"Alt-left" Parading Ignorance, Stupidity, Malice, Etc.

[Jason]

Assclown Left - sounds good to me.

[Forty Two]

And white supremacists killing people isn't a real issue..

But but Hillary. But but Democrats.

[pErvinalia]

And white supremacists killing people isn't a real issue..

But but Hillary. But but Democrats.

You are the one trying to say the left is no better and possibly worse than the right.

[Hermit]

It's a real issue. Look at...

I've seen a situation you would have regarded as far worse. Millions of 42s were shitting their pants at the imagined prospect of imminent world-wide communism via a takeover by the enemy within. Students were running around quoting Mao on paper tigers. Academic staff were openly Marxist. Two thirds of Sydney Uni's philosophy department and half of the economics department were either communists or very far left. Flinders University was similar. Then there was the Frankfurt school, professors all. Europe was lousy with armchair revolutionaries. Paris was brought to a standstill for weeks, and other European cities came close to paralysis too. Red flags with hammer and sickle rose like forests at 100,000 strong demonstrations. Then government institutions became infected by the red plague...

I doubt you know anything, not first hand anyway, about the atmosphere of alarm by conservatives and liberals alike that reigned until austerity caused by the more than doubling price of crude oil in December 1973 brought about the big freeze. Seemingly overnight the revolutionaries dropped everything and queued up to dance in discotheques instead, or just to keep their noses to the grindstone. The concessions governments felt compelled to make unravelled or were repealed almost as fast. The western world reverted to its stultifyingly conservative status quo ante.

Do you really want to do another lap of the discussion we had in A theory on the college campus issues?

[Jason]

And white supremacists killing people isn't a real issue..

But but Hillary. But but Democrats.

You are the one trying to say the left is no better and possibly worse than the right.

They're both bad. The 'alt-right' is worse, but far less immediate and imminent.

[pErvinalia]

They are certainly more emboldened by the current political climate than whatever it is you lot mean by the "alt-left".

[Jason]

I imagine 'alt-left' means those with extreme politics on the left, like 'alt-right' means the same for the right.

Unless 'alt-right' really only means white nationalists (i.e. Nazis and Racists), but then one has to ask if calling them 'alt-right' isn't just a way of smearing anyone right of center (and perhaps even slightly left of center) as a white nationalist. Come to think of it, that would explain why you lefties take such disapprobation at the term 'alt-left' - you guys recognize the 'dog whistle' smear tactic and resent it.

[pErvinalia]

I imagine 'alt-left' means those with extreme politics on the left, like 'alt-right' means the same for the right.

Unless 'alt-right' really only means white nationalists (i.e. Nazis and Racists), but then one has to ask if calling them 'alt-right' isn't just a way of smearing anyone right of center (and perhaps even slightly left of center) as a white nationalist. Come to think of it, that would explain why you lefties take such disapprobation at the term 'alt-left' - you guys recognize the 'dog whistle' smear tactic and resent it.

Nonsense. The 'alt-right' named themselves. This has been explained in the thread (or one of the alt threads somewhere). There is no 'alt-left'. There appears to be a growing group of SJW nutters in the US, and their politics while not exactly new, is certainly more focused and directed than it ever was before. So i guess they could wear the tag, at a stretch. But the key difference is that the white supremicists and neo-nazis and MRA's are identifying with the alt-right tag.

[Jason]

Well that's unfortunate then. I'd advocate changing their label like we're doing with ISIS to Daesh. Give them a label that separates, and implicitly denigrates, them.

[pErvinalia]

"Cunts".

[Hermit]

When I use "alt-right" I mean just the neo-nazis, klukluxklanners and assorted overtly nutcases. Trump is alt-right too. Though not overtly racist, he is exceedingly reluctant to explicitly condemn the fuckers, and they clearly love him. Whenever someone asks me where I draw the line between alt-right and more ordinary forms of madness, I am stumped. Sort of reminds me of the problem of sand. Every time a grain of sand is added to a hill, it gets that little bit closer to being a mountain. So, which grain causes the hill to cease being a hill and be a mountain instead?

Of course I have the same problem with the "alt-left."

[Animavore]

The alt right named themselves. Everyone knows what is meant when they hear the phrase.

They're also the ones who coined "alt left"; which seems to be anyone who opposes them. They lump BLM, SJWs, fucking ISIS... anyone and everyone "alt left". This makes the term nebulous and meaningless.

There is no fucking "alt left". Let this thread die and focus in the real and actual threat.

[Hermit]

There is no fucking "alt left".

Yes, there is. It does not matter who did the naming. The alt left actually existed decades before that name was bestowed on them. I know, because I have personally met a few.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, but they had a name (and still do) - 'socialists'. Assuming that's who you are talking about.

[Hermit]

Yeah, but they had a name (and still do) - 'socialists'. Assuming that's who you are talking about.

Nah. I'd no more bundle the alt-left with more or less main stream socialists than the alt-right with more or less main stream capitalists, and I'd be at a total loss as to where I'd put the various shades of social democrats and democratic socialists.