[spazrunaway]

Extremism is relative. The opinions of an average American in 2008 would be labelled "far-right" today (see: opposition to gay marriage, transgenderism, support for colorblindness, I could go on). Sooner or later, people will see that it's a fool's errand keeping up with this runaway train of an overton window.

[TheBobinator]

Sensationalism generates extremist beliefs as a consequence of its operation.

The mainstream media\media monopoly has two deeply engrained habits; one, the belief in distributing free news, two, in sensationalizing every story to maximize ad revenue.

Technology reduces cost, ergo, when costs reductions meet these two habitations, the net result is training the audience to accept sensationalisation itself as a brand and if they do so, you tend to polarize an audience in unpredictable ways as a consequence of operating your media empire.

Think about it this way. The reason the MSM puts out news is to sell advertising, and to the advertisers, we are products the MSM is selling to them. What do you do with products once you are done with them? You throw them in the garbage. Once we're used up we become trashed.

It's the belief that sensationalism itself is trustworthy that creates this trashing, and I would encourage anyone to learn to detect sensationalism as the psychological baseline for stimulation has risen to such an extreme these days.

In this instance, the moment we refer to any kind of warfare operation as "whack a mole" is when you begin rolling your eyes as the author is not treating people with respect.

Good, accurate information is expensive. If you need proof of that, talk to a historian.

[2lwxxtj]

>The reason the MSM puts out news is to sell advertising

I'm pretty skeptical about that. The major media outlets have significant influence over the political ideas that circulate through the electorate. In a democracy, that means having a lot of influence over which candidates are viable in elections, which, given how powerful governments are, is worth quite a lot more than ad revenue.

Why do you think Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post? Do you think he was after the ad revenue?

[TheBobinator]

If they had the kind of sway over the public you say they had, then Trump wouldn't have recieved a record 72 million votes in 2020. They spent 4 years lambasting him over every single thing they could and the impact was an election about 90 million people in the US Think was rigged.

Stuff like this doesn't help the optics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGRnhBmHYN0

Nor does Zuckerberg spending $500 million on ballot harvesting initiatives and skirting the law where he could. The one thing this last election prooved is that when rich and powerful people feel threatened with losing power or fortune, they often decide to use whatever power they have and spend whatever fortune they've got to maintain what they have. We'll find out, as the forensic investigations drag on, exactly how compromised this election was. Suffice to say, an awful lot of people on the left are acting like they have nothing to lose which is a strong signal indictments and convictions are on the road ahead.

Look at the MSM's SEC 8k and 10k filings. https://investors.newscorp.com/node/10126/html

Free news is done to sell advertising, which also finds its way into their subscription businesses and even if you pay for WSJ, the articles are often paid for or done as political favors.

[2lwxxtj]

I said they have a lot of influence over which candidates are viable, not total control. Before becoming president, Trump was a very famous and interesting billionaire, which takes away a lot of the media's tools. The famous and interesting part makes it so people want to hear about him and will pull their eyeballs away from any media outlet that doesn't talk about him (which the media companies obviously care about because that takes away their influence), and the billionaire part gives him the ability to buy a credible campaign effort.

Certainly there are considerable numbers of people in this country that totally distrust the major media sources (for very good reason, in my opinion), but they still have considerable viewerships and therefore considerable influence over the thoughts and therefore votes of many.

Again, do you think Bezos was looking for the ad revenue? Or was he looking for political influence?

[fatsdomino001]

Support for colour-blindness is far-right? Who knew MLK was such a far right extremist eh?

[bitdizzy]

MLK was not by any means color blind. The only way you could come to that conclusion is if your entire understanding of his politics were a single sound bite.

[rscoots]

He advocated for a color blind future. Obviously he did not bury his head in the sand to the non-color blind injustices he saw in his country.

[TheBobinator]

MLK recognized that people are, and are always going to, judge others as they are and like people who are similar to them. This is human nature, and it's important for our survival. People are always going to be different, but they can however, make a decision to treat others with basic dignity and respect, to set boundaries around dignity and respect, and not use those diffrences as a reason to persecute or take advantage of them. It was that humility and basic desency that he advocated for.

It's easy to look at someone and pass judgement. It's expensive to get to know someone, especially if they are very different than you are. Learning to judge someone by the content of their character is a difficult thing to ask of someone.

Imagine having to get to know Ed Gein. At the very least if you listened to the mans life, you'd be questioning if there really was a god or if nature really had any sanity, given the developmental trauma he experienced. It's way easier to see a guy wearing his mother's skin on his face and go "yep, crazy". It's harder to look beneath that and go "How the hell did society fail you?".

That is the reason why his message resonated so well. Not because he was color blind, that is naieve. It is because he pointed out, and very rightly, that ignoring the black community or any community of people over racism creates a lost opportunity.

[rscoots]

>That is the reason why his message resonated so well. Not because he was color blind, that is naieve. It is because he pointed out, and very rightly, that ignoring the black community or any community of people over racism creates a lost opportunity.

What did or didn't resonate well is not really the point of the discussion but now that you bring it up, you'll remember one of King's least popular positions was one of his least color-blind ones: worker quotas.

[TheBobinator]

Does implimenting worker quotes address racism at it's root?

[yostrovs]

He did want a color blind society. He explicitly talked about it.

[milkrocks]

Don't you know being color-blind isn't ok, because you're not validating POC's struggles.

[2lwxxtj]

Anti-racism, which is explicitly non-color-blind, is now accepted ideology among the center right in the US. See for instance Mitt Romney marching in the "Black Lives Matter" protest: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/politics/mitt-romney-black-li...

[fatsdomino001]

Ironically, anti-racism is sounding awfully like racism to me. But maybe that's just my colour-blind self...

[readflaggedcomm]

It's a right-wing dog whistle: https://www.salon.com/2014/01/20/how_conservatives_hijacked_...

[fatsdomino001]

tbh anti-racism sounds like a left-wing dog whistle to racists on their end of the extreme.

[mlthoughts2018]

Wow, looking at this thread, you appear to either be just a troll stirring up racism arguments, or else you are yourself a sickeningly extreme racist. It is just bonkers crazy reading some of your comments on a usually civil platform like Hacker News.

[emodendroket]

Yeah sure, but is QAnon stuff ever going to be mainstream? Probably not.

[betterunix2]

The average American in 2008 was not walking into a synagogue and murdering people. Let's not pretend that far-right extremism is something other than what it actually is.

[leesalminen]

The average American in 2008 wasn't setting fire to courthouses. Let's not pretend that far-left extremism is something other than what it actually is.

[guscost]

Oh and also, nearly killing a US representative with a semiautomatic rifle.

[twiclo]

Every rifle is semiautomatic

[seneca]

> Every rifle is semiautomatic

This is just incorrect. Bolt action and muzzleloaded rifles are both extremely common and not semiautomatic.

That being said, "semiautomatic" is usually a useless scare-word thrown in by people who have no clue what they're talking about.

[grimjack00]

The current scare-term is "fully semi-automatic".

[leesalminen]

My mother believed for the majority of her adult life that “semi-automatic” meant “fully automatic”, as in “squeeze once, all the bullets come out”. It’s incredible that people with little to no knowledge of the mechanics of guns want to regulate exactly that.

[betterunix2]

Not true, here is one of many counterexamples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Model_700

[betterunix2]

That is classic, soviet-style whataboutism. Yes, there are some left-wing extremists who have committed terrorist acts in recent years, but no, it is not the same as right-wing extremism. There are no left-wing militias running drills and planning to kidnap governors. Right-wing extremists exist in greater numbers, are more organized, and have been responsible for more violence in recent years than left-wing extremists.

[2lwxxtj]

How exactly are you quantifying the amount of violence for which each side is responsible?

[readflaggedcomm]

But they are now, correct? which Fuentes condoned, I presume.

[betterunix2]

The average American is not a terrorist. Extremists are a small (but very dangerous) minority of the country.

[freeflight]

FYI: In 2009 a 88-year-old white supremacist started murdering people in the Holocaust Memorial Museum [0]

That period was also heavily dominated by Islamophobia in the US with firebomb attacks on Islamic Centers and random brown people getting assaulted and called "terrorists".

Heck, a mere 4 days after 9/11 happened a Sikh was shot for being mistaken as an Arab Muslim due to his turban [1]. Which actually makes no sense but hate rarely does.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Holocaust_Memori...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Balbir_Singh_Sodhi

[betterunix2]

Again, the average American was not out doing these things. I am not denying that there was a problem then, I am only saying that it is not representative of the average.

[freeflight]

How do you even define the "average American" and in what context?

Are these people average Americans? [0]

No offense, but this sounds a lot like the argument how Trump supporters are allegedly just a "loud minority", a claim that's factually disproved not just by results from the public votes of two presidential elections, but the fact that he won one of them and only barely lost the other one.

Where does the "average American" fall in that context? Is there even an "average" when the only two valid political choices have become distilled down to a superficial "We are not the other party" forcing everybody to pick between two allegedly completely opposing sides?

[0] https://youtu.be/KHJlZyFxp88