Skip Navigation
91 comments

  • Ribbit

    • Social media misinformation is far from being the largest cause. There are so many people living in villages and islands that aren't educated, and fully believe the far right's fairy tales about how they're going to fix the system and restore things to how they used to be.

      I agree about social media though, I think that the EU needs to give Meta, Google and Twitter an ultimatum: Fix your algorithms in order not to create echo chambers of misinformation otherwise you're gone from every EU country.

    • As an aside, since it's an area where I see a lot of misconceptions, AFAIK, algorithms aren't purposefully trying to promote alt right views. But rather alt right views are usually outrage driven and outrage drives consumption, which is what the algorithms are trying to maximize.

      Though I completely agree that all the social media, search, AI, etc companies need to do far more to combat disinformation. Most of them seem to try to be "neutral" and assume good faith, but those are things that the alt right playbook actively tries to exploit. There's a very famous quote by Jean-Paul Sartre:

      Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

      I think a lot of tech companies (except Twitter -- that's gone full Nazi) are full of people trying to maximize profits by attempting to be as centrist as possible, trying not to piss off either "side". But they either don't understand how fascism spreads or don't care, so their actions are resulting in spreading harm.

  • I thought this was a portrait of Adolf Hitler with a pride flag background at first glance 😂

  • I don’t think there is concern. In the age of uncertainty, massive inequality, cultural clash between immigrants and locals, people either turn far left or far right. But the far left are always clinging on the legacy of Marx and forgot how to adapt their ideology to modern world that only far right are evolving. Or they are trying idolise Mao/ Lenin which is not very saint as well.

    The only thing to stop them popping out is built a better society that is with positive growth, good wealth distribution, high employment rate, good equality, which is not going to happen in the current political climate. Blaming people who vote for them is really not a good take as if people are willingly destroy their own country. Storm is brewing and once again the rich will take their money and leave to hide in nice tropical islands while ordinary people are punching each other in the face for a slice of bread.

    • I think one of the main problems is that there's no "home" for people leaning left. The SPD has long dropped the "S" from it's name, it's just another conservative party representing those who are already well-off, without any ideas or plans to improve life for those who are exploited in our current system. Die Linke is completely detached from reality and too busy with fighting between themselves to address the giant issues that they should have the answers for. Greens are a climate/environment party first and they're too elitist to pick up any of the angry people who (rightfully) feel like they've been cheated by the system.

      So when you have a well organized, populist party on the far-right that provides (wrong) answers for those people, it's no wonder they flock to them. Of course, you'll always have those who are actual fascists and will always vote for a fascist party, but a strong left could easily draw a lot of the other voters away from the AfD.

    • But the far left are always clinging on the legacy of Marx and forgot how to adapt their ideology to modern world that only far right are evolving. Or they are trying idolise Mao/ Lenin which is not very saint as well.

      Not that much in my experience, they rather cling to, I think, unrealistically high expectations on the human nature or culture, especially about the ability of people to work, share wealth and respect things purely based on philosophy without needing constrains such as requiring a job to live, police and hierarchy.

      • As a former "text book" leftist I am inclined to agree that good will alone is not enough for humanity in its current state to operate a society on, and that many current day leftists are wearing the same rose tinted goggles for the USSR and China that the right wears for the 50s.

        We need both incentives as well as strict limits to remain within healthy behavior at large, otherwise we end up with apathetic full time unemployed people on the lower end as well as cancerous outgrowths like individuals possessing billions, living like feudal lords of medieval times.

        Incentives tied to employment in the current form are not practical any more though. With continuing industrialization, automation, and the emergence of artificial intelligence on the horizon the economies of the world simply don’t need those people as workers any more. This leads to the UBI as the next logical conclusion to provide the consumer base our economies depend on with disposable income to participate as well as a means of securing their essential needs. This then means the incentive must be different, personal ideas are to tie the UBI to the individual being at least x hours per month engaged in some kind of productive and/or creative outlet, be it education, community work, pursuing interests, or some other form of value provided to society based on the individual‘s interests and abilities.

        Basically the Star Trek federation philosophy of personal improvement (enhanced with some basic incentive to participate), mixed with the communist idea of assigning professions based on ability, except with the individual freedom to choose instead. Do something worthwhile, and if it’s just pursuing a hobby, and thats good enough.

    • I'd add that, more than anything else, leftist fixation on older theory is more than just idolizing people who are not very "saintly."

      I think, at its core, older leftist theory is still very geared toward an industrial society. It found purchase primarily among trade unions representing industrial workers, and in some ways, I don't think we have adequately "adapted" to a post-industrial world.

      Don't get me wrong, the core tenets of labor participation, labor mobilization, and mass action will probably be relevant tools up and until mass automation occurs across the board. But we don't have the same working class base we did a century ago. I'd be interested in seeing a greater emphasis on incorporating, in addition to traditionally working class people in trades and "unskilled services," white collar workers that are nominally distinct from the former groups but are still nevertheless abused and exploited like everyone else.

      Obviously, someone who makes $50k/year doing back breaking labor is objectively worse off and more exploited than someone making $100k/year in a computer science or similar field, but the computer science person is probably getting shit on too.

91 comments