domain:mattlakeman.org
07mk
4m ago
Yeah, I think the issue with this sort of complaint is that there's nothing horrifyingly racist that Democrats can say in private group chats that would be more horrifyingly racist than what come out of Democrats' mouths in public. Democrats openly saying horrifyingly racist things is just "baked in" to people's expectations of them, such that similar private group chats just wouldn't be scandalous; . And, indeed, a somewhat similar-but-mirrored analog happened in the past month with some small Democratic Virginian politician, with basically no hubbub, in large part because Democrats openly and unironically espousing such hateful and pro-violence rhetoric has just been normalized.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
4m ago
To be clear, is support of Hitler acceptable from politicians and staffers or is it not?
I think you are confusing someone saying "I support Hitler" in a private, friendly conversation with actually supporting Hitler. Of course everyone who supports Hitler would say they support him, but not everyone who says they support him actually supports him. That is part of the point @cjet79 is getting at, I think.
For example, I have cracked jokes in the presence of friends to the effect of "slavery was great, we need to go back to that". But I do not actually want slavery to be practiced, it is just an edgy joke. One I would probably get turbo canceled for if I were a public figure, no doubt, but still just a joke.
I get the sense that with these Republican messages, you're taking them completely at face value (because they are your outgroup and it's just human nature to believe bad things about your outgroup). But you can't just assume that at the start, and then ask pointed "wait so supporting Hitler is ok?" questions. First we need to come to an agreement whether these dudes actually support Hitler, or if they were making edgy jokes. Only then can we have a well-founded discussion about "is that ok for them to do".
Corvos
9m ago
Yeah, this is why I never got into crosswords either. I think it's like blank poetry or leetcode - in theory there's a big space of possible puzzles, but in practice they're written to conform to very specific formats. Let me know if you find any crossword that isn't like that.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
10m ago
Limiting my screen time is a somewhat futile endeavor since I work on a computer, but I do my best to limit phone time. To that end, I recently ordered a bunch of NYT crossword books for something to do with downtime when I don't want to read whatever novel I'm working on.
I've been reminded how much crosswords can drive me crazy. Incomprehensible themes and horrible perversions of the English language are pervasive. I don't mind extreme trivia or obscure words or having to learn the clues and words that seem to appear in every third puzzle, but puzzle authors trying to be cute or clever is annoying.
zeke5123a
11m ago
You keep repeating this but seem oblivious to the fact that the statement appears sarcastic.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
13m ago
Naturally.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
14m ago
My suggestion for the punchline would be
B: Great, then we'll have a Great Leap Forward!
which would then be characterized as "support for genocide".
pigeonburger
17m ago
It's funny because Politico would have a stronger article if they did not fixate on this obvious joke mentioning Hitler, some of the edgelord racist stuff would have the potential to shock prudish normies or at least create enough of a problem for the right that it would have to address as if the public and the private are not different spheres of communication, but the Hitler quote Politico (and magicalkittycat) highlight as if it was the worst of it is so obviously said in jest that it's easier to dismiss the rest.
haroldbkny
20m ago
find whatever horrifying racist nonsense Democrat-associated activists say in their group chats
How do you mean this? 1. As a Chinese robber fallacy thing, like surely there are some racist Democrats out there. Or that 2. Democrats are doing their soft racism thing of belittling minority groups? Or that 3. Democrats in private are just as racist as Republicans are in private. Or 4. Democrats say racist jokes in private, but don't mean them? Because to be honest, as someone very much adjacent to and in those Democrat group chats. I don't think 3 is likely, and 4 is far less likely then it used to be 15 years ago. There is too much self policing, infighting, virtue signaling, effectively causing leftists to get brownie points for calling each other out on such things all the time.
Thoroughlygruntled
23m ago
Not just in the 90s-00s. This is absolutely bog standard group chat stuff that you'll see everywhere across the political spectrum to this day, with some variation in the specific memes used. I've been in group chats where the chair of a local DSA chapter exclusively used stars of David and watermelon emojis to react to messages, and where we regularly joke about how we won't hesitate to shoot the other in the street come the revolution. I've been in group chats where lefty academics in good standing call Donald Trump a faggot before joking about sharpening their guillotines. And I have yet to meet a conservative who can be half as cruel about someone's physical appearance as a catty gay man who assumes he's in friendly company.
Wherever young people (particularly young men) speak to each other privately, this is more-or-less what the conversations look like. I would expect a treasure trove of leaked democrat activist messages to appear very similar in a lot of ways.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
23m ago
…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.
birb_cromble
24m 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
29m 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
33m 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
36m 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
36m ago
More like "being against bad jokes in groupchats."
Anyone been fired recently for calling white people goblins? No? Yawn.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
38m ago
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
40m 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
45m 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
45m 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
50m 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
53m 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.
Yeah, I see the predicament and agree it is a major problem for young males. To answer your "how?" question, I honestly don't know for the general population of young males, and it is a fair point. It currently serves as a natural filter to weed out those prone to edgy remarks and the occasional anti-social behavior (that is actually pro-social in context), but if the filter is applied to almost everything a young male does digitally, then the weeding out isn't just limited to bad weeds.
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