Why is the far-right so dominant on the internet?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why is the far-right so dominant on the internet?

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Blind Pineapple posted:

The idea that people will say things online that they wouldn't say in real life or that they don't actually believe them is an outdated myth. Facebook in particular has bridged the gap nicely between a person's "online opinions" and their real identity. The answer might be as simple as "there are a lot of far-right minded people in the US."

This is really the answer. Someone's keeping AM radio in business after all. The reason that the far-right is dominant on the Internet is that there's a harsh stigma attached to saying what they think in other venues, that stigma is totally ineffective at getting them to change their minds, so they just keep their mouth shut except for where they can get away with it. The Internet's anonymity gives them a place to get away with it, so they get overconcentrated there, but the bigger picture is that they've found a way to disarm the consequence mechanisms that prevented these ideas from being spoken openly, but were always right below the surface.

They're also very attuned to the fact that anonymity means power and safety, which gives them several advantages in an Internet that's been shifting away from anonymity largely due to Facebook.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Dec 19, 2016

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 18:16

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 21:54

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

That is pretty much the reason the alt right dominates so much of the internet. The constant threat that if everyone doesn't use their terms that they will run off and heil hitler or whatever.

This thread got started in the first place because the alt-right is apparently overrunning discussion venues, that's kind of the opposite of running off at the first sign of trouble.

It seems like the opposite is true, really. I get to hear people complain that there's no point in arguing with idiots in comments sections while simultaneously complaining that the comments sections are full of loons. I dunno, maybe there's a causal relationship there...?

dont even fink about it posted:

Should leftists be retaliating with doxes, DDOSes, or utterly insignificant online poll rushes? I think Weedhitler bonerlord has that last one covered.

They already have a monopoly on getting people fired, so...

# ¿ Dec 21, 2016 06:01

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Run off with the conversation, not physically run away. The guy threatening that if he saw jokes he's teen become a nazi.

That's not what Kilano's comment was about though, it was that there are whites that just say "gently caress it, bye!" to obvious antagonism and eventually wind up in the arms of nationalists.

SunAndSpring posted:

My thoughts now are what exactly can be done about this stuff. How do you effectively pressure these omnipresent sites? No way you can loving boycott Google or Twitter or whatever now, there's way too many users, so hitting them in the wallet isn't an option. And how exactly do you get somebody who runs a site like 4chan to realize how ruinous it is to let their users do whatever idiot thing pops into their head?

4chan is already having financial problems because of advertisers. Apparently 8chan is funded by someone that has no qualms with losing money on it though, so that solution won't work everywhere.

Twitter is mostly powerless because it's a literal free-for-all. From the standpoint of protecting people, it's a horrible idea in the first place. The idea that a company built around "tell the entire world what you're thinking using your real name and keep a publicly-searchable record of it indefinitely" can protect people from harassment is insane.

Tesseraction posted:

Eh, I'd just summarise that by and large progressivism is winning the overall 'culture war' that reactionaries imagine exists. Obama wasn't wrong to say that the path of progress isn't a straight line but a zigzag. Right-wingers have their time in the sun right now but one of the things about change under democracy is it's rarely large things at once. It takes war or revolution. Trump's admin will suck, but the Republicans will find how hard it is to enact change quickly.

This is mostly true, but I think that there's long-term damage being done that's going to manifest in a few years. The "culture war" in the first place is mainly a matter of the right attempting to make inroads among a younger audience by embracing pop culture, which is a stark departure from the conservatism of decades prior that hated pop culture.

Also, the Republicans haven't been enacting change quickly in the first place. They've been gradually taking over statehouses and governorships since 2010 and had accumulated quite a bit of power and advanced quite a bit of their agenda at the state level already. Getting the presidency back is only a fraction of the damage that needs to be undone.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 03:35

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Tesseraction posted:

America as a whole is tending to liberalise, and so the current new guard of right-wing shitheads will try their best to make as much damage as possible to social safety nets and social cohesion before they're ousted but it will have a backlash that can hopefully re-right the trajectory of America.

It could go a lot of ways, and talking about it in terms of political power is difficult because the ability of public opinion to be reflected in policy has already been seriously undermined in the US. We'll soon have a Republican majority in both houses of Congress and the presidency despite a Democratic majority of voters in all of them. This election should make people seriously question the "inevitable shift leftward" refrain. Even if it's true, which it probably is, it's inviting counter-productive complacency and will take a very long time to materialize.

You also need to consider that the right adapts too. People like Milo are an adaptation away from religion as the linchpin of American conservatism, trade isolationism is an adaptation, and so is the current "culture war" in ways already stated. There will always be people that want to set things back 10+ years, even if the target year moves forward.

There's also the problem that progressive activism has perception liabilities in a way that it didn't used to. I remember not long ago when people were saying that there was almost no way for a conservative comedian to exist because punching down isn't funny, etc., but the "hypersensitive millennial" trope has completely changed that, and so has the embrace of consumerism in the form of food trends and "hipsters." The right gets 90% of what it wants if nothing changes, so a climate that allows the left to be easily delegitimized is great news for it.

I guess the point is that things will progress, but I'm not counting on a backlash beyond the highly likely Trump-being-giant-fuckup scenario.

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

It's just exactly what King was referring to when it comes to moderates.

How relevant King's comments on moderates are really depends on context. He's completely right that an enormous obstacle is what's basically NIMBYism, but that's a subset of what will alienate whites. #KillAllWhiteMen isn't really part of that subset, it isn't really asking people to look inward and understand privilege, it's just an empty "we're better than you."

However, it's also not where the actual problem is anyway. The problem at the moment is mainly that whites understand "privilege" in economic terms and will only find common cause with a narrative of privilege that includes that. They won't sign up for anything where they only stand to lose, and to that point, King was adamant about finding common cause with labor, to the point of framing it as the same cause.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Dec 22, 2016

# ¿ Dec 22, 2016 05:42

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

It'd be nice to get a profile of places like /pol/ that's supported by data, but I don't think that'll ever happen because the entire structure and culture of it defies any attempt to do something like get a representative sample of it and ask questions that get answered honestly. Whether it's a bunch of 15 year olds, 25 year olds, or 35 year olds is a pretty big difference. The ones making faceless YouTube videos sound like they're mid-late 20's, but God only knows what fraction that is.

As for nerd culture, I don't think that the politics of it fits neatly into left or right. It's a group that understands power in terms of social capital, which is completely off the radar of most politicians. It doesn't care for societal norms that have brought it nothing but pain, but what it fears most is exile, so it winds up in the odd position of defending its own enclaves but having no respect for tradition or authority. The "culture war" stuff plays directly into that, and so does the endless contrarianism to prove that the rest of society has its head in its rear end.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Dec 24, 2016

# ¿ Dec 24, 2016 07:00

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Jippa posted:

I think you guys are seriously lagging behind if you still think the only people that support this stuff are basement dwelling losers. Trump/Brexit banished all of that it is a far bigger group than you think.

What people are fretting about is essentially Internet subculture that's fusing pop culture with right-wing politics, which is a fairly small fraction of both the broader Internet and the Trump and Brexit support bases. There is no "only" in any of that.

If anything, the myopia of places like SA is that they think Internet pop culture is more influential on elections than it really is. Frog memes are really popular among a demographic that doesn't vote, and it's largely the demographics of who votes and doesn't got Trump elected in the first place. The real damage is going to be more long-term.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 21:58

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Tesseraction posted:

Heck Trump's cabinet are basically all establishment Republicans apart from Bannondorf.

This part is actually irrelevant to his election because he said basically nothing about what his cabinet would be beyond vague promises to "drain the swamp," which he immediately reneged on.

Neurolimal posted:

I cant articulate it well, but I feel like theres a deeper underlying problem at play responsible for frustraded men and women not finding love and polarizing them that I'm worried could blindside us. It concerns me because I feel like its responsible for a lot of the recent surge in MRA's.

I don't think that there's actually been a surge in MRAs, you can look at subscription stats for MRA subreddits and they've had flat growth for as long as they've existed, although it depends how long ago you'd qualify as a "surge." The biggest change of the past decade has been Steubenville and the still-ongoing fallout from it. It probably shouldn't be a surprise that TRP was founded only 2 months after it.

I think that the main social problem is that there is very little support for young men that are afraid of rejection or just don't understand dating. There were some non-scientific surveys of some MRA subreddits and the respondents were overwhelmingly 17-20 non-religious conservatives (which should be more evidence of their electoral insignificance). If you follow the "not getting laid" theory, then the odds of someone that couldn't get past "hi" in high school figuring out how to do it in college isn't very good, and after that they're even more screwed. It doesn't help that there are a lot of early-life phenomena that discourage young boys and girls from having casual interaction, and with the existence of male-dominated majors, that problem can get even worse in college.

What they need is guidance, unfortunately most independent dating advice is a scam (including PUAs), and there's a stigma attached to it.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Dec 29, 2016

# ¿ Dec 29, 2016 05:22

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Tesseraction posted:

But also merges strongly with the PUA community who also believe that women are dumb idiots who can be won over using the cheat codes contained in my book, $19.99 on Amazon dot com.

Yeah but PUAs, like most scam artists, exist because there's a real problem with a lack of credible alternatives. MGTOW exist for the same reason. Nobody is giving them non-lovely dating advice.

DesperateDan posted:

There isn't an easy counter for this at all. This isn't a "failure of leftism" or the result of some greasy neckbeard being called unfuckable one too many times. It's something rotten within humans, a vestigial part that never had a chance to drop off before it became an encumbrance. By adopting the same tactics to fight it, you become the same problem.

There are other major biases in play as well, especially guilt by association and the overuse of anecdotes.

Since we're talking about Internet communities, the latter is an especially large problem, and Reddit in particular flat-out encourages it via its format. Anecdotal evidence can be overcome with good data-backed arguments, but people that really know their poo poo think that it's beneath them to try any type of outreach.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2016 03:53

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

A Wizard of Goatse posted:

makes u think

Well, yes and no. What's happening in general is the same reason terrorist attacks work, they focus so much damage at a single target that it makes a huge story, even though the effect in aggregate is meaningless. That gives them extremely outsized influence even if their actual numbers are very small, although in this case that extremely outsized influence is still much smaller than larger political factors.

Kilano posted:

Aren't people saying the alt-right are actual nazi and white nationalists? So John Mccain and Paul Ryan fall into these categories?

The term is stupid and means whatever people want it to mean. The group that calls itself "alt-right" is just well-dressed neo-Nazis. What people mean when they say "alt-right" though is effectively "right-wing communities that mainly exist on the Internet." If people stopped using the term and just said "Internet far-right" then I'd be much happier.

MRAs, GamerGaters, Trump cheerleaders, /pol/ idiots, and NPI neo-Nazis aren't the same thing though, and some of those are fragmented internally as well. So, Owlofcreamcheese is right in the sense that talking about why MRAs exist and what would make them go away isn't going to apply to the rest of it, but then we were talking about MRAs specifically, so...

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Dec 30, 2016

# ¿ Dec 30, 2016 19:22

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 21:54

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

The problem with "privilege" isn't so much the realities of it as that the past few years have managed to construct a political environment where privilege is the hottest poo poo in town, but class privilege can't seem to get mentioned at all. Somehow things went from a push to have a united "99%" to embracing the dumb neoliberal gambit, aiming for a more just society but not pissing off any rich donors in the process.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2016 02:50

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why is the far-right so dominant on the internet?