the alt-right

i'm sorry the guy killed himself. i'm disinclined to look at anybody who killed themselves and say "fuck you, you deserve it".

i also dislike suicide being used as a political cudgel to try and shame people you disagree with. i've known a number of people who've killed themselves, and in some cases there are political reasons contributing to that suicide. not anything as dramatic as them participating in a fascist rally. just the way of the world - somebody mentally ill being looked at as less than, as not worth helping. somebody who wasn't cared about, wasn't cared for, and should have been. seeing those suicides, seeing people whose deaths could have, should have been avoidable (well, _delayable_, nobody's death is _avoidable_), that's shaped my political beliefs. but their deaths are always going to be personal to me. lucy's article strikes me as strangely impersonal, strangely callous. did she know dodson? or is she just invoking his death in an attempt at emotionally blackmailing people into banning a twitter account?

btw the author of that medium piece is a real piece of work from what i can tell and is definitely in the tank for some constellation of alt-right/MRA/antifeminism, mainly under the banner of being just oh so worried about the suppression of free speech. her schtick/credibility bid is to say that she had some brief period of being seduced by feminists and BLM before realizing it was all a sham and coming to her senses thanks to obsessively watching youtube videos of trump, milo, and the english defense league. presumably this is also where bases her pretense that she and the alt-right figures she trucks with "banter sometimes about (her) liberal-leaning views." but just to be clear, she has another article on there all about highlighting murders committed by migrants from the middle east. so the posture of being a liberal interested in a calmer, moderated conversation is disingenuous; the goal of the article is just what it looks like, to treat fascists and antifascists as both-sidesy whatabouts. if the use of the phrase "alt-left" wasn't a giveaway of that by itself, note the weird focus on the idea that the mayor and the cops in charlottesville were insufficiently protecting the Unite The Right demonstrators. in reality there is considerable reason to believe that they were inadequately protecting charlottesville residents and the counter-protestors from the heavily-armed white supremacists who had shown up to threaten everybody. at the very least, considering who attempted to murder whom during those events, and who was actually killed and hospitalized, her aim here can only be a deliberate muddling of the issue and rewriting of the narrative. her article is not "brutal," it's garbage. don't give her clicks.

I have friends in Charlottesville ( I lived there for several years) so this medium article has been appearing on their feeds. That terrible weekend is still an intruding presence in their lives every single day. They are still appearing on dox lists and having people like K3ssler show up at their work.

I dunno, with the numbing amount of death that occurs, it's human not to shed tears over this guy overdosing.

Gah and i should say that medium blog post not article. I don't want to automatically assign important to medium.

The writer's Twitter (@lucyfrown) is enlightening.

Protesting is incredibly psychologically and emotionally draining. It is made so by those that police it a matter of course to dissuade it. This is routinely done to inhibit the act. You are presenting yrself to assert a view. Don't do it lightly.

to treat fascists and antifascists as both-sidesy whatabouts

the reflex reaction against this which uses some notional morality as a way of feeling good/performatively not-bad about someone dying is dangerous & dehumanising

Yeah Lucy Brown was one of the organisers of the 'day for freedom' far-right rally in London the other week, it's pretty clear where she really stands.

https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2018/05/08/day-freedom-new-threat-emerges/

Lol, 1-1

I fully support alt-right nazis right to say whatever shit they want. I also fully support them having to deal with the legal and broader social consequences of expressing those views.

i think there is a meaningful enough difference between white supremacists advocating violence and people showing up to oppose them that my suspicion of "both sides" tropes in an article by a white supremacist is not just a "reflex reaction" or a way to make myself feel good. sorry. "feeling performatively not-bad"? i didn't get out of bed planning to have feelings on the death of this guy i'd never heard of one way or the other, but i'm sure not going to be shamed, by someone who organizes right-wing rallies herself, into giving a shit about a guy who marched with a torch at charlottesville. i wonder if he felt performatively not-bad about the death of heather heyer, or the nineteen other people injured in the car attack which he imho helped precipitate.

I can assure anyone who’s wondering that when I feel not-bad about dead people it is in no way performative.

Five people died while I was writing that! I probably DGAF about any of them!

And any amount of performativity by people who can’t get with this lady’s manipulative shtick is an order of magnitude less ridiculous and scenery-chewing than the act she’s putting on

apology accepted DC. the sun is shining so I will try to be patient in the face of yr indignantly bad reading comprehension. I share the suspicion of 'both sides' tropes, I just don't think it justifies a move to "it's less bad when these people die/suffer" which is such a common sentiment on the righteous left. if you don't care about someone's death, stay quiet.

i don't think lucy brown, given what's been posted about her on the thread, is trying to "shame people into caring". i think her writing shows classic troll-style disingenuousness and is more oriented towards goading people into reacting. i'm not saying "don't feed the trolls", that's not a good tactic to adopt, but i don't think it's beneficial to argue with them on _their terms_. by arguing about whether the guy who killed himself is a "good person" or not you've committed yourself to an argument that one, you can't possibly win, and two, is going to make _you_ look like the asshole.

I posted it because this was just one piece of a lot of news that has been happening recently (with all of the sentencings from the rally) and that they are actively trying to make this guy a martyr.

Horst Incel

yes. and specifically, to make this guy a martyr as a way of canceling out that other news, to "what about the terrible crimes of the alt-left, such as, i heard a nazi killed himself?"

it's not a matter of it being "it's less bad when these people die/suffer," as that this guy's death is not relevant, important, newsworthy or interesting, except to his family and friends i assume, and to cynical fascists wielding it to try and either establish a both-sides narrative or just troll the internet. not every person who dies gets a moment of silence on ilx or anywhere else - why should he, exactly? except to balance some imagined scales between him and people that his nazi buddies assaulted in order to "perform" a belief that all life is sacred? that's the both-sides-ism at work.

obviously i am much more sympathetic to those responding in terms of the epidemic of unaddressed mental health struggles and suicide generally. in that sense every death is an avoidable tragedy and i am not interested in making light of suicide. i just ask that you forgive me not being able to extend my emotional energies as far as "performatively" weeping for torch-carrying nazis/sympathizers. i have personal reasons for this with charlottesville particularly but again vis-a-vis this thread, the nazi sympathizer troll author of this blog post is specifically trying to exploit our ethical commitment to people suffering as a way to martyr this guy. the argument would need a total bottom-up rewrite to become something i'd be obliged to take seriously as a moral dilemma that prompts me to challenge my conflicting values etc etc.

~300 more deaths in the US since my last post in the thread btw

Dr. C otm, the narrative being created around the death does not just deserve pushback, it requires it.

I really didn't want to turn this into a suicide/overdose or performative grieving thread, I think people should feel however they feel about death. Sorry!
I think there is still another rally planned in Cville for this August despite the city's attempts to prevent it.

Yerac I am from C-ville and was just there, they've changed a lot of the rules about public gatherings (unsurprisingly) so I hope that helps.

Oh really? I was there from the mid 90s to 2000s (at pl4n 9, UT$, 'TJyou). I've been keeping up to date on everything from the people associated with <<< those who were directly affected. There is still a lot of ptsd.

whoa

have not lived there since the mid-80's but I may have bought records from you at that store on a visit home

yeah a friend's kid got hit by the car (is OK but...), people are still freaked out

DC you've construed a distaste for ppl publicly making a point of their lack of empathy for a recent suicide as a demand that ppl do the opposite

which "ppl" are you talking about? i think i have construed right-wing activist and mythmaker lucy brown pretty accurately.

anyone

DC I was getting confused about what you were trying to express too (and I went back through the thread), so I left it alone.

now I feel bad that I even read that stupid Medium article, various things about it (referring to nuclear energy as "clean and renewable", stuff about Mayor/cops not adequately protecting the nazis, the handwringing about antifa weapons but not y'know nazis carrying assault rifles) raised my suspicions but know I feel stupid I gave her a click.

I don't think medium really generates much money, if at all, for writers. So, there's that.

Horst Incel

omg

if she commits suicide because we hound her off of medium.com should we feel guilty

No. Also, keep us updated.

medium pays on claps

Thanks, for some reason I thought it was based on clicks by members.

deleted a post above at user request (sorryI didn't see it for two days). worth noting that the author has indeed been hounding off medium.com

That's curious - my @Medium account has been shut down. pic.twitter.com/zFuQZWUOEq

— Lucy Brown (@lucyfrown) May 24, 2018

hounded

Lol that was fast

Laurie was right, language is a virus

YEAH! (on medium kickout)

nice.

Also want to remind that this thread is deindexed.

here in portland the question of the moment is whether the guy who ran over three women at portland state yesterday is alt-right or not. in the meantime some anonymous people are making vague threats demanding that jordan peterson's upcoming appearance here be cancelled. this is hugely annoying because now of course the argument is going to be whether anonymous threats are ok instead of whether or not jordan peterson's upcoming appearance should be cancelled.

Was at a 3 year old's birthday party this weekend and one of the dads was wearing a KEK t shirt and it bummed me out the whole time.

oh god :(

discovered one of the students from my lgbt group who graduated a couple years back has gone alt right, she is dating a cop who has a kn1ghts t3mpl4r pic as his cover page

It’s a phase

im hoping so.

The Proud Boys/Patrot Prayer shitheads were in Portland this weekend, too

one of the dads was wearing a KEK t shirt

fuckin hell. did anyone else know what it was and/or make mention of it?

No, and I was too pissed off and embarrassed to ask anyone else if they knew.