domain:drmanhattan16.substack.com
cjet79
2hr 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
2hr 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
2hr 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
2hr 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
2hr 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.
3hr 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
3hr ago
then what behavior if any is unacceptable to you?
Betrayal, disloyalty, perfidy, treachery, and supporting foreign migration.
KMC
lurk moar
3hr 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.
3hr 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
3hr 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.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
3hr ago
All that being said, when you're running a political organization in the current era you cannot say the things they said and expect those logs not to be leaked. I think having some cooth goes a long way, even in today's world.
Why? This was probably the first all male inclusive space (or so they thought) that they'd ever experienced. They'd been denied any third space to be boys their entire lives.
I mean, you aren't wrong, but also, what you expect is impossible in context.
HereAndGone
3hr ago
This storm in a teacup seems to be getting more juicy/spicy, since rumours are swirling. Milo (yes, 'tis he) is claiming that the leaker was Gavin Wax who co-operated with Politico (in a way that frankly reminds me of the guy who pointed Cade Metz at Scott and fed him tidbits as part of his axe-grinding with the Rationalists).
Is this the result of internal power-struggles or in-fighting, and Wax is trying to destroy a particular opponent/rival? Has anyone got the inside scoop on this? If this is all a catfight over person or persons trying to get into the inner circle/back in/kick the other guy out, it becomes way more interesting than "bunch of idiot college kids do idiot stuff" (because the kind of people who join The Young Whatever Party groups in college, no matter what country, tend to be a particular type who are both politics wonks and politically ambitious, hoping to parlay involvement in such groups into some sort of political career, and nobody else gives a damn. See William Hague).
Totalitarianit
3hr ago
I am so profoundly glad I had my teens and 20-somethings before the age of, whatever this is. We had ICQ, AOL IM, irc, and to the best of my knowledge none of this was really permanent? Logs were all stored locally, if you missed something in irc, you just missed it. It was all far more ephemeral by nature.
I'm especially glad there are no recording of what went on at LAN parties even into our 20's. Or the insane conversations we had at college. Or the things we said drunk post college. Or the chauvinistic things we joked about when we started having some success with women.
Same. I said a lot of things as a teen and in my early 20s that I would deeply regret if they had been made permanent online. Thank goodness social media, and more importantly Twitter, wasn't a thing when I was most stupid.
My observation of young, confident males is that they are often disagreeable by their nature. The most hilarious thing in the world to me when I was young was watching one of my friends do or say something absurd that either straddled or blatantly crossed the line of what was considered acceptable to decent people. CKY (and then Jackass) had some of the funniest things I'd ever seen on video. I wasn't nearly as wild as some of the people I was acquainted with, but I would laugh very hard at the wild things they did. The incentive to be edgy in young male social circles is pretty high. All that being said, when you're running a political organization in the current era you cannot say the things they said and expect those logs not to be leaked. I think having some cooth goes a long way, even in today's world.
HereAndGone
3hr ago
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"
This'll teach me to read the linked text (particularly ironic because I'm bullish on 'go back to the sources'). Vance had a leetle more to the comment than just "this is pearl clutching" (so ignore it); he was contrasting it with the guy who was talking about hoping Jennifer Gilbert's children would die:
This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia. I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3hr ago
If you're really curious about what I think about actually supporting actual Hitler, than I'm against it and don't find it acceptable, but the point is you don't get to tell me what constitutes supporting Hitler.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
3hr ago
Was there any actual support for Hitler? The single quote appears to be, as per the context The_Nybbler provided, a reducto ad absurdum joke.
Obviously, if the only "support" in this entire leak is that line, then you'll join us in condemning Politco for being disingenuous scumbags, right?
But yes, for the record, actual neonazis are contemptible retards. Also for the record, this includes affiliates and allies like Hamas and the young Democrats who support them :)
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3hr ago
TBH (without having read Griffin's book) I've always wondered if "palingenetic" is superfluous here. I mean, the fascist movements we do know have had the palingenetic element (and it doesn't really affect the question of whether Trump's a fascist or not since the palingenetic element is obvious down to the MAGA slogan), as one could imagine a fascist movement built on the basis of "our nation has never been particularly great or important, but we are going to be great in the future".
HereAndGone
3hr ago
(1) Bunch of twenty-somethings are idiots (2) This includes edgelord stuff like making jokes about Hitler and other topics deemed "should not be joked about" (3) Whatever really was said in the thread remains to be determined
Also, is "to cow before Trump" a direct quote or just the people writing this article being illiterate? "To cower before" makes sense, as does "to kowtow to/before". This is what happens when you let AI write your article for you! Or be too young to know how to English properly, if it's direct Young Republican quote.
(How did Politico obtain the leaked thread, I wonder?)
Yeah, if it's genuine, it ranks between "young idiot guys need a slap upside the head" and "if old enough to know better/comments are genuinely bad and not just white guy saying 'nigga' as though he's a rapper, heads must roll".
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 😁
William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat.
cjet79
3hr ago
I googled myself in 2009 when I was a senior in highschool and the fourth result that came up was me on a Facebook post saying that a movie was stupid. In a group that I thought was private.
That was when I scrubbed what I could of old posts from Facebook and elsewhere that had my name attached. I started using reddit more instead to comment. But even on reddit I had it in the back of my mind that my username might be linked to my real name at some point.
Something in society has been damaged from everyone living in the panopticon. I don't even know what it is, because it has been this way my entire adult life. I do know that the way most people cope is by making the private spaces as different as they can.
Anyone leaking private space conversations is always the asshole. I try not to change my opinion of the victim of the leak, but that's not always doable.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
3hr ago
That's a good argument. The only counterargument I have is Putin having already made stupid decisions in 2014 and 2022. I have consistently failed to model his thought processes, so if I agree it's contrary to the interests of the Kremlin it doesn't mean he won't think it's worth doing either.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
3hr ago
Yeah, I'm going to need anyone leaning left to rank these comments on a scale of "I want to shoot you in the head and watch your children die in your wife's arms".
Have you not been paying attention?
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.
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