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Notes -
Big leak of the Young Republicans groupchat, spanning multiple high level members across the nation's "premier Republican youth organization" (as it calls itself), including staffers for GOP representatives, at least one Trump admin employee, at least one elected official, and other high ranking conservatives. "Young" in this case is 18-40, adults working in a professional capacity.
The leaks showcase praise for Hitler, jokes about gas chambers, comments on Jewish dishonesty and other antisemitic messages. Also comments supporting slavery. Along with it is generic racism and bigotry such as widespread usage of slurs.
It also shows an interesting insight into what ordinary republican activists are thinking behind close doors.
One interesting thing is their fear that tying a political opponent within the party to white supremacists and Nazis might hurt them in the general election, but make them more popular among the base.
The response has been mixed.
Elected state senator Rob Ortt says
Adviser for Elise Stefanik says
And Roger Stone says
However, some Republicans in high places don't seem to view it as a major deal. Such as JD Vance, whose only comment is to call it "pearl clutching"
Now I have to disagree with our vice president here, I don't think it is pearl clutching to oppose support of Hitler. I also have to wonder how sincere it is to deflect away the topic and talk about "powerful people call for political violence." when it seems calls for violence happened in the chat given the many jokes about gassing and even bombing political opposition. Is it not possible to be against neonazism such as "I love Hitler" and talk about sending opposition to the gas chambers your opponents and Jay Jones's awful comments? Stefanik, Ortt and others seem to manage. Plenty of others also seem capable of this feat and have criticized both.
Richard Hanania, author of The Origins of Woke, suggests that these sorts of group chats are actually really common among the right wingers he interacted with. In fact his response to this seems to indicate agreement this chat is tame compared to many conversations he has seen.
Some beginner questions for discussion.
is neonazism, support of slavery, and unabashed bigotry such as this actually common among young conservatives as Hanania and the group chat themselves seem to believe?
In that same vein which response is better, someone like Ortt and Stefanik or Vance? And should the Republican party be concerned about the rise of neonazis and support of slavery if question 1 is yes?
Often what we see now is people "hiding their power level" with extremism, and it's often not revealed till they get to the point no one seems denouce them much. This is happening with Jay Jones now, and has happened before in cases like Mark Robinson "black Nazi". Even now Vance can't bring himself to denouce this. Is this tribalist loyalty helping to empower extremism and violence?
A common complaint among the right is "they called us Nazis". But often, we see some right wingers calling themselves Nazis. The aforementioned "black Nazi" Mark Robinson, candidate for LT Gov John Reid in Virginia, etc. As Hanania himself pointed out, the only major national politicians to refer to Trump as Hitler was JD Vance (and RFK per community note, but that might not have counted under his usage of "national politician"). Even the leaked group chat expressed this belief about the Kansas delegation. Now I've been a strong believer in individual responsibilities and have fought for it consistently, so I do the same here and believe that the only people who should be called Nazis are the individuals who praise Hitler/want gas chambers/call themselves nazi/etc. But question 4 is, why do so many of these self identifying Nazis seem to feel at home in the GOP, and why do they seem to believe they might have decent levels of support? How many others are "hiding their power level" too as suggested?
After the lefty reaction to the Kirk assassination I absolutely don't care about this, and will never care about anything like this from my own side ever again. OP wildly overestimates the number of fucks the right has left to give.
…did you ever?
I’ve found the people most interested in policing comments about Kirk are the ones who were already jumping at the bit.
Ever is a long time. Probably the single largest cohort of people here are disaffected liberals who would have been pretty seriously offended by those group chats 15-20 years ago, I certainly would have been.
Fellow former liberal here. I also would had been offended by those chats 10 or 15 years ago. These days, I just shrug. When the left wing stopped being about tolerance and acceptance and started being about finding a new group of people to hate (e.g. how the illiberal left hates men who date in other countries[1]) I became a lot more jaded, cynical, and apolitical.
[1] I have a lot of real world female platonic friends, and they all universally support me living in another country and dating women there. The only people in the real world who at all opposed me dating in another country are both men: One straight man and one gay man.
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Who the fuck are you to say otherwise? Back before the blue team made being racist against me hip and tried to get my niece to cut her tits off, I was a Daily Show watching Dem-voting asshole internet atheist. Now when the thing that side has become comes calling, wearing its little civil rights skin suit, to tell me how so-and-so said some no-no words, I just snuggle in among all the Jesus freaks and right wing dickheads I used to think of as my enemies and say, well, at least they weren't aimed at me.
Thanks for asking.
Even the guy who used to write for John Oliver and still is liberal in every conceivable way is getting fed-up of the activists blowing up mountains out of molehills and the 'trust the science' bullshit being, well, bullshit.
Interesting link. Does anyone else feel the author writes jokes exactly like ChatGPT?
Guy drives me up the wall about 90% of the time with his posts about how he used to write for John Oliver, but every so often reality bonks him over the head hard enough that there is common ground between us on "this is freakin' stupid".
And he was where I heard about Katie Porter's performance, and that one was genuinely funny (though with the material he had to work with, it would have taken real genius not to be funny there).
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Would you happen to be the Twitter Skeletor? That guy rocks and you rock.
Nope, never heard of them, but thanks. lol
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It is interesting to see it potentially developing as the last straw for a lot of people, where a passive lack of charity crosses into something more active.
Once, I did care, but I burned out before this. I don't really consider the right "my side" in an affirmative sense, but my anti-leftness solidified sometime during the whole "whiteness is the source of all evil but technically doesn't mean white people wink wink nudge nudge" era of egregious bigotry.
This is not good for society, and it's definitely not good for my intellectual charity when talking to whatever infinitesimal fraction of the left refused to tolerate that shit, but I don't really feel like the ball is in my court for solving it, either. For all my many flaws and failures, I've never declared an ethnicity a contract with the devil, or tried to create high-minded academic fig leaves for virulent racism.
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I did. The whole reason I got into /r/SSC and The Motte is because I thought they represented a chance for dialogue between the two sides, and a chance for each of us to say "I guess they make some good points sometimes", come together, and either forge a common path, or at least forge a pact to purge the crazies on each respective side. All I got for the trouble was "not good enough" said in so many ways, and a litany of denials that there's anything wrong with the progressive side, and that if I think otherwise, it's because I'm being uncharitable.
Now... you know me (and I know me), I know I'm prone to sperging out at times, but I was actually trying, but at this point, why bother? This isn't even accusatory, I know your heart's in the right place, but I know that you and people like you are incapable of stopping the things I find offensive and distasteful that come from your side, so why should I police mine?
Well, "morality" would be the obvious reason why. Policing evil on one's own side is desirable in itself, by definition. If my brother has gone crazy then it is my duty to do something about it, whether or not my neighbor is dealing with his crazy brother.
I'll take another stab at this, and try to answer the point you were actually making. Going with your analogy:
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Your brothers are crazy and I've never seen a single indication that you even think it's a problem. You just engage in pure "arguments as soldiers" arguing.
But by all means, show us the way. Demonstrate some policing of your own side.
Again, morality is not a tit-for-tat game. If you actually believe people on your own side to be evil then you have a duty to oppose them if it is in your power. Whataboutism regarding the outgroup's bad behavior is simply not relevant, no matter how bad that behavior is!
You have to be trolling, right? This is the most naked and shameless call for a double standard I've ever seen.
Everything you just said also applies to you. If morality is not tit-for-tat, then you still have an obligation to police your own side. And you don't even engage with the concept! Just slide right past it and press the attack. It's like you're brain damaged, or suffering some kind fo anti-memetic effect.
Or just egregiously obnoxious.
Which I do! I didn't emphasize the point because like, you have to take my word for it. I'm not going to self-doxx and I'm not important enough to make an observable difference on the general state of leftist discourse. But I happily acknowledge that I have a duty to push back against evil in my own Tribe. I have never claimed otherwise, and I do not claim the behavior of the Red Tribe affects this duty in any way. Red Tribers in this thread are the people who claimed that defection on the Blue Tribe's part freed them from any responsibility to oppose evil among their tribesmen, and that is the claim I sought to refute. That my own position on evil in my own Tribe reflected the values I espoused, I thought was obvious from context and didn't need to be spelled out.
I also want to emphasize that I am not saying "Red Tribers have a responsibility to repress fellow Red Tribers whom I, a Blue Triber, deem evil". I am saying "Red Tribers have a responsibility to repress fellow Red Tribers whom they consider evil by their own standards" - eg if you're Right-wing but consider slavery to be evil then you should be putting genuine effort into opposing slavery apologists on your own side. If you don't claim to consider slavery apologia evil, or if you don't think people currently accused of being slavery apologists are actually pro-slavery, then fine! Where I push back is when they say "sure, I agree slavery is evil and that there are pro-slavery crazies in the Red Tribe, but the Blue Tribe doesn't punish its equally-evil pro-assassination crazies so why should I lift a finger to stop my crazies?", which I think is a morally untenable, hypocritical stance.
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I mostly agree in theory, but as far as I can see, this being applied in a rather one-sided manner has serious real-world consequences that can't be overlooked. In many parliamentary democracies, the moderate right refuses to work with the far-right, while the moderate left happily works together with the far-left, which means there is a strong bias in favor of the far-left of getting their way. Germany is the most extreme example here, as the moderate right has boxed itself into a corner of now only being able to coalition with left-wing parties. Only a fool would think this has no practical impact on politics, and indeed, the CDU was forced to put extremely stupid far-left green current-day demands into the german constitution just to avoid working together with the far-right.
The same happens with violent protests ; Several dozen organized, masked left-wing extremists can storm a moderate right (CDU) office, threaten staff and trash furniture and it will not even go into political violence stats since it gets recorded as a "protest". The moderate politician has to fear violent altercations with the left if he speaks or votes the wrong way. Again, this has practical impacts on political outcomes.
The same, again, in science, my own field of employment; Far-left activist-scholars (their own moniker!) get to openly admit that they consider their political views as more important than there scientific integrity, can openly involve themselves in blatant witch hunts, and there will be not only no repercussions, but they will be, if anything, rewarded with government money. On the other hand, a politically unaffiliated researcher who gets unfortunate results (by left-wing views, that is) in a study but stands by them due to the methodological strength of the design risks his whole career, and other moderate scientists around him are pressured to denounce him as far-right lest they get the same fate. That this is possible is a direct result of genuine right-wingers having been stringently excluded much earlier - not only would they have the moderate's back on this topic, it also means that the demand for right-wing extremism exceeds supply, so you have to start to cancel moderates to keep the far-left happy.
And I can only repeat it, I don't even consider myself right-wing. All I want is being able to do independent research(in my employment) or common-sense governance (in politics), and the far-left is fucking scary, has actual positions of power and can openly do what it wants with little fear of reprisal. The far-right is a bunch of truckers or anons that have to keep their head down lest it gets chopped.
This is the reason why Trump got elected, and why the Afd in germany is literally the largest party.
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I can understand going out of my way to police the shitposters on my side when the two sides have roughly the same values, mutual respect for one another, and are committed to having a rational conversation. In that case this sort of policing of my side to conduct itself in a way that is not offensive to you reaffirms our mutual respect, serves as tangible evidence that our values are mostly aligned, and helps ensure that the rational dialogue continues. But when:
Why should I work to make my side conform to your aesthetics? This has nothing to do with morality, your aesthetics are not morals.
Oh, if you don't believe that the shitposters in this particular case are evidencing any evil beliefs, or potential for harm, as you would recognize them in moral terms, then that answers that. I understood your talk of "coming together to (…) forge a pact to purge the crazies on each respective side" as applying to 'crazies' who you would find morally reprehensible by your own standards, as much as a sincere principled leftist might find assassination-supporting accelerationists or an indiscriminate cancel-mob morally reprehensible. I hadn't understood it as a question of 'aesthetics' at all. It is in that framework that I was arguing that you should still deal with the evil extremists on your own side even if the opposite side isn't repressing its own. If you agree with this principle, but simply don't think it applies to the YR chatlogs then we have no real disagreement and I'd simply misunderstood you.
Yeah, I think I was all over the place. The "purge the crazies" bit applied to past conversations that got me here. I wasn't sure how much the YR situation applied originally, but now it seems pretty clear to be humor.
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…would you actually believe him if he said ‘yes’?
any number of players can play this game.
It seems rather obvious to me that for a very large number of people on the right or their sympathizers, the bottom has absolutely fallen out in terms of their regards to how they are perceived by their self-declared enemies.
On a personal note, I certainly don’t care. I’m interested because I’m intellectually inclined to want to really understand and discuss why things are the way they are, I enjoy it and it gives me pleasure and I think it makes the world a better place.
But I don’t care about leftists, at all. Certainly not about their perception of me and the right. I have no concern for their wellbeing, even just as people, and any pangs of sympathies I might have had for them are gone. I don’t actively want them to suffer, at least for no reason, but for most of the people who celebrated Kirk’s death I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.
I did not feel this way ten years ago when I was more of a garden variety paleo-libertarian, I didn’t even feel this way five years ago after I had become a really strident right winger. Not even close.
As far as I’m concerned, open war is upon us whether we will it or not. The way the culture war has proceeded simply cements that notion.
Eh, it’s possible. People here are unusually likely to pass that sort of Turing test.
And I don’t disagree that the bottom, so to speak, has fallen out. There are a lot of people who are feeling more afraid, alienated, polarized. What they aren’t feeling is vindication. That’s something you get from people who were already thinking about a CW model.
If the turing test for denying wrongthink can be made by people on this board then the turing test isn't especially useful as a gauge, just like the actual turing test is just copeslop for teacher pets obsessed about their defining characteristic of intellect being supplanted by fancy calculators.
Also, how does one assess what other people are actually perceiving in their mental reward mechanism? This typical mindedness is especially uncharitable, and runs the serious risk of overinterpreting basic metaphor for much deeper meaning simply to fit ones own biases. Reading others as scared dumb animals simply because they find it unnecessary to explicitly verbalize the readily obvious sneering at the moral masters being shown as toothless is just contempt levelled from a different direction.
The test isn’t for denying wrongthink, but for “caring about anything like this from my own side.” More likely here than on the vast majority of forums. ArjinFerman and professorgerm both gave credible, level-headed examples of how they gave something genuine thought.
And I’m not interpreting mental rewards mechanisms. I’m arguing that we’ve gotten “the bottom falling out” on the object level, but not the meta level. People are rightfully upset about Kirk’s murder without coming to the same conclusions as Skeletor.
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A daring synthesis.
champing at the bit
jumping at the chance
Damn. I really screwed the shark.
I dare you to share your favorite search result for 'Shark Waifu'.
It has been 15 years since I have had occasion to use this.
https://i.postimg.cc/9F82dHCz/9b3qjdl5vpx21.jpg
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It's water under the bus.
No no no, it'll be water under the duck once your bridges are in a row.
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I should have known better than to count my gift horses before they hatch!
We'll burn that bridge when we get to it.
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Now, now don’t get your horses in a bunch.
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You're replying to a filtered comment.
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