the alt-right

The impasse that keeps coming up is that the right wing in america in 2019 is so hateful, so radical, so irresponsible and so dishonest, that at any point critiquing the shortcomings of the left feels bizarre, like complaining about a broken window when the house is on fire. I get this position. But i also think it’s important to keep ourselves to a higher standard of conduct. So my critique of the excesses of call out culture and other things come from that standpoint.

There's nothing nuanced about a MAGA-cap, and attempting to get a nuanced reading of MAGA-cap-wearing people is nonsensical. It's completely breathtaking to read the statement from the kid, who not once mentions the fact that they were wearing caps swearing allegiance to a racist, sexist piece of shit. The gall to constantly wonder why on earth anyone would choose to attack us poor white Trump'ers, when we clearly have no hate in our hearts and our little heads wearing hateful hats.

I don't know about you, but a 16 or 17 year old wearing a MAGA cap doesn't elicit the same reaction from me as an adult doing the same. That's what I mean by 'nuance'.

16 year old in a MAGA cap makes me angrier because they're young enough to know better

Yeah, except this is Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, KY we're talking about. All-male to boot.

You should be old enough at 16-17 not to wear a MAGA cap. It's not hard. Gillette explained it recently.

lol

Look, it's really pretty simple: You show up at the March For Life wearing a MAGA hat, you've already revealed yourself as human garbage. You don't have to have any kind of interaction with a member of a minority group to further prove your human garbage status.

Why single out this kid who's not even old enough to vote, then, out of everyone who goes to pro-life rallies or wears MAGA hats?

think it all boils down to the dude's smug and exquisitely punchable face honestly

yeah but it is a kid and he's fucking blowing up all over the internet. idk.

NO QUARTER FOR THE CHILDREN OF OUR ENEMIES!

i would honestly rather be burned alive than be subject to the ire of a nation. i would never wear a MAGA hat so i am not at risk of *this* kind of anger, but people are getting called out all the time and sometimes there is gratuitousness to it and cruelty

I thought the guy being called out and getting death threats was the wrong guy and it was another guy.

the thing is, death threats should just in no case be happening

who are the death threat senders? it's usually not MAGA teens getting death threats, it's like feminist bloggers and things.

think it all boils down to the dude's smug and exquisitely punchable face honestly

I think this is part of what creeps me out: he's targeted for not being photogenic enough.

he's a meme, he captures a certain feeling too well

is that justifiable though?

the way the media singles out, pours attention onto & judges individuals generally is very bad, this case is not exceptional though imo

That hat represents a million jobs taken hostage in the name of white supremacy, thousands of brown kids separated from their families, "Pocahontas" being thrown around as a slur, the 'right' to commit any criminal action you see fit so long as you're rich and white - his face just perfectly captures everything reprehensible about the MAGA movement, "what are you going to do about it??" Like, I don't think the kid 'deserves' this, but then I think about Christine Ford and just go, "whatever, fuck him"

I don't think the kid 'deserves' this

U&K

lol the only thing that scans as to me is "Undertaker and Kane"

I assume it's because he's a kid that this has captured so much attention. The whole image is more conflicted and painful this way.

Same! :) xp

I can maybe give middle aged dudes in red hats some benefit of the doubt - they may really hope or think that trump will make their lives better, which of course means that they aren’t all that smart or are terribly desperate or deluded (especially in 2019).

Whereas I imagine a teenager with one is guaranteed to be a smug trolling asshole at best and a virulent racist at worst.

i agree jmm. it raises the specter of a new generation of right wing nationalists, which is more upsetting than seeing trump as the last gasp of a fading generation.

just sitting here imagining a group of black or hispanic male teens shucking their shirts, hopping around chanting, mugging for the camera outside of the Lincoln monument.

i'm sure the MSM would be bending over backwards to see some "nuance"

Tit-for-tat, always the best strategy, amirite.

i don't know what the media would do, but i wouldn't want a 16 year old individual from that hypothetical group singled out for special condemnation xp

ftr i'm not singling out the main twerp; the whole group is deplorable. particularly any adults from Convington who were there to "chaperone".

and yeah, the BHI dudes are total assholes. all what, 4 of them?

I don't even know what the argument is at this point. "The original narrative we were righteously outraged about was probably wrong but, eh, fuck him anyway"?

This is a long but interesting Twitter thread. (TL;DR: the school that produced these MAGA-hat fucks should be burned to the ground, as it's a breeding ground for racists and rapists.)

The MAGA kids’ school seems extremely and consistently horrible pic.twitter.com/fSsPpOigvn

— pizza roll heiress (@christapeterso) January 20, 2019

"The original narrative" was just the 2-minute clip. I don't think people were particularly interested in what "started it"

yeah there isn't really any nuance here? this kid sucks.

The original narrative was that a mob of white students were harassing and intimidating an elderly vet during the Indigenous People's March, which context doesn't really support. No one was calling for expulsions over a hat or attendance at the March for Life. xp

or over other bad things that happened at their school involving other people

Like, the update tells a different story from the original post here: https://splinternews.com/white-students-in-maga-hats-taunt-harass-native-americ-1831894825?fbclid=IwAR2r30uuXRw5tAboWNY2m2VNEkjB2MGbMfqdAf306aXxR9343KRVByBX9-A

the most highly voted commend on that article advocates letting kids beat each other up in school so that racist kids would get beat up

a classic publication of the left that splinter news

The original narrative was that a mob of white students were harassing and intimidating an elderly vet during the Indigenous People's March, which context doesn't really support. No one was calling for expulsions over a hat or attendance at the March for Life. xp

― Locked in silent monologue, in silent scream (Sund4r), Monday, January 21, 2019 9:47 AM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

are they not harassing and intimidating an indigenous vet?

I don't think it's at all clear that they are, no.

he doesn't look intimidated to me? he looks purposeful; why turn him into a victim?

Their attempts at intimidation failed - so that's fine then, nothing to see here.

Phillips approached them. They didn't approach him at the Indigenous Peoples' March The one kid is literally doing nothing - standing and awkwardly smiling after Phillips went up to him. The others are chanting along, which might or might not be mockery. I don't see an obvious reason to regard their explanations here as less credible than the narrative that they were harassing him.

It matters how the thing started. If Phillips walked up to the kid (which is how it looks from the video) then that's a different situation from the kid going out of his way to plant himself in someone's face. Not that I buy the idea that the kid was trying to defuse the situation either. It looks much more like he's unwilling to back down, and being goaded on.

kind of think busing a bunch of belligerent high school students to support your school religion's political stances is a less than effective idea to begin with

of the people I've met who have experienced that type of thing, half of it was going along with what their school encouraged or a way to fuck around on a trip, maybe even miss a day of class and clown around on a bus (and maybe a hotel, if it was an affluent school)

they probably were briefed on their right-to-life nonsense, if they even paid attention in that school assembly, and defaulted to being confused asshole teens

all evidence points to them being assholes, though

at this point, i have to say i don't think it matters if this kid was being a smug bigoted bully or not, because if he was: a) taking him down via social media or w/e feels like a waste of time, because it wouldn't destroy him or lead to an awakening, he'd be "just fine" b) it's a waste of energy that could and should be used for more positive things, i mean who cares about this kid and studying the tape like it's the zapruder film, c) there's an endless supply of low-level bigots out there and we can shame every single one to death but it would be useless, it will never work, and the reasons for a backlash against the left sometimes comes from the overuse of energy on issues like this.

it feels like clickbait news, just turning a single moment perhaps out of context into a massive national issue, because people want to see others immediately as a villain or a hero. which is not to say that Phillips didn't feel a certain way at that moment, i mean i don't doubt that the crowd he waded into had let's generously say a "weird energy" at the moment, or this kid has *opinions* which are not cool.

I mean every other day there's a new "moment" and energy is evaporated away on these moments and then the next one comes along and everyone is miserable again. my FB feed is filled up with this kind of thing multiple times per week and it's just misery as fuel for action and i think it does not particularly help as much as people think it should.

Their attempts at intimidation failed - so that's fine then, nothing to see here.

i already regret posting anything but since u mentioned it and i don't think what you're saying is totally unreasonable (that how the person reacted is unrelated to the intention): in the absence of compelling evidence about the intention looking to see its result is worthwhile esp when evaluating harm claims.

xp the best case afaict is that this stuff is trivial and a waste of time and not just actively destructive to everyone involved. i think sometimes ppl do get the most heated over the most trivial things bc it's a fake symbolic space to project other more complicated or upsetting emotions. raging on ilx or twitter is basically a zero-cost rant. if it is encouraging social fractures, or hurting the ppl doing the venting, or whatever bad psychological backlash one can imagine, that might just be an unfortunate secondary effect.