Debates died

[Keirador]

This, too, is why Debates died. We actually did manage to strike up a few exchanges of interesting debate, and one side quit when it became apparent they were losing.

Today's "right" simply can't defend themselves. There's no debate to be had.

[willie23]

Sorry for my late reply. But don't claim victory too soon. I've been unbelievably busy this past week. I've got more coming soon.

[mat.gopack]

Well, in preparation for that

I think it's also important, when considering violence, to keep in mind the way that the left and the right think about it is very different. Most notably that can be seen with property damage. (I'm using 'Left' and 'Right' fairly generally here, but more so meaning actually left/right wing, excluding the center left/right in the US).

Property damage in left wing circles is seen as not a huge deal - especially compared to damage done to actual people (eg, bodily harm or death). Situations like a police department being set on fire, or looting a Target, are simply not going to be seen as actual violence by many on the left, if the only damages that happen are property. By contrast, something like shooting tear gas at a crowd - which will cause bodily harm - is generally viewed as more violent than that.

On the flip side, the right wing has a very different view of it. Property damage appears to be put on the same level - if not above - violence against other people. We can see that in the many groups of militias that self-organized and unilaterally appointed themselves to go off and 'defend' property - often without the people who they were pretending to defend knowing or wanting them to - fully prepared to use deadly force if they deemed it necessary. There's an apparent view that if someone is damaging or attacking your property (or anyone's property if you're around and feeling 'generous'), that use of *any amount* of force is completely justified to stop them. And that's how we get someone like the Kenosha shooter getting celebrated widely in right wing circles, despite killing multiple people over *ostensibly* going to the city to defend a ruined parking lot without the owner having any idea they were doing so.

Moving past that, the right wing also has a much more effective - and general - feedback loop with regards to violence. There's some parts of the left that can certainly be the same - but they're more insular and small, and don't propagate as widely. To illustrate, I'll use Antifa. Antifa in left wing circles is extremely decentralized, and though mostly runs around the same sets of circles online as the larger 'far left', there's not really any organized flow of information. There's a general positive view of them in that wider circle, but calls to violence are not really a big thing outside of going down and confronting extreme right rallies. At the least, there's little to no penetration of mainstream media - even the left of center ones - by antifa.

But the right wing response to Antifa is a very telling way of looking at how effectively the far/extreme right penetrates into the mainstream. It starts with extremely biased/fake 'reporters' that operate on twitter or unreliable sites (most notably Andy Ngo and Ian Miles Chong, from what I've seen). They compile massive number of clips of antifa violence - usually edited to only include the violence on one end (egregious ones off the top of my head include a picture of a guy on the ground injured, without including the moments before and after where he was charging into a left wing crowd attacking people with a baton, or a bus clip where they tried to make it look like antifa attacked people on a bus with a hammer - when the hammer was initially used by someone on that bus to attack first, and got wrested out). The point, though, isn't to be accurate - it's to build up a massive amount of 'evidence' of extreme & scary violence.

That then gets circulated extensively around the online right - and *then* gets picked up by the right wing media. Ngo has gone on Fox News somewhat often - and that narrative of 'scary, threatening Antifa' fits in perfectly with Fox News programming. And that percolates out into the wider 'mainstream' right to a degree that simply isn't the same with the left. I think it's part of what's led to QAnnon being such a major hit in the right wing, with so many people falling for it - after all, I've had family members who are moderately right wing freaking out over protestors marching downtown - like 5 miles away from their house - because they thought it would be entirely Antifa and that they would burn the city down. It's not any wonder that so many right wingers are primed for violence - their information networks continually make it seem like they are personally under attack and that it's necessary to fight back.

Seems like I got a bit carried away again

[Keirador]

Well, in preparation for that

I admire your optimism.

[mat.gopack]

Well, in preparation for that

I admire your optimism.

True, I am too optimistic much of the time

[vaderi]

Yup, he ran away.

[schocker]

I read the above description of the right-wing press or extreme press. I wonder if the author actually reads the LA Times or similar mainstream papers. They all do the same. I read an article about a movie theater in Fresno today in the LA Times where the author picked sides and then reported. This is a large part of the problem with our media. THEY PICK SIDES AND THEN REPORT. Last summer when the riots were taking place I heard an unremembered reporter "It is mostly a peaceful demonstration" and in the background were burning buildings and a police line. It wasn't objective reporting. My point is that this is happening everywhere and on all sides. Read the LA Times any day of the week and if you are objective you will see their bias clearly.

[Keirador]

Yup, he ran away.

Well, yeah.

Fascist snowflakes prefer to practice their free speech in safe spaces, where nasty liberals can't do thought-crime at them.

[Keirador]

I read the above description of the right-wing press or extreme press. I wonder if the author actually reads the LA Times or similar mainstream papers. They all do the same. I read an article about a movie theater in Fresno today in the LA Times where the author picked sides and then reported. This is a large part of the problem with our media. THEY PICK SIDES AND THEN REPORT. Last summer when the riots were taking place I heard an unremembered reporter "It is mostly a peaceful demonstration" and in the background were burning buildings and a police line. It wasn't objective reporting. My point is that this is happening everywhere and on all sides. Read the LA Times any day of the week and if you are objective you will see their bias clearly.

Which poster are you referring to? Several people here have talked about media, including myself.

I'm not going to defend the LA Times specifically, because I do not read the LA Times and am not aware of its coverage.

I will say that the example you noted doesn't necessarily demonstrate a lack of objectivity. Police presence does not mean a crowd is violent; police are pretty famous for over-reacting and that's largely what these protests are about in the first place. Burning buildings don't tell us anything about the behavior of the majority of the crowd. It takes one person to start a fire, if another 10,000 are just holding signs, then it is mostly a peaceful demonstration. There's a discussion to be had, and a good one, about collective responsibility and the extent to which protesters who knew that one or some of their numbers had turned arsonist are morally responsible for aiding and abetting arson. But even if you think, as I do, that collective responsibility would be rightfully borne by any protester who was aware of the arson, that doesn't make the claim that the demonstrations were mostly peaceful false.

But apart from the LA Times, a regional paper, I don't know how we can talk about media bias without discussing what has happened on the right. The right has decided that feelings are more important than facts. Any news outlets who reports facts without kowtowing to the feelings of conservatives is pilloried as biased. The most notable example, and most relevant to this thread, is the suggestion that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election. There's no shred of proof that 2020 was an unusually fraudulent election. News organizations that report correctly and accurately that there has been no proof of election fraud get called biased by conservatives. The Republican Senators who attempted to delay the certification of the election didn't even argue that there actually was fraud: they argued that tens of millions of Americans believed there was fraud, so the election certification should be delayed to cater to the feelings of Trump voters, with no regard whatsoever to the facts. And that's the information ecosystem the right lives in: if enough like-minded people believe something to be true, it either is true or is at least worth considering, even if there are no facts whatsoever to support it.

[schocker]

Then you are blind to bias agree with. If you can't see it there is nothing I can say.