Alt-Left

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Bowser, Dec 27, 2016.

  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Because he clarifies for you the usage and meaning of the term "alt left". You seemed to think it was reserved for all out communists or something - at least actual lefties of some kind. You seemed to think it had a meaning, and made sense, and referred to a definable group of people.
    Yeah, they kind of are. They're certainly coordinated - the catch phrases, the fad terms, the talking points, the falsehoods and deceptions, all turn up in the whole pile around the same time. You have noticed that, I hope?

    The feedback and feed forward between Fox and Breitbart and the Republican Party media team is especially obvious, during a campaign. These people are not at all independent of each other.

    One example: you are familiar with the book deal wingnut welfare system, right? Where some guy who has done a dirty job well for the Republican Party suddenly finds their literary skills in such high demand that a book publisher will pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars in advance money for the right to publish their very first book as soon as they write it? Entire branches of major publishing houses have been set aside for these deals. Well, Mary Matalin, formerly head of the Republican Party's media operations, founded one such branch, and that branch just handed over 250,000 dollars of advance money for a book yet to be written or even outlined by one Milo Yiannopoulos - an "alt right" guy, also an editor at Breitbart News, welcome and supported by Fox, and major speaker at the Republican Convention http://www.salon.com/2016/07/20/inside_milos_gays_for_trump_virulently_anti_islam_party_at_the_rnc/
    And who else is on that particular line of the wingnut welfare gravy train? https://newrepublic.com/minutes/139...ight-troll-milo-yiannopoulos-250000-book-deal
    The former head of the RNC's media operations - the whole campaign thing - has financed James O'Keefe - handed him money. That's one step - troll to top.
    All I claimed was connection. All you denied was connection. You claimed there were all these levels, and the trolls were far from the mainstream. What I asked you for is a couple of names of people who are on those "higher Republican levels" you claim exist and I say don't exist. I have already named a whole shmear of quite high level US public figures that operate on what you were calling the "lower levels", including denizens of Congress and the White House and mainstream major media pundits. I have pointed out that the distance between the troll level (your term) and the very top of the US mainstream Republican media is one step - I provided proof, via two or three links of different connections.
     
    Last edited: Dec 30, 2016
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  3. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    No he does not. I read the term alt-left years ago, at least 2014, was Hannity speaking of the alt-left then to his crowed of elderly senile viewers?

    It is as coordinated as a tail waging the dog. What today's media does it is finds trends, trends which move liked wildfire through specific demographics, the medias amplifies those trends to get attention, to sell ads, once the people get board media must finds another. The trends are generated externally, not that the media has not tried desperately and openly to make its own trends. The rightwing obsession with pizzagate for example was not coordinated, it was a random creation of bullshit, that started trending and the rightwing media HAD TO amplify it or else someone else, a competitor in the right wing media would, and they would lose business to them. The rightwing media does not care what they say, they say what they say only because their audience eats that shit up, they only care about making a buck.

    There are a whole lot more players than fox and breitbart, there is the Examiner, National Review, Business insider, etc, etc and then there are endless writers who cater to the rightwing, pumping out articles endlessly in the hopes of striking gold with something that trends or greatly amplifies as trend. These people ARE independent of each other in that they would fuck the other over to get on top with out a single care, what links them is an audience of ideologues that they must feed for money.

    I'm pretty sure Milo got the deal because he is a trending attention whore! He has had events all over the country, I even been to one, he has a huge following, anyone with any business sense can see that if they print milo's book they can make a killing and thus so many are jumping head over hands to make a deal with him. The fact all these people are jews/ in mean "conservatives" does not mean they are all coordinated by the elders of zion/ I mean "Republican Party".

    And who controls the biggest banks in the world, why the Jews, consequence?, I think not! The "wingnut gravy train" is not under anyone control anymore then jewish bankers are.

    No I deny they have power and control.

    No that is a straw man of your own interpretation.

    And you want me to name anonymous trolls that start trends? Lets use Milo as an example because I watched his rise over several years. Milo hated gamers, thought they were degenerates, as much of the media does, but then came gamergate, a trolls orgy, Milo saw their was money to be made and switch to the gamers side and began amplifying gamergate talking points, the gamers loved him and now he had a greatly expanded audience. Now did Milo secretly causes gamergate, no, did he drive their memes and trends, no, he merely amplified for profit.

    You have not proven control.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    ? It didn't mean anything in 2014, it still doesn't.

    The use of the term by the mainstream media has been demonstrated to you. Your example of other uses by non-mainstream media was also considered, and shown to be equivalently meaningless. No "alt left" exists, ever has, or probably ever will.
    You talk about "trends" as if they were the weather - as if they existed independently of the media involved.
    "They" are almost certainly going to lose money on the book (laundered political contributions come in here), as is normal in the wingnut welfare book publishing business. As far as Milo being a "trending attention whore" - you do realize how that "trending" stuff happens, right? Where and why the "attention" comes from?

    Meanwhile, if you think the intellectual wing of the nameless faction that has taken control of the Republican Party, the think tanks and social media operations and mainstream media punditry and "news" organizations and print publishers and all the rest, are mythical bogeys on a par with the Elders of Zion and their Protocols, you're a fool.

    And the fact that you are a fool who displays all the features of the wingnut media presence - such as the standard false equivalence accusation mirroring the actual bad thing done by the wingnuts (here: equating factual observation of obvious rightwing media coordination as made by foes, with lying anti-Semitic slander made by the nameless) - is becoming more and more significant in replying to you.
    I have proven direct, single step connection. One level. No "lower Republican levels" exist - the very top guys financing and running the RNC media operations are in continual and influential contact with the people you call "trolls". They are in many cases financing the trolls.

    And that's what will determine how the term "alt left" has been and will be used, in US public discourse. My prediction is that it will be employed mostly in support of the "bothsides" meme currently being worked heavily in the normalization of the Trump administration.
     
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  7. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think we disagree here, it was a comical tongue in cheek term then and I don't think it has changed from that.

    Alt left is just another name for communist, do communist not exist? I think we agree it is not a legitimate name, but this idea that the mainstream media has created the term "alt-left" is bullshit, it existed before and trended before and they picked it up, the media rides waves, rarely does it cause them.

    I might buy it, Milo is a very funny guy. Stuff trends because people like it or become fixated on it, Milo generated both love and hate, either way attention poured to him based on his personality alone and his trolling. This theory you're insinuating that the right wing media can make thousands if not millions of people give a dam about anything they spout is pure insanity, rather those people give a dam about things before hand and the rightwing media tried to direct them by flashing what they like in front of them, to only marginal degrees of success. For example had the rightwing media been coordinated Trump would not have won even the primary, and a standard republican candidate would have made it, but they HAD to cover Trump because that is what their audience wanted, and if they did not cover Trump their competitors in the right wing media would.

    Oh sure there are think tanks and social media operations and mainstream pundants, etc, etc, they just are not as powerful as you think, no coordinated, in some cases itching to devour each other. If you think they are coordinated in a grand scheme of conservative control (with the likes of Trump no less as their Manchurian candidate) then yes that is on par with the Elders of Zion, and thus you are the wingnut. I would rather be a fool than batshit crazy.

    You have proven no power, you have proven no "continual and influential contact" with the trolls. The likes of Milo do not control people, rather they ride trends.

    Is that what fox news is doing now?

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  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    It wasn't tongue in cheek then, it isn't comical now. It's propaganda - it's serious.
    "Alt left" is not now, and never has been, a name for communists. Hell, even "communist" is not a name for communists, in that crowd.
    That's no theory of mine. That's silly. Where did you get it?
    You seem confused about how coordination works in the media - for example, in the Trump coverage up to the nomination every single rightwing pundit paired Sanders with Trump in any analysis they did. They seldom even mentioned one without the other.
    1) That's not what a Manchurian candidate is. 2) If you don't think there is a grand scheme of "conservative" (sheesh) control, there's something badly wrong with your perceptions. It's not like it's hidden or anything. There's obviously an overall strategy and tactical coordination here - you think the Koch brothers just throw their money around at random?
    The likes of Milo are financed by the likes of Matalin, supported by the likes of Bannon, using money from the likes of Adelson and the Koch bros. So are the likes of James O'Keefe. That is continual and influential contact between the White House consigliore, the head of the RNC, the major financiers of the Republican Party, Breitbart, cable news, talk radio, and 4chan/8chan.
    Yep.

    Nice "bothsides" cartoon, btw - couldn't have illustrated my point better. The left side exists, is much of the self-described "alt right". The middle exists, mostly as liberals and lefties. The right side is the "alt left" - and it's fictional (as well as having nothing to do with the "left").
     
    Last edited: Dec 31, 2016
  9. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    18,523
    I think we are talking about different people here, I'm talking about image board trolls circa 2014 and you're talking about Fox News, Now?

    Well then do a better job explaining what these elders of conservatism are doing.

    Really? Well if they did it was probably because they were both getting so much attention from the public.

    Lets talk about money for a moment: Hillary Clinton got over a billion dollars, much from very rich donors... so how did that money work for them? The Koch Brothers have money to throw, that does not mean they actually get returns on their investment equal to the amount of money they dispense.

    First of all Milo is not 4chan/8chan, second: You have not proven power and control! You need to proof the Koch Brothers give orders to Milo! A connection is worth nothing, NOTHING! Putin and Trump like each other clearly, but without proof of financial ties or agreements between them we have nothing but conspiracy theories. From Milo to Koch Brothers, they are all right wing, yeah and? All those Banks that are Jews, so?

    So is that what the alt-left is now? I was just calling them the "regressive left", and they do exist, you are one of them. Now the thing about the both-sides argument is it is usually used as an ad hominem tu quoque or a "two problems make a who cares about the first problem" fallacy, none the less this "alt-left" does exist rather you are really nothing compared to the danger of the alt-right or more so the right in general, in short these are not equally proportional sides, people like you and PC identity politics social justice types simply do not compare to President Trump, unfortunately enough Americans disagreed and voted for Trump simply to give you and your ilk the bird.
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    They are gathering political power in the US, by talking over its Federal and State level government.
    1) That wasn't true (Sanders was hardly covered at all, himself - Trump was getting his speeches aired in full, for free) 2) that would only explain the fact of the coverage, not the slant.
    I don't care which of the people in that obviously organized and coordinated effort you think is in control. I doubt very much they have a single leader or one source of command. And I know for sure the moneybags behind the nameless faction would not give hundreds of thousands of dollars to anyone in the media who needed orders to know what to do.

    It's the other way around: prove you know what to do, then they give you the job, money, etc. Like Chuck Todd - he tried out, won the job. Or David Brooks. Or James O'Keefe. Or Dinesh D'Souza.
    Then why argue about it?
    Are you really that oblivious to the scene in front of you, or are you just pulling my chain?
    You have the argument backwards. The reasoning is not "member of nameless faction -> in on the operation we see", it's "part of the organized operation we see -> member of nameless faction". And plenty of allowance is made for dupes - some right here on this forum.
    Like I said - there is no definable group of people called the "alt left". They don't exist. Your silly little imaginary identity for me, or the righthand column of frames in that cartoon, or Hannity's reference to Brian Stelter, or somebody on 4chan talking about "communists" they know nothing about, is all the reality that term is ever going to have. It's a propaganda term, and its major role is going to be in"bothsides" goofy like yours and Hannity's.
     
    Last edited: Dec 31, 2016
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Besides the obvious fact that I'm not in the PC crowd at all, and I dislike identity politics very much (such as Republicans have been getting elected on since 1980, hardcore identity politics being the major strength of the Republican Party), you might pause a sec and ask yourself this:

    you know these working class just-happen-to-all-be-white folks you claim went out of their way to flip the bird to somebody they worked with every day and have always been treated with respect by, who knows their skills and admires their virtues and agrees with them on many contentious matters ?

    whom do you think they would react most strongly against:

    1) somebody who pointed out to them they were in fact racist, and they were in danger of voting for a fascist, and told them why - man to man;

    2) somebody who thought they were stupid and desperate, and sat in their living rooms treating them accordingly.

    Just a thought. I never did the first, btw - your silly presumptions of namecalling are symptomatic, not sound.
     
  12. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    So you live in denial, please lets talk about race in America some more, or your opinions on BLM. Look you can call yourself what ever you want, others will call you "regressive left" or Alt left now I guess from the fox news crowed. Also calling someone a racist ends any conversation right there - man to man, more so then "stupid" or "desperate".

    Anyways I'll read the rest and reply when and if I feel like it, fun fact the rights new fake news fixation is that California just legalized child prostitution, lets take a moment to look at how that idea spread across the right's hug box.
     
  13. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,884
    And you can set about formulating a thesis that explains how coddling them will help.

    Your struggle to advance racism ends right here.

    I will note you also aren't exercising tight enough control over your writing to pull off this con job; nobody really believes you're a liberal or Democrat or whatever. In the end, it's a combination of the words you use giving away your sense of separation 'twixt yourself and liberals or leftists, and that you demonstrate a stronger grasp of the right-wing arguments you're advocating than the more liberal arguments that would, according to your posture, be part of your stock trade.

    After a while, it's pretty clear what you got and what you don't got.
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    People like you call me all kinds of things, especially around here in lieu of actually dealing with some argument - you and Hannity and 4chan and the rest of your little crowd are devoted to namecalling. It's your world. So? Your names demonstrate that you know nothing about me, or anyone like me, and have obtained your worldview from the exact media framing operation I point to as having elected Trump - the source of your vocabulary.

    You even bought the line that the rightwing political and media coordination efforts don't exist - there was no Caucus Room strategy, no memos to Fox, no Frank Luntz consultations, Breitbart runs on charity and good intentions, pay no attention to the billionaire behind the curtain, terms like "regressive left" and "alt left" just kind of, y'know, show up in your world.
    More fool you, if you think you have to namecall to argue a point with somebody.

    But that also means you don't know those people like you say you do. Seriously: if a bunch of people like you really were going from house to house among the white working class of the upper midwest, campaigning for the Dems , thinking that those people were stupid (or even worse, namecalling them as you project everyone else does), you guys may have elected Trump in Wisconsin or Michigan - that kind of attitude shows, and has influence.

    To belabor the obvious: Most of them aren't stupid. They're ignorant, and racist, and that can be manipulated to get them to do stupid things, but they know the difference between themselves and those of their fellow citizens who are in fact stupid - and so they can be separated, politically, from those neighbors of theirs. But in order to do that, they have to be induced somehow to separate themselves from the rightwing media operations currently surrounding them and framing their entire view of the world for the past thirty years or more. That's not going to be easy, especially if we have to pretend those operations don't exist, the victims of them aren't racist, and there is no body of knowledge they lack.

    Here's a start for you: you have mentioned several times now that the median Fox viewer is elderly. This is so - but when you attempt to argue from that to irrelevance or lack of influence, you overlook not only Fox's influence on CNN and similar stations, but why their median is elderly in the first place.

    It's partly because their audience is very large, compared with others, due to their presence on basic cable, the military media, corporate provided media, and other "free" venues. As far as I know, all the break rooms in every manufacturing plant in my region feature Fox and/or (more recently) CNN (which more recently adopted rightwing issue framing and punditry). So do the gas stations, bars, and similar public TV venues. At one point they had a de facto monopoly on the domestic news feed to US military personnel - and the corrupted CNN took over what they lost. So they have had and still have disproportionate access to all the working poor and individual elderly who have basic cable in their apartments, assisted living, etc, but are unwilling to lay out the (quite high, notice) extra fees for auxiliary programming, and meanwhile their younger audience is undercounted - that biases the median age of their viewers.

    You might take that into account, in discussions of the media world of the white rural working class voter. Or did you already know that, and were just pulling chains again?
     
    Last edited: Dec 31, 2016
  15. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    18,523
    Lol, I don't need to prove myself to you! As for coddling: tell me how has all that attacking everyone that disagrees with you in the slightest as a racist sexist misogynist conservative worked out, oh that right we got President Trump now, thanks alot! You and your ilk divided the left and gave this country to the worse the republicans have to offer. Look in the mirror for who has advance racism and who has destroy liberal arguments.

    Oh you mean like how you ignore my argument that you have not proven power and control?

    It just one extreme or the other with you? I either believe in the elders or I'm a evil jew? Yes Fox memos and Breitbart alt-right fostering and billionaire funding, and no to coordinated hive mind effort that has actual control over the rightwing monsters they created.

    And? So? You have not proven they control their audience instead of simply shoving the shit their audience wants or is already talking about back into their audiences faces! Take Pizzagate for example, did fox come up with that, no, but they HAD to talk about ti regardless of how stupid it was because their audience was talking about it and they would lose views, as they viewership is either dying off or moving to online sites or increasingly even more, as you put it "wingnut", than fox! Was anyone talking about Breitbart a few years ago, now they are trumps propaganda Reichsministerium, do you think Fox likes that? My point is that the rightwing is not controlled by a few billionaires in some smoking room, but by millions upon millions of people that cling to conservatives and nationalist ideals as a comfort food for their ever growing hunger for prosperity and stability. Nazi Germany did not come out of a strong prosperous people, but a broken people suffer economic hardships that turned to instinctive tribal urges of Blut und Boden to ease their pain.

    Where was I? Yeah I'm high, happy new years.
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    That was a courtesy. Your apparent inability to understand big words like "organization" and "coordination" was nothing that needed emphasis, in my opinion.
    Nobody said they did. Or anything like that. I'm the last guy on the planet you will see claiming that fascists are competent masterminds of democratic governance.

    The topic was the coordinate media operations that have been so instrumental in their taking power. Fascist propaganda efforts are very effective - famously so, in the past, observably so in the present. You, for example, have adopted their framing and vocabulary and tactical approach in discussions of political matters - and you don't even seem to be aware of it.
    They do neither.
    Except that those millions of people have been - for years now - bouncing between mutually contradictory and invariably self-destructive obsessions on time scales as short as weeks, without the slightest consideration for whether they were "conservative" or "nationalist" or anything of the kind. They have been injuring themselves for the benefit of others. And the primary beneficiaries of their crazy have been the very people backing and supporting that self same media operation I pointed at. What an amazing coincidence that is - don't you think?
     
  17. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    18,523
    Except they are not fascists, and they did not want Trump, rather they HAD to support and cover Trump or else someone else would, because they are capitalist and money comes first.

    Yeah because they totally wanted Donald Trump as their Judas steer. Had this been 2000 you might have a point, but that was 2016 and fox and the conservative media simply do not have a handle on their audience anymore, the tail now wags the dog.

    And you have the framing of a lefty version of an Alex Jones believer! You can claim I have adopted their framing, vocabulary and tactics, and if I have, good, BECAUSE THEY WON! Your style is clearly ineffectual, you and your ilk calling everyone racist and sexist and a conservative has done nothing but get us President Trump, and yet you freak out if someone on fox news calls you "alt-left"?

    Yeah what ever.

    Yes and? How is that a counter point to anything I have said? Did I say these people are correct in their beliefs? Where the German people correct in following Hitler?

    Are gradients possible for you to understand? It is not Illuminati control or purely a coincidence, there answer is inbetween. Yes the rich and elite republicans try to corral their cows, but right no the cows are stampeding.
     
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    It's the manner of the coverage, not the existence of it, that is at issue.

    Many of "them" in my posting - such as Roger Ailes and Steve Bannon and probably the guy who runs CNN and at least a share of the management of MSNBC - are full members of the media operations of the nameless faction.

    And btw: Who are you talking about - who is this "they" in your posts?
    No, I don't.
    But you say you didn't win?
    Why is everything you say about my "style" wrong?

    Maybe it's reading comprehension problems - for instance, as far as I know nobody on Fox has called me, or anyone like me, "alt left": and that was my point, remember? That the term meant nothing, and was being applied to guys like Brian Stelter? The argument I was making, from that and other evidence?

    How did you miss the central point of such a simple argument from evidence?
    You claimed millions and millions of people were clinging to conservative and nationalist ideals, and the wingnut media were simply following them. I pointed out that no such clinging has been taking place - no conservative or nationalist ideals have been clung to - and everything from your vocabulary to the latest featured news frame on CNN has followed (not preceded) the visible and traceable media pressures and agenda of the nameless faction.
    And in their stampede, they have given control of the US Federal government to the fascist movement that had previously taken control of the Republican Party and a large share of the State governments. So it seems to have worked out fairly well for the Bannons and Ailes and Adelsons and Kochs and so forth. Almost as if they had a hand in the stampede, somehow - unless you regard that as coincidence?

    At any rate, my original description - of a public discourse and news media dominated by a coordinated and organized media campaign on the part of a fascist movement gaining political power in the US - is apparently agreed upon, and we can continue with unsettled matters.
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2017

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