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ABC News: Former alt-right member on how hate groups get people to join: 'It was presented as wholesome'
- Thread starter cameron
- Start date
It's not really that hard to understand. She doesn't want the world searching her on social media and bombarding her with messages. Can't do that with just a face and a first name.
It's a very liberal forum, there is a concerted effort to downplay or dismiss the internal vacuums that exist in people that make fascism appealing to them, because they are fundamentally indicting of capitalism and the enlightened technocratic status quo.
Yeah, like they view all nazis and racists as people who walk around cackling about how evil they are. They don't seem themselves as wrong, they think they're in the right. That's the problem, they believe their beliefs are correct.
Yeah, but what about people inside of her city & in her neighborhood? They may recognize her.
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Right I'm not rejecting anyone. Just not handing out cookies.
We need more people to spread the word on how the alt right operates. Get them mainstreamed so everyone can see through their con.
Neighbourhood maybe, but they already know her anyway. Still a huge difference between your neighbourhood and the entire world.
I get the impression that she's not trying to hide who she is or what she did, she just doesn't want an inbox full of hate mail from people across the globe.
no, we should just write them all off as idiots and ignore when they murder minorities, lgbqt+, and anyone else who doesnt agree with them.
It's really not that hard to get people to join in on evil. You just have to present the other end as being assholes, which on the internet is also not that hard.
It's the same way you get people into any group including terrorist groups
Groups like ISIS do the same thing and target the same kind of people
There's no benefit to just writing them off as just idiots it's good to understand how people fall into such groups
Groups like ISIS do the same thing and target the same kind of people
There's no benefit to just writing them off as just idiots it's good to understand how people fall into such groups
These stories and threads are always a fun time with the over emphasis on those that are harsh on the subjects not understanding this. Stories like this aren't surprising because I have been able to see white people get radicalized offline and online my whole life as an outsider to them but viewed as a non threatening one.
When you're one of the targets of it you start to pay attention to it early. As they often highlight, black families in America talk about race with their kids. Part of my talk included how to identify clues like this.
The way she was recruited isn't really an eye opening thing unless these conversations are new to you. Even then I don't get how this is supposed to be surprising when it's not different from how people get recruited by gangs, terrorist organizations, cults etc. They gave your life purpose and meaning making you think that you were seeing the world for what it really is and were special. See also perpetrators of domestic violence who build someone up and then isolate them more and more so that they become dependent on them.
We need to make sociology mandatory for basic education because this is getting kind of sad. I'm happy that more people are aware now though.
When you're one of the targets of it you start to pay attention to it early. As they often highlight, black families in America talk about race with their kids. Part of my talk included how to identify clues like this.
The way she was recruited isn't really an eye opening thing unless these conversations are new to you. Even then I don't get how this is supposed to be surprising when it's not different from how people get recruited by gangs, terrorist organizations, cults etc. They gave your life purpose and meaning making you think that you were seeing the world for what it really is and were special. See also perpetrators of domestic violence who build someone up and then isolate them more and more so that they become dependent on them.
We need to make sociology mandatory for basic education because this is getting kind of sad. I'm happy that more people are aware now though.
I'm a black man, so when I read stuff like this.... better to keep it to myself.
My guess would be that its not that they dont get it, its that they think she's trying to wash away the guilt by playing the 'I was clueless' card.
I bet it takes its time easing into more obvious hate speech to really get the guard down.
Because it's been considered wholesome for like ever throughout history.
The interviewer constantly has to force her to admit her own shit.
"Uhhh... I dunnoooo maybe I did..."
"Either you did or you didn't."
"Oh... yeah probably I did..."
She's not even actually willing to admit her own complicity. She hears the term "day of the rope" used as a threat against her, seemingly knowing what it is, and goes back to her boyfriend?
Fuuuuuck off.
"Uhhh... I dunnoooo maybe I did..."
"Either you did or you didn't."
"Oh... yeah probably I did..."
She's not even actually willing to admit her own complicity. She hears the term "day of the rope" used as a threat against her, seemingly knowing what it is, and goes back to her boyfriend?
Fuuuuuck off.
2nd chances are a lot easier to go round than sympathy. and it seems like a lot of people are eager to roll out the sympathy wagons for these white people who have "seen the error of their ways" and want to come back across the racist divide. and of course the only way to get through to them is unconditional love and acceptance and complete kindness.
and at the end of all that, what do you get? An ally? Someone who doesn't want to see you dead and buried anymore? And all their friends.
Nobody cares about bringing these people back into the fold. However, it is useful to understand how recruiting into alt-right circles actually works.
I used to be an advocate of the idea that it was just a lack of education and critical thinking ability. But, I happen to know people who are extremely intelligent and extremely well-educated (and, in some cases, not white) who have fallen into alt right circles in a big way and I'm not exactly sure what to make of it.
they think their intelligence has granted them "good ones" status, or they even had someone tell them as much. I know intelligent people who have fallen into the same circles and I'm not at all confused about what's going on.
Some people sure care a lot about redeeming these folks. I agree that it helps to know how people get radicalized and the thinking process that goes with the "slippery slope",
but I don't trust this lady or her experiences, so it's hard to say how helpful her "reluctant racist" life stories are.
I heard about it from this ebook reading (which I heartily recommend for getting a quick history on modern fascism):
And yeah, I don't buy her naivety. The "day of the rope" is a power fantasy of violent "justice" for victims including "race-traitors". And that's her first exposure to this ideology! I can't pretend to understand the psychology of being indoctrinated by a loved one but I think that "I just thought I was pro-white" is an extremely generous narrative she's constructed for herself.
It's not a narrative that she's constructed for herself, it's the narrative that they all use.
This isn't shocking to me because it's how people get drawn into a lot of different things, not just radicalized groups. A lot of these steps are used by manipulators in all walks of life. Find someone that's unhappy or insecure about an aspect of their life. Present a welcoming and understanding front. Use the trust gained from that to slowly seed doubt in the areas you want doubted. Reinforce that the person being manipulated is not at all at fault but it's the fault of other (people/systems/organizations/etc..), and by that point the manipulator has cultivated fertile ground to convince the person being manipulated of nearly anything. It happens in relationships to make people cheat. In relationships to make people stay. In friendships to sabotage others. In professional environments to cement control/information flow/etc... Hell, a lot of these steps are also used to help break people from objectively bad things like drug addiction.
Psychology is powerful and can be used for good or ill and most people completely underestimate how effective it is.
And the internet and media are such powerful tools for that. Nationalism (along with isolationism) is also dangerous. Humanity ends up corrupting everything.
Reminder: These people swept up into white racial identity politics are bombarded with messages that white people are essentially second class citizens.
The alt right is clever how they package and deliver this.
Many people believe they are victims under assault. Of course this forgoes historical context and doesn't hold up to scrutiny. But the alt right prepares for that, too.
The alt right is clever how they package and deliver this.
Many people believe they are victims under assault. Of course this forgoes historical context and doesn't hold up to scrutiny. But the alt right prepares for that, too.
I think a lot of people don't understand the article. These groups don't have pamphlets stating that genocide is the answer. It start off with, "men's rights need advocating," or, "black people are the real racists for wanting safe spaces from white people."
I'll admit I started getting sucked into the rabbit hole reading Tia/Kia. It wasn't until I took a step back and realized, "wait no these guys aren't just calling out hypocrisy, they're hateful people."
People think these groups recruit by swinging a hammer, but they recruit with a wedge.
I'll admit I started getting sucked into the rabbit hole reading Tia/Kia. It wasn't until I took a step back and realized, "wait no these guys aren't just calling out hypocrisy, they're hateful people."
People think these groups recruit by swinging a hammer, but they recruit with a wedge.
Well see it was all fun and games till a white girl got killed.
They jump through a lot of mental hoops, like "it's not racism, it's statistics/facts" or "I hate every race equally".
The worst thing about internet manipulation is that all liability can be thrown out the window when it comes from a faceless group. They can basically plant the seed and walk away, throwing away any involvement in the process.
There is plenty of people on this board that get that. We've been saying it for years, just others either don't give a shit or are naive. When people are talking about de-platforming these people this article is exactly why. You can't reason with these people, it took a white woman dying for this person to even step back and think about what she was doing. And that was AFTER researching this shit. By watching videos on YouTube...
I get that, but a lot of people on the first page seem blown away that people get suckered into this shit.
maajid Nawaz is still an extremist. He is an islamophobe and promotes extremism from the right by excusing their behavior when it comes to islamophobia
I'm a little late on this, but this is how gang recruitment works too.
Two documentaries about cults on Netflix go deep into cults and how crazy they can be:
Wild Wild Country: Indian guru gets a sex cult and takes over a town in the midwest. They try to poison a town via Sizzler and kill a fed prosecutor. The line between insanity and scam is hard to tell.
Abducted in Plain Sight: girl gets kidnapped 3 times...between the first and second kidnapping, both mom and dad have sex with the kidnapper. Aliens are invoked.
So how stupid can people be to in-your-face wrongness? Plenty stupid it turns out.
Wild Wild Country: Indian guru gets a sex cult and takes over a town in the midwest. They try to poison a town via Sizzler and kill a fed prosecutor. The line between insanity and scam is hard to tell.
Abducted in Plain Sight: girl gets kidnapped 3 times...between the first and second kidnapping, both mom and dad have sex with the kidnapper. Aliens are invoked.
So how stupid can people be to in-your-face wrongness? Plenty stupid it turns out.
What's got me scratching my head is how she goes from un-racist to "sure yeah, let's understand this white supremacy stuff" instead of pushing back and criticizing it.
Like wtf.
Only on the platforms which they're already using, and with the intent of not putting a light on it but completely debunking it.
It's funny, because Antifa is only a threat to fascists. So if they're afraid of them, it's admitting who they are.
I'm down for her redemption when she's paid retribution. How about six months in prison, then 2 years community service working as an anti-right-wing counsellor educating small towns on how to avoid being indoctrinated?
A couple of years ago at Christmas, my brother showed the family a "comedy" video from Gavin McInnis of TheRebel, where he was dressed-up in the "True Canadian" Bob and Doug Mackenzie style, complete with the accent, delivering a low effort Canadiana-themed monologue peppered with subtle racist stereotypes and white nationalist dog whistles. My dad and sister were laughing at it, but I knew exactly what he was up to. The first step is all about easing people into normalization. After the video was over I had to tell them all about the Proud Boys, because they had no clue who this guy was, other than he was "funny".
It absolutely isn't. Had Clinton been elected over Obama in 2008 we would be in the exact same place. These are the exact same people that were screaming in the streets opposing desegregation in the 1960s. It's the craziest fiction ever that these people just "went away" after the civil rights act of 1965 passed. They are very much still there, they were simply afraid of the repercussions of publicly being outed as "racists" after everyone agreed racism was bad in the mid 1960s.
What we are seeing now is a resurgence, not because of Obama (though that's a small part of it) but because:
1.) the news was full of headlines like "Hispanics to be the majority by 20XX" and "Illegals flooding over the border" that Fox News etc were pushing to drive turnout through fear. White people- especially white nationalists are SCARED TO DEATH of being in the minority, because of how they've treated minorities.
2.) Smartphones came around just in time to begin regularly catching police doing what they had been doing forever- simply killing black americans when convenient because they did not consider their lives to have value. This sparked the "Black Lives Matter" movement which Those People capitalized on to begin spreading the message that the Police (and law and order in general) were under attack by blacks, and Fox News etc were complicit in pushing THAT message too.
3.) Trump capitalizing on this was a symptom, not the cause- though his candidacy and rhetoric normalized this behavior and removed the repercussions of being openly racist because "trump does it." Since the President is racist, and is supported by racist media networks, White nationalists are now openly parading around again because no one is going to call them out on it.