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https://twitter.com/Flames_Baldwin/...weet-roasted%2F There was definitely a trend of American newspapers writing weirdly complimentary headlines about actual white supremacists a while back but I can't say that I've seen anything approaching this level of glamorisation of fascism in European papers.
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Sep 29, 2017 10:10
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lost in postation posted:https://twitter.com/Flames_Baldwin/...weet-roasted%2F
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Sep 29, 2017 10:25
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I never claimed they were? That's a weird extrapolation from "American papers sometimes make the far right sound new and exciting".
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Sep 29, 2017 10:39
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lost in postation posted:I never claimed they were? That's a weird extrapolation from "American papers sometimes make the far right sound new and exciting". But ok, I should not insinuate you had actually claimed this was giving them votes. Still, of what consequence is it, if of any? Is there more substance to your post than "they did not deliberately chose unfavourable lighting for Spencer's face"?
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Sep 29, 2017 10:49
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Cingulate posted:Mother Jones isn't subliminally converting its readers to support Spencer, come on. It's about the normalisation of fascism and fascist ideas under the cover of a different coat of paint. And this has been going on for years. The coverage of Brexit by the UK press for example. I don't think there are many fash in the UK media but that doesn't change that the anti-immigrant fanaticism of The Daily Mail & The Sun & others has created room for key ideas of the fash to be treated as something culturally acceptable. That has consequences.
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Sep 29, 2017 10:51
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What does "normalisation of fascism and fascist ideas" mean? It seems to me my intuitions about what that would mean are rather far away from where we are, and heading to, as a society. Is there some hopefully intersubjectively verifiable test I can apply to a society that tells me if it has normalised fascism and fascist ideas?
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Sep 29, 2017 10:58
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Well, the point, if anything, is:lost in postation posted:I can't say that I've seen anything approaching this level of glamorisation of fascism in European papers. That said, summing up the argument as "they did not deliberately chose unfavourable lighting for Spencer's face" is really quite disingenuous considering the general tone of the headlines.
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Sep 29, 2017 10:58
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lost in postation posted:https://twitter.com/Flames_Baldwin/...weet-roasted%2F
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Sep 29, 2017 11:01
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lost in postation posted:Well, the point, if anything, is: What, really, is the substance of the claim? jBrereton posted:There was some fairly simpering coverage of Nigel Farage by everyone including The Guardian when Brexit wasn't really on the menu.
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Sep 29, 2017 11:04
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Cingulate posted:What does "normalisation of fascism and fascist ideas" mean? It seems to me my intuitions about what that would mean are rather far away from where we are, and heading to, as a society. Is there some hopefully intersubjectively verifiable test I can apply to a society that tells me if it has normalised fascism and fascist ideas? "Does X thing (e.g. an article in a newspaper) downplay or ignore the seriousness of a candidate/party's fascist leanings, or attempt to portray them as kooky but ultimately harmless?" is a good litmus test, I've found. So, Jimmy Fallon ruffling Trump's hair on prime time TV falls under that category, for instance. e: and why this focus on Mother Jones, of all things? it's a) far from forming part of the core of the mainstream media and b) iirc pretty far left, so just about the worst example you could choose to ask about normalisation of fascism. Can we go back to the independence debate? It was far less frustrating than the "explain why voting for nazis is bad" conversations we're having now. Altivia fucked around with this message at 11:08 on Sep 29, 2017 |
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Sep 29, 2017 11:05
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Cingulate posted:Again, it's Mother Jones. Are you really saying this is symptomatic of something that can be called glamorisation of actual neo-nazis, by outfits such as Mother Jones? You keep repeating Mother Jones as though it was unthinkable that a centre-left paper would be complicit (even unwittingly) in anything untoward, which is odd to say the least. YF-23 was talking about the media lobbing softballs at the far right and casting them as lovable cartoon villains. I was giving an example of that. I have no idea what actual consequences, if any, this has on the electorate, and I genuinely don't understand why you seem to be so hostile to the idea.
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Sep 29, 2017 11:10
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Cingulate posted:Again, it's Mother Jones. Are you really saying this is symptomatic of something that can be called glamorisation of actual neo-nazis, by outfits such as Mother Jones? Using phrasing like "Meet the dapper" and using the term "white nationalist" instead of "racist" and the like are all parts of softening the impact of what he is. Which is a bog-standard racist in his dad's business suit.
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Sep 29, 2017 11:22
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Altivia posted:"Does X thing (e.g. an article in a newspaper) downplay or ignore the seriousness of a candidate/party's fascist leanings, or attempt to portray them as kooky but ultimately harmless?" is a good litmus test, I've found. So, Jimmy Fallon ruffling Trump's hair on prime time TV falls under that category, for instance. And are you saying this is some broad underlying theme - that our media landscapes are accurately characterised as portraying the far right as ultimately harmless? E.g., there's not just a few instances of shallow jokes embedded in an overwhelming consensus of rejection, but that is the general theme? Cause when you say "the media is normalising fascism", what I'm envisioning is something much more sinister than even what you're seeing on right-wing mainstream media. Altivia posted:e: and why this focus on Mother Jones, of all things? it's a) far from forming part of the core of the mainstream media and b) iirc pretty far left, so just about the worst example you could choose to ask about normalisation of fascism. Altivia posted:Can we go back to the independence debate? It was far less frustrating than the "explain why voting for nazis is bad" conversations we're having now. lost in postation posted:You keep repeating Mother Jones as though it was unthinkable that a centre-left paper would be complicit (even unwittingly) in anything untoward, which is odd to say the least. Either way, I think if you put things in proportion, the media is still just as united in a rejection of the far right as they used to be (i.e., not perfectly, but largely). Tesseraction posted:Using phrasing like "Meet the dapper" and using the term "white nationalist" instead of "racist" and the like are all parts of softening the impact of what he is. Which is a bog-standard racist in his dad's business suit.
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Sep 29, 2017 11:23
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Cingulate posted:Ok, so what does it mean that Mother Jones are doing these things? Their ideology should be clear. Both sideism. Can't look biased, someone might stop reading our website!
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Sep 29, 2017 11:28
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Cingulate posted:Ok, so what does it mean that Mother Jones are doing these things? Their ideology should be clear. You can have your heart in the right place and still be complacent about how you handle things.
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Sep 29, 2017 11:34
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MiddleOne posted:It would be way worse. Imagine the staggering amounts of money that would go into supplying anything for the entire EU. The entire EU already buys lots of guns, it just does it country-by-country instead of as a whole. There's no reason 28 countries separately negotiating their procurement would be less corrupt than the EU negotiating as a whole. In fact it would probably be less corrupt since there would be eyes from each country watching it, instead of the President of Bulgaria giving the entire budget to his brother in law and declaring the transaction top secret due to national security.
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Sep 29, 2017 11:36
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Cingulate posted:This is very far away from how things look like from here. Maybe I'm reading this too strongly, if I'm saying "Spencer is a stupid clown who will never have any power, amount to anything, and should best be laughed at" I am normalising fascism? That's actually a more rotund rejection of Spencer than a lot of articles I've seen in otherwise respectable journals. I think you're imagining a more sinister, cabal-like behavior than what's actually going on. The overarching point is that there has been a tendency - probably unconscious among mainstream media outlets - to treat candidates/parties with fascist tendencies as more of a joke than a legitimate threat (which was definitely the case with Trump at least until he won the Republican primaries, at which point it was arguably too late). And painting them as a joke or an outsider who "will never hold any power" lets people feel less bad about voting for them, and then - oops! - Bannon is in the White House. How on Earth could that have happened? Cingulate posted:Are you saying I'm proposing voting for Nazis may not be bad? I mean, I may have overstated lost in postation's point, but this seems to me to be taking things too far. No, not you. It was more of a general complaint about the tenor and quality of debate in the last few pages of the thread.
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Sep 29, 2017 11:45
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Cingulate posted:And are you saying this is some broad underlying theme - that our media landscapes are accurately characterised as portraying the far right as ultimately harmless? E.g., there's not just a few instances of shallow jokes embedded in an overwhelming consensus of rejection, but that is the general theme? Yeah, I think it's more a case of concentrating on the extremists' eccentricities and lovable quirks rather than the hatefulness of their ideas, not out of a sense of agreement, but because it sells more. (And to maintain a "neutral" political tone, in some cases.) To get away from the American example (that I singled out because I think it was literal glamour granted to a literal fascist), somebody like Farage undeniably profited from being seen as a figure of fun rather than a serious ethno-nationalist, at least initially.
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Sep 29, 2017 11:49
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lost in postation posted:Yeah, I think it's more a case of concentrating on the extremists' eccentricities and lovable quirks rather than the hatefulness of their ideas, not out of a sense of agreement, but because it sells more. (And to maintain a "neutral" political tone, in some cases.) Absolutely, he was constantly referred to as a man of the people, pictured in pubs drinking and laughing with people like an Ordinary Bloke. No attention was paid to his political positions other than him whining about EU fatcats... despite the fact he himself is a multimillionaire, and never challenged his assertions about the EU even when they were blatantly bullshit.
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Sep 29, 2017 11:54
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Cingulate posted:Either way, I think if you put things in proportion, the media is still just as united in a rejection of the far right as they used to be (i.e., not perfectly, but largely). Like I tried to say yesterday, that still has negative consequences. In terms of the EU, even if the media in, say, Finland (with whose media I am most familiar) keeps writing EU-positive editorials and castigating EU-critics as racist dullards, people critical of the EU (for whatever reason!) seeing that will note that politician So-and-So is against the EU too, a) maybe EU-critical thoughts aren't so rare after all 2) I might just vote for this bad boy/girl! Or, in another example, several leaders of our racist party have been convicted of racist hate speech or are under investigation for it, and our media tends to put that information in many articles that discuss said leaders. The comment field, if there is one, is invariably filled by racist party supporters crying about "political convictions" and how our society is corrupt and things have to change. So they'll just keep on voting for the racist party, despite explicitly being told that it's the racist party. And this self-victimization about the perceived injustices of the justice system also feeds into the general message that "things gotta change, gotta vote for an alternative"; so long as the main stream parties keep austering away with gay abandon, you'll have more and more people susceptible to a message that the system is against them. I don't think you have to be a Nazi rocket scientist to realize the inevitable outcome of this, despite the media dutifully condemning the racists. Like I said, I don't have a solution to this Ouroboros of racism, it's simply an observation. It's fine if you want to insist that the media is behaving in a responsible way, but the larger point is that it doesn't diminish the support for racist parties so long as the austerity gently caress-show keeps happening.
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Sep 29, 2017 11:57
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Cingulate posted:This is very far away from how things look like from here. Maybe I'm reading this too strongly, if I'm saying "Spencer is a stupid clown who will never have any power, amount to anything, and should best be laughed at" I am normalising fascism? Talking about the "dapper white nationalist" and the "new think tank in town" is absolutely glamourising them. I don't give a gently caress what publication it's coming from, that is a headline that portrays them as cool kids, as something aesthetically pleasing, and with that portrayal comes the implication that you should find pleasure in these aesthetics. And now you can be a fascist and be greeted with people talking about how handsome you are, or how sexy you are, or how you're a revolutionary firebrand - and that's normalisation. It doesn't matter if in their next breath they denounce your bullshit ideology, through headlines like those they've provided a framework by which you can be treated as a pop-star rather than as a totalitarian rear end in a top hat.
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Sep 29, 2017 12:25
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As a more general and topical point, while I am not sure how to most effectively combat the far right in Europe, I do think succeeding in painting them as ridiculous would work better than painting them as dangerous: from what I know, the German AfD is in part attractive because it is perceived as an actual threat, and I assume it's the same for the others. It being dangerous is part of its appeal. If people saw them as imbecile clowns, they wouldn't vote for them. It's certainly like that for Trump - being scary is a reason for, not against.Truga posted:Both sideism. Can't look biased, someone might stop reading our website! Altivia posted:That's actually a more rotund rejection of Spencer than a lot of articles I've seen in otherwise respectable journals. I think you're imagining a more sinister, cabal-like behavior than what's actually going on. The overarching point is that there has been a tendency - probably unconscious among mainstream media outlets - to treat candidates/parties with fascist tendencies as more of a joke than a legitimate threat (which was definitely the case with Trump at least until he won the Republican primaries, at which point it was arguably too late). And painting them as a joke or an outsider who "will never hold any power" lets people feel less bad about voting for them, and then - oops! - Bannon is in the White House. How on Earth could that have happened So another one, and this goes more to the US than to the local far right I think: Trump is a clown, and just by virtue of how utterly ridiculous he is, it's neigh unavoidable to make jokes about him. Quoting him verbatim is making fun of him. Posting video clips of him is making fun of him. Though this goes much less for the (European) rest of the far- and alt-right – but it does go for Spencer. YF-23 posted:Talking about the "dapper white nationalist" and the "new think tank in town" is absolutely glamourising them. I don't give a gently caress what publication it's coming from It also matters because Mother Jones writers most likely assumed they were doing this as a warning. Actually, what the piece communicates to me is making them look more scary. They look serious, they don't have face tattoos - that makes them more dangerous! They're masquerading as normal human beings now, the invasion is here! And I would bet most of the people coming across this, or any, Mother Jones piece will experience it like that.
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Sep 29, 2017 12:48
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Cingulate posted:Mother Jones? I know I know, I'm just shooting ideas at a wall. It's not at all likely, but I wouldn't put it into the impossible bucket either. Also, there's very few publications that will call even an open nazi a nazi these days, there's a couple youtube channels that have called Trump's fascists shenanigans fascist, and it just about ends there. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some kind of chilling effect of "well literally nobody is calling these guys nazis so maybe if we call them nazis people will just pull godwin and ignore us". Reminder that Nazis basically didn't exist in the mainstream US media until Charlotsville happened.
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Sep 29, 2017 13:02
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A Buttery Pastry posted:For the comparison to hold up, you should probably scale the decline to match the ascend. Assuming the Roman Kingdom is the equivalent of the European Economic Community, you end up with a timeline for Europe that looks something like this: We need 2 major religious shifts rather than just the 1.
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Sep 29, 2017 13:02
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Cingulate posted:When you say "glamorising fascism", I'm imagining unapologetic and intentional SS aesthetics on Vogue covers and discussions of which Nazi top brass was the cutest. Cingulate posted:As a more general and topical point, while I am not sure how to most effectively combat the far right in Europe, I do think succeeding in painting them as ridiculous would work better than painting them as dangerous: from what I know, the German AfD is in part attractive because it is perceived as an actual threat, and I assume it's the same for the others. It being dangerous is part of its appeal. If people saw them as imbecile clowns, they wouldn't vote for them. It's certainly like that for Trump - being scary is a reason for, not against.
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Sep 29, 2017 13:05
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Truga posted:I know I know, I'm just shooting ideas at a wall. It's not at all likely, but I wouldn't put it into the impossible bucket either.  I actually doubt the far-right is uncomfortable with what they perceive to be an inflationary usage of the term "fascist". Entropist posted:WW2 fascist aesthetics have been thoroughly ridiculed and even appropriated by leftist artists. No serious fascist would want to be associated with any of that any more, so that is a red herring. Modern fascism looks quite different and this aesthetic may even be shaped by how the media choose to depict key alt-right people. So we have neither a language to sufficiently demonise, nor to sufficiently ridicule the far right. It's all just circle jerking for now.
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Sep 29, 2017 13:15
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Cingulate posted:
Most of the criticism seems to miss the big picture, which is that the far right receives a huge amount of criticism in the media. Trying to come up with a far-fetched explanation of why the media is to blame, for example Richard Spencer in a suit or not mentioning that Nigel Farage is a millionaire with a German wife every sentence, basically exists so that posters here who lean far left can pat themselves on the back and say "yeah, it's the media's fault."
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Sep 29, 2017 13:44
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Most of the criticism seems to miss the big picture, which is that the far right receives a huge amount of criticism in the media. Trying to come up with a far-fetched explanation of why the media is to blame, for example Richard Spencer in a suit or not mentioning that Nigel Farage is a millionaire with a German wife every sentence, basically exists so that posters here who lean far left can pat themselves on the back and say "yeah, it's the media's fault." *looks sadly as the discussion flies miles over your head*
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Sep 29, 2017 13:46
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Most of the criticism seems to miss the big picture, which is that the far right receives a huge amount of criticism in the media. Trying to come up with a far-fetched explanation of why the media is to blame, for example Richard Spencer in a suit or not mentioning that Nigel Farage is a millionaire with a German wife every sentence, basically exists so that posters here who lean far left can pat themselves on the back and say "yeah, it's the media's fault."
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Sep 29, 2017 13:46
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Cingulate posted:
I have an older brother that trawls the local techtalk messageboard, and obviously there's idiot nazis hanging around and they keep talking this or that bullshit, including paraphrased 14 words or shooting at refugees on the border, and he comes into threads and starts talking about throwing all these nazi posters into caves (this exact thing happened around the end of world war 2 here, tens of thousands of people, mostly nazi collaborators but also some, uh, "anti-communists", were extrajudicially executed and buried/thrown into holes in terrain, there's still one mass grave found every year or three, so everyone knows exactly what he's talking about). Normal people read that and laugh but the nazi people refuse to see the mirror image/irony at all. They keep rushing into the same exact thing that happened to their predecessors, for the exact same bullshit reasons. The one and only thing changed in the narrative is godless commies got replaced by muslim rapists. It's absolutely incredible how exactly the same the rhetoric is, and yet, when someone calls them on their nazi poo poo, or shows them a mirror, they get told they're being ridiculous and an enemy of are people. e: I think my point is, many nazis don't even realise what they are, because they're giant loving babies with opinions that matter a lot to them, but not many people say they're loving nazis into their face often enough, and if you don't agree you're probably just a part of a communist conspiracy or a criminal who doesn't want to obey their totally fair and good (for them and nobody else) "common sense". Truga fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Sep 29, 2017 |
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Sep 29, 2017 13:46
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Most of the criticism seems to miss the big picture, which is that the far right receives a huge amount of criticism in the media. It's obviously not nearly enough criticism. Or maybe the only criticism they'll understand is assault rifles, it's what it took last time. We'll probably find out fairly soon, tbh.
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Sep 29, 2017 13:49
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Cingulate posted:I think I just have much more extreme associations with the concept of "normalising/glamorising fascism" than you, and under my associations with that concept, the claim that this is a general trend would be quite paranoid. When you say "glamorising fascism", I'm imagining unapologetic and intentional SS aesthetics on Vogue covers and discussions of which Nazi top brass was the cutest.   
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Sep 29, 2017 13:57
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Cingulate posted:So what kind of language do you think can best combat rise of the far-right? Geriatric Pirate doesn't want to combat the rise of the far right.
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Sep 29, 2017 14:02
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forkboy84 posted:Geriatric Pirate doesn't want to combat the rise of the far right. Everyone has some sense of self-preservation after all.
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Sep 29, 2017 14:04
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Cingulate posted:So what kind of language do you think can best combat rise of the far-right? Anything that is perceived to have an agenda or purpose will ultimately end up being counterproductive. The goal for the media (when it comes to reporting, not editorials) should be objectivity, and the terms chosen should be the most objective ones. The media's job isn't to combat the rise of the far-right by using news just like the media's job wasn't to sway voters towards Brexit through biased reporting about the EU. Both the far-left and right are exploiting perceived biases in the centrist media and I think that's driving people on the fence towards both sides. I think "far-right" is a fair term. Calling someone who has repeatedly said "I'm not a Nazi, Nazis are bad" (like the AfD leader mentioned earlier here) just makes people seem hysterical whereas calling someone who is proud to be a Nazi a Nazi is probably fair. But in the big picture it's a huge sideshow that both the far-left and right are using to explain increases in support for each other, because it allows them to say "if only the media was unbiased, we'd win by so much." Not that I think that the media is completely irrelevant (it drives people's perceptions of the world a lot), but it's being used as a scapegoat by both sides right now.
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Sep 29, 2017 14:10
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I'm not a human, humans are bad. I'm also not lying through my loving teeth right now. 
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Sep 29, 2017 14:13
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So you think anybody's gonna read that one and come out of it thinking, "hm, maybe these alt-right people ain't so bad after all"? The most strongly leftist people I know linked me to that piece, if I remember correctly.Geriatric Pirate posted:Anything that is perceived to have an agenda or purpose will ultimately end up being counterproductive. The goal for the media (when it comes to reporting, not editorials) should be objectivity, and the terms chosen should be the most objective ones. The media's job isn't to combat the rise of the far-right by using news just like the media's job wasn't to sway voters towards Brexit through biased reporting about the EU. Both the far-left and right are exploiting perceived biases in the centrist media and I think that's driving people on the fence towards both sides. But I didn't ask you what the media's job should be, but with what language one could counter the far-right. Geriatric Pirate posted:I think "far-right" is a fair term. Calling someone who has repeatedly said "I'm not a Nazi, Nazis are bad" (like the AfD leader mentioned earlier here) just makes people seem hysterical whereas calling someone who is proud to be a Nazi a Nazi is probably fair. (And yes, I rather deliberately say "far-right" rather than fascist or nazi. I guess Spencer is a fascist and a nazi, but the AfD and Leave and so on, aren't. They're highly reactionary and they have fascist tendencies, but they're not fascist.)
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Sep 29, 2017 14:21
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Geriatric Pirate posted:But in the big picture it's a huge sideshow that both the far-left and right are using to explain increases in support for each other, because it allows them to say "if only the media was unbiased, we'd win by so much." Not that I think that the media is completely irrelevant (it drives people's perceptions of the world a lot), but it's being used as a scapegoat by both sides right now. The goal of the media has never been objectivity, and it's probably unachievable regardless. What's concerning is nominally left-leaning media being so timid and reluctant to use any strong political language to describe the rise of the far right when right-wing media fully embraces libel and insults. For reference, here's a recent cover of a reasonably mainstream French newspaper:  They're outright stating that an "ultra-violent" communist fifth column is planning a coup.
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Sep 29, 2017 14:25
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Cingulate posted:So you think anybody's gonna read that one and come out of it thinking, "hm, maybe these alt-right people ain't so bad after all"? The most strongly leftist people I know linked me to that piece, if I remember correctly. I made sure to include "in reporting" in my text about the media, to make sure that it's distinct from the analysis and editorial parts. I think the best policy is to be as open as possible about the facts and to win on those instead of plotting the best way to call someone a fascist (anybody remember where the term "fake news" came from? That's going to happen to any attempt to overpoliticize reporting) And my answer was: Objective language, and when it comes to European nationalist parties that is "far-right". If you're down to trying to pick the best terms to discredit your opponent, you've already failed in a way. I mean I admit it does get a bit difficult with people like Trump to pick the correct term (is he really far-right?) but it should be a complete sideshow compared to letting his actions speak for themselves. And like I said - the problem with being too aggressive with language is that it backfires spectacularly and leads to the exact opposite of what you were aiming to do in the first place.
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Sep 29, 2017 14:28
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lost in postation posted:They're outright stating that an "ultra-violent" communist fifth column is planning a coup. "But we're better than that!" is screaming the centre-left media, as it feels a nozzle touch the back of its head.
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Sep 29, 2017 14:31
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