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James_Miller comments on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (285)
Would doing so Make Less Wrong Great Again?
I think Omnilibrium is a better place for those discussions.
Exactly. I voted 'no' because Omnilibrium is far more apt, and still quite high in quality of the Discussion.
As someone who voted yes, and currently seeing how the margin is 32 'yays' (52%) to 29 'nays' (48%), I don't think you should start this discussion simply because there is a majority in favour of a discussion thread on Trump. I mean, I wouldn't like to see 48% of users put off by this discussion. So, I think it's safe to say the discussions should really only start if you get a supermajority, something like 2/3rds in favor of starting the discussion. If that's not the case whenever you decide the poll is closed, I don't think it's worth the costs of hosting the discussion here.
I thus agree with ChristianKI to move the discussion to Omnilibrium.
I agree.
presently the scores are close to tied with 23 votes. (ROT13 of the current score (guvegrra lrf naq gra ab)) If the tie continues I would encourage you to not post it.
What is this asking for permission via a poll thing?
Make a thread and watch its karma. It will tell you all you need to know.
In the past I've seen people suggest that a controversial topic/thread should have been brought up in a poll beforehand instead of just posting it outright. James_Miller seems to be following the suggested convention.
It's called politeness.
I find it strange, and counter to my own values, that telling people "shut up, I don't want to hear what you want to talk about" is considered "polite", while talking about what you want to talk about, without asking permission first, is considered rude.
It's about the defaults. The problem with political debates is that it is difficult to contain them -- they are likely to grow (because for almost any topic you can find a political point of view), and they attract new people who are interested more in promoting a political idea than about improving their own rationality.
So we can either explicitly support the norm "we don't debate politics (unless there is an exception)", or we can either explicitly or implicitly have the norm "political debates are okay". We have the former.
Maybe there are other possible solutions, such as trying to contain politics in specific threads, this was tried in the past (if I remember correctly, some people kept making more and more treads for debating NR pretending to be general political threads; or maybe it was other way round and all general political threads were hijacked to debate NR).
In theory, it should be possible to debate politics rationally, but in practice, we have problems keeping the debates civilized.
And having more to talk about is a problem how?
NR? Neoreaction?
If you have Neoreactionary views, your general politics will naturally be Neoreactionary. So some people wanted to talk about it. Why is that a problem?
When I see a thread that I don't want to read, I don't. It doesn't cause me any problem.
Wouldn't that be a significant opportunity to get LessWrong?
Sorry for yesterday, I'll try to post a more coherent reply now.
.
Once in a while someone accuses Less Wrong of having a specific political bias and being intolerant towards the dissidents. The alleged political bias depends on who made the accusation. For example, neoreactionaries believe that Less Wrong is politically correct and left-wing; they would probably use the word "demotist", which pretty much means anyone who is not a neoreactionary. Meanwhile, RationalWiki (an "Atheism+" website) believes that Less Wrong contains "cringe-inducing discussions of the merits of racism", and the supposedly "non-political" debates in reality promote libertarianism and neoreaction.
Looking at the 2014 survey results, Less Wrong members identify mostly as Social Democratic, Liberal, Libertarian, approximately in equal numbers.
Can this result be interpreted as a unified political bias? I don't know. Maybe yes. Maybe there is an idea of society that most Less Wrong members would approve of -- I imagine something like: universal basic income, universal healthcare, minimal government required to provide security and the basic income, freedom for entrepreneurs, freedom of sexual expression and identity -- while they may disagree on some technical details (such as affirmative action: yes or no) and mostly on which label is most appropriate for this idea. Or maybe I am completely wrong here.
If we map this to the traditional American politics (Democrats vs Republicans), Democrats would obviously win, cca 4:1. But this shouldn't be surprising, considering that Less Wrong is an openly atheist website (Republicans associate with religion) and that half of members are non-American (Republicans associate with American jingoism, which non-Americans have no reason to share). Correcting for these two factors, I think the ratio is pretty much what we should expect.
My conclusion (which anyone is free to disagree with) is that the accusations of political bias more or less express frustration "why don't these people all agree with me? they said they were rational, and rational people are supposed to agree with me! are they suggesting that I am stupid?" (exaggerated for easier comprehension).
.
How to debate politics on Less Wrong without getting caught in the affective spirals? Let me quote:
Specifically for neoreaction this means that "neoreaction" is a wrong topic for a debate. (However, "tell me why do you identify as a neoreactionary" can be interesting; probably the most productive LW thread on this topic.) The best approach would be to taboo "neoreaction" (and all other political labels), choose one object-level belief and debate that. Of course this presupposes that someone could compile a list of specific object-level beliefs in simple language without links to the other beliefs (and no, "Cthulhu always swims left" is neither specific nor transparent). Then we could debate the individual beliefs, and perhaps agree on some and disagree on others; and maybe we could find out that some of those beliefs are actually not unique for neoreaction.
(And then there is the issue that people who would disagree with some neoreactionary beliefs would soon find that the karma of their comments written years ago have overnight dropped to -1. Which will require some technical changes in voting mechanism to fix, there is no other way.)
Um, you were the one who first brought up that term in this discussion. In fact, the only reason we're having this meta-debate is because a bunch of people didn't want to have an object-level discussion about Donald Trump.
Right. And let me quote from a post (again):
So at issue is democracy. Given this, with respect to that belief, it's easy to see how LW is politically unified. In fact, doubting democracy is pretty much outside of Overton window (that's part of what makes neoreaction interesting).
Not sure how many neoreactionaries actually agree with that definition. But anyway...
So the belief is that societies that (1) accept democracy (2) will inevitably (3) meet their progressivism-caused doom.
(1) We would need a working definition of "democracy". Specifically, what about countries like USSR or Burma or North Korea that nominally have elections, but the winner is reliably known in advance. Do they also count as "democracies" for the purpose of our belief; that is, does even half-assed pretext of democracy inevitably bring the doom? Or do we need people to participate in real elections? What if the elections are real, but most media are in hands of a few rich owners, and most voters believe the media?
I am asking this to avoid rationalizations from hindsight, like: "Singapore seems to be doing pretty well despite being a democracy -- nah, they are a democracy only in name, it's actually People's Action Party ruling since 1959"; "North Korea seems like hell -- well, they do have elections, so this is an example of a democracy that already met its doom".
(2) The word "inevitably" actually doesn't predict any specific outcome, because if the prophesied thing didn't happen, you can always add "...yet". Could it be made a bit more specific? For example, do countries with a lot of democracy meet their doom faster, on average, than countries with only little democracy? (For example, should we expect Switzerland to meet their doom sooner than North Korea?)
I am not a neoreactionary, so you'll have to find somebody else to argue their side -- shouldn't be a problem, since you mentioned that they can't shut up :-P
However I'll explain why I find their ideology interesting. The thing is, in contemporary political discourse in the West democracy became a sacred cow. One could talk about better or worse implementations, point out issues with specific governments or policies, etc. but the notion that democracy is the best and you should always try to have as much of it as possible seems to be sanctified, enshrined, and maybe even embalmed :-)
And that is a bit of a problem. It's a problem mostly because democracy (even in an idealized state) is not perfect and has systemic faults and shortcomings. Discussing those is... difficult because of the sacred-cow status of democracy. Trying to mitigate and ameliorate them is also difficult because that usually involves something other than "moar democracy!" and publicly suggesting it can be less than wise.
Note that debates about the merits of democracy were common in the XVIII and XIX century, but are almost extinct now (again: in the West. Asia is quite different in that respect).
And me, I don't like blinders but I do like sacred-cow steaks :-)
My objections are not about having bias, but enacting a bias institutionally and through social pressures to shut up people you disagree with.
That impulse to shut others up by power and pressure has a marked tendency to go in one direction.
Your projection of "why don't these people all agree with me?" sounds ridiculous to me. Can you point to a few discussions where NR folks were shocked, just shocked, that there was someone in the world that disagreed with them? I'd think that they're probably well used to that by now. I wouldn't expect them to be shocked.
I'll share my conclusion. In many circles, the Left is accustomed to being able to proselytize their ideology while silencing Unbelievers. LW has a rare density of Libertarian leaning people, who generally aren't the types to sit silently and assent. Failing to ideologically bully, the Left resorted to pressure to just not talk about politics, which achieves the main goal of silencing the Unbelievers.
LessWrong is not supposed to be a claim, but a goal. We have all sorts of wrong ideas that we share and mutually critique on our path to becoming LessWrong. But for politics, no go. More important to shut up those heretical ideas than actually get LessWrong about them.
No. The desire to speak, and the desire to be free to speak without being pressured to shut up, is not the demand or expectation that everyone agree.
Yeah, the best approach is to UnIdea "neoreaction".
As for your suggested LWSpeak dictionary for political speech, that's conveniently another method of control. You can't use these symbols. You can't talk this way.
How about instead we criticize each other's ideas if we want, and don't criticize them if we don't?
I guess you have read something about "professing and cheering", "applause lights", "affective spirals", "rationalist taboo", "anticipated experiences", and "replacing symbols with substance". Political debates are not a separate magisterium. Neoreaction is not a separate magisterium within politics.
If your belief has the ambitions to describe the territory, you should be able to describe the same thing without using the shibboleths. A marxist could transform "capitalists exploit workers" into "people who control resources can achieve transactions disadvantageous in long term to people who must participate in transactions with them in order to survive". A libertarian could transform "free markets lead to progress" into "when interactions between people are free of coercion, people are more likely to fully use their creativity". A theist could transform "homosexuality is a sin" into "if you live in a universe with an omnipotent being who infinitely punishes people for sexual relationships with people of the same sex, it is prudent to avoid such relationships".
But if your beliefs are merely cheering for your team, or if the words you use are merely mysterious formless substances, you cannot transform them. Or if your beliefs are wrong (do not match the territory), unpacking the keywords can make the wrongness more obvious. Refusing to unpack your keywords means that on some level you already know that it wouldn't end well. Just say loudly: "countries with a lot of democracy, such as Switzerland, have lower quality of life than countries with no democracy, such as North Korea, because democracy makes people selfishly destroy the society, while a dictator will optimize for long-term prosperity" if that happens to be your belief with the symbols replaced by the corresponding substance.
Reality check: is Eliezer supposed to be that leftist bully who oppresses the rare libertarians at LW? I'm asking because he wrote the articles about anticipated experiences, tabooing words, affective spirals, et cetera. Do you perhaps believe that the techniques described in the Sequences are merely a clever ploy to oppress heretics?
Because to me it seems like you simply refuse to apply some general techniques to a specific set of beliefs... for pretty much the same reason why a theist would object against using an Occam's Razor to religion.
According to LW census liberals and social democrats make up about two thirds of the whole population. If anything, the fact that talk about politics is discouraged here is good for ideological minorities, such as conservatives, communists or neoreactionaries, because there are plenty interesting LW topics that are unrelated to politics. A few years ago people understood that.
Discussing specific ideas one by one is different from discussing vague blobs of ideas that have a lot of connotations. The first one is much more productive than the second, because in the second case people tend to constantly move the goalposts and usė motte and bailey tactics. Discussion of specific mechanisms how elections may lead to outcomes that are contrary to the interest of population is different than discussing a vague blob of ideas that contain people as different as Moldbug's techno-commercialists and religious traditionalists who have basically nothing in common. For any neorectionary proposal there is another idea that is almost an opposite. You can't discuss it unless you specify exactly which ideas you are discussing. That is what tabooing the word "neoreaction" means. Discuss ideas that are specific and concrete, ideas that have empirical content, not some kind of vague symbols.
Is the implication that other third, made up of libertarians, wouldn't want to be in a political conversation where they are outnumbered?
If so, that's a pretty good joke.
"It's good that we don't talk about X, because there are a lot of NotX things to talk about" is a rather peculiar claim.
I suppose one could argue that Trump the political animal is in fact a vague blob of ideas, but as a topic of conversation, it's fairly specific, and yet the poster asking for permission to discuss him was effectively told to "shut up" by 40% of respondents. And he did so.
But that is not what "shut up" means.
Can he discuss Trump, as long as he doesn't use his name? Shall it be "He Who Must Not Be Named" then?
The problem was they were not able to stop talking about it. Because they had no other platform than Less Wrong where they could present their ideas to wider audience and try recruiting new people.
Also they loved to pretend that the rationalist community as a whole somehow supports their political beliefs, despite the polls showing cca 3% support.
Then at some moment Eliezer became tired of being known as "the guy who hosts the neoreactionary website" and publicly disowned them. They moved their politics to their own website called "More Right" (as you see, they still couldn't stop making hints that they are somehow connected with LW), so they finally had some other outlet.
(It also didn't help their PR that the known vote-manipulator Eugine was their supporter. I know, that's merely an argument by association, but it doesn't help to keep the debate rational and try avoiding mindkilling, if one side has a member that keeps mass-downvoting everyone who disagrees.)
Thank you for the history. That was before my time. Or maybe I just missed that.
But this is consistent with my observations. It's not really politics that is the target of the ban, it's a certain type of politics.
By your own reporting, they were connected to the LW site. That's where they came from, until they were booted off as untouchables. It's part of their own history that LW was the incubator for their site. And given that they were booted from LW for their views, sticking a thumb in the eye of LW is entirely predictable. The name is triply appropriate, given the politics. It would have been too obvious and too good a name to pass up. I would have used it.
FWIW, I agree despite being very unfavourably disposed towards their political views.
Nope, it's a certain type of behavior.
Nope.
Yes, this attitude is a part of the behavior.
Generally, you guys love to behave like predators. Never take "no" for an answer, double down when someone refuses to debate with you (but when someone does, it's obvious you don't listen anyway), then switch to karma assassinations when arguments fail, or otherwise threaten revenge. You probably believe that this is the right (pun intended) strategy, and if only you stay persistent enough, everyone will sooner or later bend over and take it in the ass. Thus sayeth Gnon or whichever idiotic abbreviation you worship today.
Meanwhile, in the real world, being an asshole often works short-term, but in longer term, there are some complications. Such as being publicly recognized for what you are, and not being welcome among people who have higher standards of interaction.
By the way, you guys are much less different from the SJW predators than either side would admit, except that they are pros (because they were selected from a much larger pool of candidates) and you are mostly wankers. Just saying, because you are going to downvote this comment anyway.
But don't mind me. Follow your own strategy and see where it leads you.
Oh, boy. Who's that "you guys"? I don't think bbdd is one of the NRx.
In any case, let me point out that you just threw a hissy fit. That wasn't a good move... X-/
Downvoted for the kind of attitude actually described in Politics Is The Mind-Killer, the NRxs historically tending v to be the worst offenders is irrelevant.
Nope. Banning a certain type of behavior was used as cover for banning a certain politics.
I don't see behavior as the issue identified here, I see being associated with certain political ideas.
If you want to be nitpicky, then yes, they personally weren't booted, just discussion of the offending ideas was booted.
Are you passing out honorary NR degrees? Don't think I'm entirely on board, though they make a lot of good points.
It's predatory to discuss ideas. It's not predatory to prevent people from discussing ideas through institutional power.
Isn't it inconvenient when people you disagree with won't shut up? Don't worry, you can probably make them.
Ah yes. Maybe I was around. I do recall discussing someone's equivalence of "NR" = "Assholes". Or maybe that was a PUA discussion. Basically, I disagree with you, therefore you're an asshole.
And you're right in the sense that having unpopular ideas often comes with a cost.
Funny, you seemed just like a SJW predator to me. "Shut up" is also their answer to ideas they disagree with.
Actually, I've upvoted one of your comments in this thread, hadn't downvoted any others, and had no intention of downvoting this one. But don't let that keep you from feeling persecuted by a mean old predator.
In which way is this is a problem on an internet forum the purpose of which is to let people talk about things?
I know some people who can't stop talking about existential risk or quantum immortality X-) Is that a problem, too?
If you want to say "I don't want to be associated with people of such political beliefs", well, just say so.
I thought he said it pretty clearly. EY didn't want to be associated with NR, untouchable heathens that they are.
I don't want LW to be a recruitment place for a political cult.
If the political cult is unable to find a better recruitment place, well, sucks to be them.
What do you mean by "cult"? Many people would consider the founding purpose of LW to be a recruitment place for a cult. Or do you mean you don't want anything that might convert people to a political position different from yours?
Banish the Heretics!
Apparently they've also splintered to another site:
http://thefutureprimaeval.net/
LW announcement on More Right - A Good Time Thread
http://lesswrong.com/lw/hcy/link_more_right_launched/
Too bad they already deleted the reasons why.
I believe there was some discussion of the motivation on the LW announcement link.
It seems to me that Viliam's complaint is not that there would be more to talk about, but that more talk would be politicized.
I don't know for sure whether it was (I don't think I ever paid that much attention to the politics threads) but here's one way it could have been: suppose LW has few but very vocal neoreactionaries[1] and that most of the non-neoreactionaries are not very interested in talking about neoreaction[2]. If those few neoreactionaries arrange that every political discussion is packed with NRx stuff, then those political discussions will be annoying to everyone else because in order to read the bits they're interested in they have to wade through lots of NRx comments (and perhaps, though here they may have only themselves to blame, lots of anti-NRx responses).
[1] I think there is some evidence that this is actually so.
[2] This seems likely to be true, but I have no evidence. (I don't mean that most non-NRx people want never to talk about NRx; only that for most the optimal amount of NRx discussion is rather small.)
What about when you see a thread that you would want to read, but in which a few people obsessed with things you find uninteresting have posted hundreds of comments you don't want to read?
Of course it doesn't need to be neoreactionaries doing this. It could be social-justice types seizing every possible opportunity to point out heteronormative kyriarchal phallogocentric subtexts. It could be people terrified about AI risk turning every discussion of computers doing interesting things into debates about whether We Are All Doomed -- or people skeptical about AI risk complaining incessantly about how LW promotes paranoia about AI risk. It could be Christians proposing Jesus as the answer to every question, or atheists leaping on every case of suffering or successful scientific explanation to remind us that it's evidence against God. Etc., etc., etc.
It might be. Or it might be so only in the sense that for an alcoholic, having a glass of whisky is a significant opportunity to practice the discipline of self-control. (That is: in principle it might be but in practice the outcome might be almost certain to be bad.)
What do you mean by that? Do you mean that they're not interested in becoming lesswrong about the issue or that they only want to become lesswrong to the extent it doesn't involve being similar to those weird NRx's?
Obviously I mean neither (btw: hi, Eugine!). I mean what I say: for whatever reason they are not very interested in talking about NRx here. Possible reasons other than your maximally-uncharitable ones:
Interesting theories, let's see how they square with the evidence.
On the other hand they are interested in questions where where race, gender, and political structures are relevant to the answers.
If that was the case, one would expect them to be able to produce counter arguments to say the "NRx" (although it's not unique to NRx) positions on race and gender. Instead the best they can do is link to SSC (which agrees that the NRx's have a point in that respect), or say things that amount to saying how they don't want to think about it.
To the extent that's true its not the "NRx" people generating the heat.
These are just rephrasing of my hypothesis that they only want to become lesswrong to the extent it doesn't involve being similar to those weird NRx's. Good to hear you're willing to agree with it.
So, being "less wrong" is measured by "how much time one spends debating neoreaction"? If you refuse to keep endlessly debating neoreaction, you are closed-minded. Don't worry about evidence; the signalling is cool!
I was running monthly politics threads. I don't recall that conversations involved NR specifically, but I do recall that the discussions taking place were so specific they had no general/popular appeal, and conversations were short, muted, and didn't go anywhere.
I was left reading the discussions taking place with the impression that people were looking for things to try to argue about, rather than having anything particularly meaningful they wanted to argue about which they previously couldn't. Given that one of my purposes was to try to arrange a safety valve for a perceived growing political pressure (which eventually exploded in the feminism war that got Eugine Nier banned and which caused most of the more prominent feminist-leaning members to leave), they were failing for my intended purpose, so I stopped creating them.
The debates didn't generally have an issue staying civilized, though, as I recall.
Is this actually true? I don't think LW is having this kind of problems.
Same with "difficult to contain" -- I do not observe these difficulties.
Hint: "civilized" is a euphemism for "not reaching conclusions that make Villiam feel uncomfortable".
No, it's an umbrella term for things including "not mass-downvoting people because they disagreed with you once", etc.
Hello back, Eugine.
Saying "I don't want to hear that" when specifically asked if you want to hear it is very different from "shut up, I don't want to hear what you want to talk about".
Yes. I was referring to the latter, which I've seen a lot of.
So much so, that people tip toe around and ask for permission to speak.
FTFY.
That implies most everyone on LW is impolite most of the time.
Well, yes, but
"just show me the answers"
What benefit would you propose it would bring?
It's one of the most important and surprising events of our time and much of the discussion is anti-rational, i.e. bad people support Trump so Trump is bad; many are claiming that electing Trump would be catastrophic and discussing potential catastrophes is supposed to be one of the purposes of LW.
I think a question of how Trump interacts with x-risk is a potentially interesting conversation topic. I think an analysis of class that uses Trump as an example is a potentially interesting conversation topic.
But I worry that even here a direct discussion of Trump will be anti-rational / along cultural lines instead of about rational expectations, and I'm not sure what actions we would take differently as a result of having that conversation.
I think Trump's rise is interesting for a number of issues that people here have particular interest in.
How he wins. How his attackers lose. The power of his signature issues in trade and immigration. The potential for a political realignment with the Republican Party, and how that realigns US politics as a whole.
The media has been outraged, they have attacked, and they have failed to bring him down. His poll numbers just go up and up and up. That's interesting, and merits discussion.
*cough*bullshit*cough*
Then name three more important events that have transpired mostly in the last 6 months?
You said (emphasis mine): "one of the most important and surprising events of our time"
I tend to interpret "our time" as a period that is a bit longer than the last six months.
But even if you want to look at recent news, here are three things which I consider to be much more consequential than Donald Trump: (1) the European refugee crisis; (2) the Chinese economic troubles; (3) the Russian direct military intervention in Syria.
May I politely suggest paying less attention to the idiot box?
I'm not sure that argument goes through--if the European refugee crisis is important, then aren't Merkel, Obama, and Clinton important? And if they're important once they're in office, isn't the process by which they enter office important?
That argument involving the idiot box actually looks like this: Mass media optimizes for outrage. Estimating the importance of the topic by the amount of air time it gets is a mistake.
No. Not in the sense that Merkel, etc. are unimportant, but in the sense that a systemic crisis is not reducible to the importance of whoever happens to be in the office at the moment.
If James_Miller wanted to discuss the crisis of the "establishment" center of the mainstream US parties and the rebellions within them, it might have been an interesting topic. But James_Miller want to discuss Donald Trump, personally.
Of course, that's what Donald Trump wants as well X-)
The reason I picked those particular people is because of Clinton's role in the removal of Qaddafi, Obama's role in the continued destabilization of Syria, and Merkel's public pledge to take in refugees (which exacerbated the degree to which it is a European crisis, instead of a Syrian or Africa crisis). "Whoever happens to be in the office at the moment" is a factor in many of these crises.
I have a feeling we're slowly slipping towards the conflict between the "impersonal forces" and "great people" views of history :-)
But I guess the question here is whether you want to discuss people or whether you want to discuss systems. Of course they are related and interdependent, but still. Going back to the source of this subthread, I find thinking about tensions between "rebels" and "nomenklatura" in US political parties to be moderately interesting (especially in the context of how they deal with the need to overpromise during the campaign). I find Donald Trump to be very uninteresting. YMMV, of course.
Even if she did greatly exacerbate it by doing something really stupid?
Yes, even, because there are reasons she did that and those reasons don't have much to do with her personally. It wasn't like she buckled the entire German consensus.
How about the various welfare states around the world finally starting to run out of other people's money. The biggest manifestations of this so far have been the financial crisis in the EU, and the various pension crises in US local governments.
Heck, in my more conspiratorial moods I'm inclined to suspect that these migrant crises are an excuse to import a bunch of convenient scapegoats who can than be blamed for the collapse of popular entitlement programs.
That's not one of the events "that have transpired mostly in the last 6 months" :-)
But yes, I'm watching Japan with great interest :-D
The refugee crisis is very interesting. Not quite "Camp of the Saints", but it's a huge acceleration of frictions I expected to take much longer to play out, and not really hit the fan so soon.
Chinese economic troubles? Recessions are big things, but they happen. Economies go up, they go down.
Russian intervention in Syria. Russian satellite state getting military support. Shrug. Turkey seems much more interesting to me. I suppose the Russians intervention does make it possible for some serious confrontation with the US, but I don't see Putin or Obama having much interest in that.
There are some complicated wrinkles to this one, including the observation that the (current) legitimacy of the Communist Party rule to a great extent depends on it being able to provide visibly and rapidly rising standards of living. And, of course, the question whether China is done with its growth spurt or it's merely a hiccup has major geopolitical consequences a decade or two away.
The first time post-Soviet Russia puts boots on the ground outside of the former USSR. The overarching theme is the global assertiveness of Mr.Putin and Middle East is always an... interesting place. And there is Iran nearby :-/
I agree that Turkey is interesting, too, but nothing "big" happened there recently and were were talking about events.
Um, shooting down a Russian plane.
And... nothing happened.
I'm saying this in hindsight, but I disagree about this being surprising. Anti-immigration parties are on the rise all across Europe. The National Front in France are probably to the right of Trump, and Golden Dawn in Greece are genuine neo-nazis. More generally, non-mainstream parties are on the rise, probably powered by the ability to organise grassroots activism via the net. Even the Pirate Parties are winning seats.
Given this, is it really surprising that non-mainstream candidates would happen in the US too, both with Trump and Bernie Sanders?
I'm actually surprised that Sanders isn't the Democratic frontrunner, especially when his only opponent is being investigated for espionage.
Depending no who you listen to, so's the National Front, Putin, anti-Putin, Trump, mainstream Republicans, insufficiently left-wing Democrats, etc.
Ok, so what's your reason for believing Golden Dawn are actually neo-nazi? (Edit: and what do you mean by "actual neo-nazi" anyway?)
Just look at their flag:
https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Meandros_flag.svg/150px-Meandros_flag.svg.png&imgrefurl=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_(political_party)&h=100&w=150&tbnid=CDly4gAodIMPcM:&tbnh=80&tbnw=120&docid=g-53Bx9BWHOy2M&usg=__gcjSL8sDC3eM9-5mVj4vERTCyW8=&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-oezK-bfLAhVpQpoKHY3fANQQ9QEIITAA)
It looks just like a swastika. Sure, Putin and Trump and anyone who is nationalistic can be compared to Nazis, but this cheapens the term 'Nazi' or 'fascist'.
By "actual neo-nazi" I mean a group which has significant use of Nazi imagery and when significant members explicitly endorse Nazism.
Seriously? You're only argument is that their flag looks like a Swastika if you squint just right?
The flag looks almost exactly like a swastica. Also, see hairyfigment's comment and read the wikipedia page. There is plenty more evidence.
They wouldn't have chosen that flag unless they were neo-nazis. If they really wanted that symbol, it could have been against a different color background.
You think so?
Glad you asked, Eugine:
Of course, society normally finds it easy to recognize and ostracize such blatantly dishonest Nazism. It doesn't create any actual confusion - unless people have gone out of their way to weaken society's immune system, eg by deliberately signalling Nazism when the reality is more obscure.
What do you mean by "normally" and can you find any examples of society that actually operated like you describe? Keep in mind the word "Nazi" was already being applied to anything and everything the speaker disliked as early as 1942.
I think it weakens the immune system more when anyone who isn't in favour of completely unrestricted immigration gets called a Nazi. And there's a failure mode where constantly calling people Nazis (or sexists/racists) makes them more favourable towards Nazis (the theory is that on a subconcious level they think 'if I'm a Nazi, maybe Nazism isn't so bad).
Or the more straightforward, if anyone proposing sensible immigration policy gets called a Nazi, eventually people conclude that "Nazi" means someone in favor of sensible immigration policy.
I agree, and I am trying to use words in a precise manner. Trump is not a Nazi. The Golden Dawn are.
LOL. Seriously, do you have any more evidence beyond "their symbol sotra looks like a swastika". How about you try looking for the factions in Greece using Nazi-style tactics, like say arresting their opponents on vague trumped up charges. Hint: it's not Golden Dawn.
The ideological gate keepers are losing control. The Cologne cover up looks like a pretty significant event for discrediting the Top Men.
On Sanders, all the Democratic Powers that Be lined up behind Clinton, and even Sanders got in lock step to maintain that Clinton's email catastrophe is much ado about nothing. The Democratic Party has spent a couple of decades dealing with Clinton scandals. It's all just a cast right wing conspiracy, don't you know?
Probably the biggest hit Hillary has taken is from younger women, turned off by HIllary "standing by her man" and attacking his sexual abuse accusers, Gloria Steinem belittling Bernie gals as boy crazy for Bernie Bros, and Albright playing the Vote Vagina or Go to Hell card.
scores are still at the same place with 54 votes ROT13 (gjragl avar lrf, gjragl svir ab). Mostly tied. As I said before:
I vastly prefer voting "no" on a poll like this, vs. the idea of downvoting a post I think doesn't belong here but is fine otherwise.