domain:bracero.substack.com
birb_cromble
1d ago
Is there really not a single right-wing hacker competent enough to find whatever horrifying racist nonsense Democrat-associated activists say in their group chats?
Were you not here last week, where we discussed how Virginia politician Jay Jones was outed as wanting to see a political rival's wife wailing in despair as her child bleeds to death in her arms?
daguerrean
1d ago
Yea, anyone that has been on 4chan or Discord knows that young conservatives are most likely full Deus Vult if they are engaged enough to care about politics, and this stuff is truthfully pretty run of the mill.
That said, this is bad, I have no problem saying this is bad. However, I think it is a sort of LARPing for 99.9% of these people, the same way Eat the Rich/Punch a Nazi is LARPing for the majority. But in the Kirk discussions we already hashed out the reasons this is bad. I think there is a crisis of earnestness, people are absolutely allergic to being serious which creates this sort of “Haha just joking….unless?” aspect which rightly scares people. In part I blame Trump for the degradation of seriousness as a virtue in American politics, but perhaps he was more a effect than a cause.
Now a bit regarding Nazism specifically. The left has so abused the term Nazi/fascist, similar to abuse of Antisemite or Communist/Socialist, that at some point you can’t be surprised when people start to think Nazism isn’t so bad, and start to wear the badge in defiance. In a weird way it becomes analogous to blacks reclaiming the word “nigger”
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
1d ago
What is the difference between a person who says they love Hitler and a person like me who doesn't say it?
What is the difference between a person who says they love terrorism and a person like me who doesn't say it?
A degree from Cambridge? A job at Harvard? The presidency? Man, loving terrorists must be good for your career... as long as they're left-wing terrorists, of course.
pigeonburger
1d ago
"I love Hitler" seems about as literal Nazi as possible. If that is not "proof of Bad Nazi" to you, what is?
Did you read the context?
AD: He did say “My delegates I bring will vote for the most right wing person”
PG: Great. I love Hitler
Do you think that last line, if this was written with acting cues as in script, would be:
PG *with stars in his eyes at the thought of a Fourth Reich* : Great. I love Hitler!
or
PG *deadpan* : Great. I love Hitler.
or
PG *sarcastically* : Great. I love Hitler
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
1d ago
More like "being against bad jokes in groupchats."
Anyone been fired recently for calling white people goblins? No? Yawn.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
1d ago
hardly worth clutching pearls over... maybe imitation pearls?
New flair day, thank you.
This seems to come from the libertarian view that "government is [a monopoly on] violence"
Do people consider Max Weber to be a libertarian? But yes I'm coming at it from the libertarian traditions. Hence the tag...
That said, while I think the libertarians have a mostly-self-coherent ethical view (which is more than many can say), I think some level of civilization is worth the trade off in terms of absolute freedoms.
In "defense" of my less radical brethren, the vast majority of libertarians agree. Ancaps are - or were - over represented in parts of the internet. There are far more minarchists and those are greatly eclipsed by just self-described libertarians who make all sorts of tradeoffs.
cjet79
1d ago
Ha, ya the military is often the Pinnacle of male bonding rituals. I'm sure any given barracks regularly has the most heinous shit said in it.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
1d ago
Now I have to disagree with our vice president here, I don't think it is pearl clutching to oppose support of Hitler.
Is there really not a single right-wing hacker competent enough to find whatever horrifying racist nonsense Democrat-associated activists say in their group chats? I get the feeling it's a lot less irony-infected than this kind of thing.
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?
Is Hanania a person to trust, here?
Two, for a long time nobody gave a shit about unabashed bigotry from the left perpetrated by every major institution and every university in this country, and most people still don't care. While I think these jokes are very trashy and a kind of male socialization I've never really understood, I'm gonna need a little more than trashy jokes to get up in arms about.
When we get "blackness is evil and must but abolished, but don't worry that technically doesn't mean black people, wink wink nudge nudge" unironically preached by a major university or newspaper, I'll be concerned.
Is this tribalist loyalty helping to empower extremism and violence?
Do you want to revisit a 2020 discussion?
why do so many of these self identifying Nazis seem to feel at home in the GOP
Nazis have replaced the Devil. If you wanted to spit in the eye of Christians, you identify as Satanist and make dead baby jokes. If you want to spit in the eye of hypocritical liberal-progressives, you identify as a Nazi and make those jokes.
For Mark Robinson it was a weird fetish thing, not quite the same example as the rest, btw.
A group chat of your friends is leaked. The text:
A: I'll vote for the leftmost candidate
B: Great. I love Stalin
Would you consider calling B "a leftwing extremist praising Stalin" a fair reading?
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1d ago
See, but you skipped the part where I pointed out, how?! They have no third spaces to do so. None. Zero. Zilch. There is zero third space for male bonding. So of course the moment they find themselves in a remotely male third space, they begin doing the repressed male bonding rituals that are their nature. It's unfortunate that the first third space they found that fits the bill is a Young Republicans Group. But society failed them first, by denying them any other third space before that one.
cjet79
1d ago
I knew more leftists growing up than righties. They absolutely had these places. One of the most leftist people I knew in highschool was a Jewish guy and he had all of the best Holocaust jokes.
I know fewer super lefties today. But the moderate democrat dads I know are still willing to sling around the wild stuff in private conversations.
Totalitarianit
1d ago
Because politics and bed fellows, and because it has gradually become common knowledge that this is a "do so at your own risk" type situation where the risk appears to be increasing almost daily.
It is no longer smart to exchange jokes of that nature in text groups with your name attached to them while being a public figure of any kind, especially if you are a political figure.
If the context is, Young males should never make obscene jokes no matter the place or setting, then yes, that is impossible. If the context is, Young males who work with the public in a political role should never make obscene jokes in text chats that could be used against them later, then I think that is possible and it will work itself out naturally. Young, smart, politically active males looking to fill these roles will either take this story as a cautionary tale or they won't.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
…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.
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?
How many layers of irony are you prepared to dig through?
I've been in groupchats where varying levels of racism, sexism, homophobia, and contempt for minority groups is tolerated. Never out-and-out calls for extermination, but at worst places where everyone can quote crime statistics from heart and Pinochet/Helicopter memes are in vogue.
Generally speaking, my perception is that the ratio of participants who engage in edgy humor and thoughtcrime for purely signalling purposes to those who truly have a core belief that is reflected in the statements is at least 3:1.
Which, under standard lefty logic makes them all just as culpable.
But I simply disbelieve that anything like a majority of them are actually in favor of literal Hitler taking power, rather than just noticing that he is one of the few taboos left that you can actual 'violate' for comedic effect. Decades of media programming that "NAZIS ARE THE ABSOLUTE WORST EVIL", you're going to get some people who find it amusing to trample on that message.
Indeed, digging into the actual texts make it clear much of what was being said was sarcasm with a negative valence towards the subject.
Anyway, I used to be the guy that occasionally reminded people not to go too blatant in their poasting since everything being said could in theory get publicized at an arbitrarily later date. I myself use the same sort of discipline I do in professional e-mails where I assume that I might have to explain what I wrote to a Judge at some point, so don't put it in writing unless you're okay with it being read into a Court record later.
I've since stopped doing that sort of policing... unless I see something that could be read as an actual call for violence or statement of intent to commit violence. The norm against such calls is what I myself dearly want to maintain.
Otherwise, trangressing taboos is ultimately a pretty standard way of establishing camaraderie, and a group chat is inherently not a space where these words are being exposed to people who would genuinely be offended or 'harmed' by them, so it seems obvious that the 'intent' is not to offend or harm. This is distinct from the types who go on twitter and elsewhere specifically to troll or get a rise out of others. I still disdain those ones pretty universally for polluting public discourse.
There are practical reasons to rein in the language a bit b/c of the risk of exposure like this, but at this point I am more in favor of adjusting the larger social rules to be more permissive than I am in punishing young guys for being uncouth or poorly socialized.
And of course, if the most benignly controversial statements of the kind Charlie Kirk used to make (and he was light-years from spouting slurs) is enough to justify killing you, why hold back at all? There's value in signalling to peers that you'll have their back if the left comes for them because you're stuck just as deep in thoughtcrime as they are, and there's value in signalling to the left that you're not afraid of thoughtcrime and there's more people on your side than they expected.
samiam
1d ago
Without reading the article, a line from the original Star Trek comes to mind:
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
The article comes off as a typical left-wing shaming Gish gallop:
- It quotes a bunch of things said by alleged right wing people out of context
- It does not examine the context of the quote nor why the writer said the quote, but immediately assumes the worst.
- It makes a long list of these quotes, all of which are done out of context
Without letting other people see the source of these quotes, we are left guessing. And, quite frankly, to give just one example, the mainstream left-wing press was really dishonest when quoting RMS out of context to shame him, either quoting things he hasn’t believed for years to decades, misrepresenting jokes others made about him as something he said or did, quoted something out of context to imply something he never endorsed nor said, etc.
Until we get full context, we can not damn anyone. And we haven’t gotten that context to examine the facts for ourselves.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
1d ago
My assumptions for someone that says they have not experienced this kind of bonding:
- They are female
- They are autistic
- They have no intrusive thoughts
- They are lying
Or they're putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay!
Sometimes I am shocked at how poorly the female mind grapples with things like this. Like, I've heard my wife have abhorrent conversations with her best friend on the phone that she absolutely does not mean. And yet when confronted with someone else having had a similar conversation, she cannot relate. How horrible. Clutch the pearls!
I remember when Trump's Hollywood Access tape leaked, and she really was in the grips of the "My father would never say something like that" propaganda that was going around. I had to gently remind her that her father served in the military. No effect. I went further, that he's told the same joke a dozen times about telling a waitress she "gave good head" and offending her when she served him a beer with the perfect amount of head on it. That had some slight effect. Still, those pearls were clutched, if slightly less hard.
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?
See, this is the problem with the question. Someone asked recently about what the building consensus rule here meant, and I think this is a stellar example: it presumes that what you're referring to is clearly "neonazism, support of slavery and unabashed bigotry", where someone not highly motivated to see it as more will just see joking and edgelording. Tasteless, yes, and ill-advised in a context that had the possibility of being leaked, but looking at the quotes in the articles I see nothing that reads to me like neonazism or support of slavery, just laconic jokes. As for the bigotry, there's a better case there (though nowhere near a slam dunk) but at this point the right has run out of shits to give about following the left's rules for what they're allowed to notice and think about groups of people. Or at least joke about.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
1d ago
I think you missed the part above where I said this is lame because of how tame it is. These people are nerds. And the only thing I find lamer is pretending that this is horrible as a way to score political points.
To be fair, I don't think many left-wingers have these spaces. Just toxic longhouse cesspits where no irreverence is permitted because that would release tension and distract from the seething Twenty-Four Hour Hates. That's why places like Chapo and CumTown were so important.
KMC
lurk moar
1d ago
then what behavior if any is unacceptable to you?
Betrayal, disloyalty, perfidy, treachery, and supporting foreign migration.
KMC
lurk moar
1d ago
"I love Hitler" seems about as literal Nazi as possible.
There are no literal Nazis, and there haven't been in 80 years. That's part of the point here, you're chasing boogeymen.
Republican governor of Vermont
The difference between Vermont and New Hampshire.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
This includes edgelord stuff like making jokes about Hitler and other topics deemed "should not be joked about"
Bah, making jokes about Hitler is lindy.
EDIT: Thank you, TheMotte, for permitting me to post a slur like "nigga" and not force me to use a dash as though this was the 18th century or I were writing for Politico, though I guess that makes me as reprehensible as a Young Republican 😁
Interestingly, they spell out "retarded" in the article but in the balloons in the header they make it "r------d"; I'm not sure if this means they censored it in the header or if the actual Young Republican wasn't willing to spell it out. Anyway, "this girl is fully retarded" is hardly worth clutching pearls over... maybe imitation pearls?
cjet79
1d ago
To be clear, is support of Hitler acceptable from politicians and staffers or is it not? If supporting Hitler is acceptable when done in private conversations, then what behavior if any is unacceptable to you?
It is absolutely unacceptable and abhorrent behavior to leak private group chats. See, I have standards!
In my opinion there is literally nothing that can be said between two consenting adults in a private conversation that I would consider unacceptable behavior.
When I was in middle school and highschool kids around me would make dead baby jokes, Holocaust / gas chamber jokes, they'd say all racial slurs, and they'd talk about fucking each other's mothers and sisters.
I think you missed the part above where I said this is lame because of how tame it is. These people are nerds. And the only thing I find lamer is pretending that this is horrible as a way to score political points.
Of course some Republican dude condemned them. As I said above they should resign for failing to distinguish between a private and public space.
You seem really stuck on the Hitler thing. But I clearly was talking in general terms about many different ways we can be terrible human beings.
My assumptions for someone that says they have not experienced this kind of bonding:
- They are female
- They are autistic
- They have no intrusive thoughts
- They are lying
It's fine if you are 1-3. You'll just have to trust me when I say that these conversations take place all the time. I'm 100% certain that you know a man who has had a "say horrible things" conversation within the last month. I'm decently certain (80%) based on your comments that none of these men would be stupid enough to admit it to you, so you'll never know who they are.
…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.
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