timorl @timorl@qoto.org

AND they are essentially using the wrong names for the maniacs, to make things worse. ~_~

O gods, it's a discussion on the topic "our extreme evil maniacs are not as bad as YOUR extreme evil maniacs", why do people do that...? //rethorical, you don't have to answer...

@freemo @SecondJon Maybe the left accepts its more extreme movements because they are less violent? (I assume we are talking about the west here?) At least as far as I know recent deaths by far-left extremism are much *much* rarer than far-right (mostly alt-right).

Also, what specific far-left movement (or set of movements?) do you mean by alt-left @freemo ? I still feel like we are talking about something that might not exist, so I'd like a pointer.

@freemo I won't let that stop me from responding to the more sane part of the discussion though. :>

Aaaa, I said politics and now my feed exploded, halp. >x

@SecondJon @freemo

Blah, I'm trying to answer your points in order, but they are a bit split between posts, I hope this is possible to understand.

No, "alternative" here means still part of the right, but an alternative to current implementations. A good example on the left is the rise of Green parties started in the '70s. They offered an alternative to the labour and progressive movements, that mostly concentrated on eco-politics, which were completely ignored by their contemporaries on the left. At the same time it's hard to argue that Greens are not on the left of the political spectrum -- unless you think they aren't?

By all that is unholy, how did you get me identifying left/right with good/evil?! When I describe one of the most extreme movements on the right of course it's hard not to make everything sound evil. If I described tankies maybe you'd think I think left is evil and right is good? And why do you think "individual responsibility" is evil? Or "nationalism" for that matter, people usually support it in moderate quantities, especially on the right, and you have to get quite far left to think of it as purely evil.

The scale you are describing is I believe anarchism/statism, and I never saw it described as right/left, it's relatively (though not completely) orthogonal to this classification. Maybe you confused it with laissez-faire/regulation, which is often called economic right/economic left? When someone says "right" or "left" without the "economic" modifier, they rarely mean this (with the exception of some libertarians, who for some reason like to think of themselves as being the purest form of right; just because you like jumping to conclusions -- I actually think the libertarian ideology has quite a lot of useful ideas, and as a whole it offers an extremely useful perspective).

// Answers to the next post start here.

Once again, they identify as right, just check any of their writings, check which politicians they support, or read up what the actual definitions of left and right are (Wikipedia is an acceptable start, even if enough nuance is lost, that it's barely the truth). They essentially looked at the contemporary movements on the right in the US, and decided that they are all lacking in expressing what they perceived as the core values of the right. Therefore they started an alternative to these movements, that was still on the right. They think the left is completely idiotic, so they want nothing to do with them.

You are also wrong about the usage of the word alternative, and I don't even have to provide an example, because you did it for me. You write "alternative operating system" about Mac OS, which is an operating system. I'm not sure how you missed that. For "alternative" to be used like to want, you'd have to call Mac OS an "alternative Windows", which barely makes sense. You could say "alternative *to* Windows", but there is no "to" in "alternative right".

Finally we are getting to something interesting though -- what shared values do you see between the left and alt-right? I know of some, but not many and I'm interested in your perspective. Just as a precommitment, a md5 of what I have: cb99745252729798e37c501a858cf2f4

@SecondJon
They call themselves an alternative right, not an alternative to the right. The broad values they share are focus on individual responsibility, nationalism, admiration for the 19th century version of family. Ones that I don't expect you to share, but are definitely still in the domain of the right, are white supremacy and exclusion of "deviancy" in the sense of sufficiently different people. In practice they also support many policies od the right, the most visible being anti-immigration, isolationism, and fighting against LGBT+ related social change.

This assumes we are still talking in the left/right framework, where every social movement has to land in one of these two categories. But if we don't, then it would definitely not make sense to talk about the "alt-left", because the meaning @freemo described does not make sense without this assumption.

@SecondJon I don't think that is quite fair. The alt-right is part of the right, inasmuch the left/right categorization in politics makes sense. They share the same base values, even though some accents are shifted and, of course, they are more extreme than the mainstream.

Besides the left is not a single movement (just like the right), so they cannot exclude someone just like that. The movements within both broad types of political thought exclude one another to an extent. For example, on the left, most movements exclude tankies, progressive liberals and socialists exclude each other, and many people are annoyed by the "regressive left", which itself maybe isn't a movement, but some people losing sight of important ideals, usually in the pursuit of perceived justice (I suspect @freemo was mostly thinking of them when complaining, his description seems appropriate). I might not know the inner workings of the right to understand exactly who excludes whom, but there is definitely some beef between libertarians and most other people, and, as you say, conservatives are unsurprisingly not fond of the alt-right. And, thankfully, no one likes neo-nazis.

Although, at least in the US, among the parties the left one seems to be better at excluding non-mainstream movements, just look at the 2016 presidential nominations. Not that I think this is good...

Also, my arguments were not about exclusion, but inclusion. Who considers themselves to be a part of a movement usually defines a movement better than other people trying to categorize. There are many movements on the left, SJWs, socdems, liberal progressives, socialists, tankies, and some of them are clearly extreme, far-left and so on, but none of them call themselves "alt-left". On the right, on the other hand, one of the movements calls itself "alt-right", and, what is more, it's not the only extreme, far-right movement there. My point is, it's the ideological self-identification that is important.

@freemo I think I broke the response thingy in my other toot, but anyway I wanted to thank you for pointing out that "alt-right" had a broader meaning before the movement took it as their name. I was very annoyed when I saw people using it in the "wrong" way, now it will bother me less. What will bother me though, is the fact than not enough people point out that the phrase has two quite different meanings. >.<

@freemo
It is (or at least was in the early 2010's when I interacted with them) not a small movement. And it is definitely more than just not agreeing with the right mainstream. They support the idea of an ethnostate, generally believe in dangers posed by global warming, strongly support free speech in a way that explicitly includes verbal harrasment. The latter is the source of so many people being annoyed by mentions of free speach recently (see also "freeze peach" in mastodon instance blocklists). They used mostly internet activism, originally mostly in the form of trolling, although later shifted to other forms, which broke the meaning of "trolling", because the media couldn't keep up. They seem to also believe in accelerationism. If you want a very extreme, but accurate description of their beliefs the Christchurch shooter's manifesto is a reasonable source. Obviously, extreme, so many self-descibed alt-righters won't agree with his methods, but the gist of the ideology is there.

I know about this because I read many discussions around the time the movement was being born, both from its proponents as well as enemies.

@freemo
What you describe seems to fit with a very general "left I don't like" approach, as it definitely does not describe a single coherent political movement. I wasn't aware you were also using "alt-right" in the same sense though (or that it apparently had that meaning originally?). It's still confusing, because "alt-right" has a meaning referring to a specific movement too, while "alt-left" doesn't.

It also explains why many people who are called "alt-right" and deny that label, while all people called "alt-left" deny it.

@freemo
But it was quickly adopted by people describing themselves that way, while I have never seen anyone describe themselves as "alt-left". It also can be understood more specifically than "far-right", with some views and policies that are definitely part of it. I couldn't say the same about "alt-left", I have only seen it used as "left I don't like". My main problem is that I have no idea which part of the left you are referring to.

Why is #ipv6 adoption so... inconsistent?

@freemo
Minor thing — alt-left is not a thing. Alt-right is not a slur, but the name choosen for itself by a political movement. Alt-left is a phrase used to describe a theoretical counterpart to that, that does not exist. If you want to call out a specific part of the left, please use the names they use for themselves, or at least a descriptor that could help identify who you are talking about.

@SecondJon
I don't expect impartiality, only an attempt at it. I was under the impression these were the standards, so people at least pretended to follow them. Explicitly saying you won't even try is... well, terrible from my point of view.
@freemo

@freemo
That guy seems much more reasonable, and yeah, this makes the D's move much less excusable. Thanks!

@freemo Didn't the Senate Majority Leader say that he will not be impartial? It seems kind of reasonable not to let someone who claims this explicitly pass judgement. Although using legal tricks to do that is disappointing, I don't see how else they could have avoided that.

Eh, no idea, I'm very disappointed by more and more politicians all over the world ignoring the spirit and even sometimes rule of law. I feel like one "side" (broadly speaking, since I'm talking abut many parts of the world) is doing this much more, but there are obvious reasons why I might be biased.

@shibaprasad
@freemo
Both of you make a very good point. We shouldn't forget though, that some people understand the gender/sex distinction, but still ideologically oppose some people expressing their gender. I'm not sure if J.K. is in this category, but at least the intellectual core of the TERF movement is.