselves to be and have been bullied by those with whom they have the intolerable temerity to disagree. But those safe spaces which they have attempted to establish have not been permitted the conventional inviolability, but rather been gleefully invaded and their inhabitants shamed and castigated without scruple. Why "believe in safe spaces" when you are not permitted to have them, but rather encouraged with great firmness to accept that only once you have surrendered your dissent, and publicly abased yourself in hope of expiation for the sins you now forswear, will there be even a chance you may be allowed to feel safe?

As in every case where bullies run rampant and are unchecked by any impartial force majeure, the only passive defense has been invisibility, and it is very hard to remain unseen indefinitely. Your enemies only have to be good, or lucky, for a moment. You have to be good, and lucky, all the time. When you inevitably slip, or when your good fortune inevitably runs out, you are at their mercy. The social, educational, vocational, and even legal consequences can be severe - and, worse, it is not in your power whether they will be or won't be. But, like any bully, they're probably going to work you over that much harder for making them go to the effort of catching you, instead of politely submitting yourself for violation like a good little victim.

And as with any bully, there's no merit in what they do to you. No doubt every bully imagines himself enforcing some sort of right ordering upon society, in whatever sphere his power enables him to encompass. But this is a lie. The bully does what he does to his victim because his victim cannot or will not be what the bully demands he be. But even this is a lie. In truth the bully does what he does because he can, and because it's easy, and because it brings him pleasure.

Some grow out of this over time. Not all do. And power is seductive. It can easily betray you into doing things to others which you would never suffer upon yourself. It can give you any number of reasons for the former to seem virtuous even though the latter is iniquitous. The danger comes in the difficulty of differentiating this betrayal from reality. There are times when it truly is virtuous to, for example, break someone's nose, and times when it truly is iniquitous. Standing up to a bully, for example, bears virtue. Imagining one stands up to a bully, while in fact behaving as a bully oneself, does not. It is vitally important for everyone, but especially everyone with the power to crowdsource the sort of vengeful mob that can so easily destroy someone's social and professional and educational life, to bear this distinction sharply in mind. To fail in so doing risks erring into shameful, unjust, indeed frankly abusive behavior. And I suspect there are few on any side of any political divide who would be willing to argue that abusive behavior merits tolerance from those whom it would make its victims.