Has 2016 radicalized both the left and right?

[The Lone Alliance]

I'm not talking about inequality, The problem with that factor is idle hands are dangerous hands.
Massive unemployment leads to massive number of people with nothing to do but drown themselves in vices and drag the quality of life of everyone else down around them. (If the government is lucky) Or, they naturally form resentment and criticism and as a side effect self radicalize.

Part of the reason behind the Libyan war when you get down to it was that there was large scale unemployment in Libya, mostly in young men.

The people of the future are going to be bored out of their minds and realize that the value of a human being in the era of robots will be worthless, they will be worthless. And that will breed resentment, it will be very easy for a future Trump like person to appear and blame a new "Other" and they will blame the robots and their creators, and it will be easy to attack because unlike, minorities, gays, foreigners, or the like, robots aren't people with rights.

They are just machines after all.

I believe there will inevitably be a Neo Luddite style backlash against all this futurism. It's already slowly beginning to develop even today.

...Why do I get the feeling that figure will be the Antichrist?

Well if you're part of the 80% with nothing to do but watch the remaining 20% do everything with their army of robots, it won't be that hard to build resentment.

Especially since you can't use identity politics or even political issues to divide people because the robot doesn't care what you are, it's still taking your job.

I think I'm reminded that some versions of the far future of Issac Asimov books, I think his future earth eventually banned robots outside of certain jobs that humans had reached a point they could no longer do. The only place that Robots were still accepted were in the far flung spacer planets and those planets were actually slowly beginning to fall apart socially because of their dependence on robots for everything.

Of course I might be wrong it's been a long time since I read those books.

[Thanatttynia]

I can't think of any political decision which inspired more disillusionment and dejection amongst ordinary people. The longer we get away from this the more it seems to have completely destroyed public trust in the political order (compounded of course by not punishing the bankers in its aftermath, which screams 'justice for some')

What I think is remarkable is that it's been practically wiped from public discourse, there was a 10 year anniversary last year and I saw relatively little coverage and analysis of the impact. As Ostro notes the discourse changed from 'we'll make everyone better off' to 'stop the other side at all costs' and so both sides have veered to the left and right leaving the centre dead. The fallout of blame skewed the political landscape to extremes.

It's strange, though I get why the powers that be aren't too keen on broadcasting it, they can't be so obtuse as to completely miss the public mood. Ofc the 'end of history'/'there is no alternative' stance has been present in the liberal political order for decades, an attitude predicated on believing that 'the other side' is intolerable, but I agree there was a shift following the 07/08 crisis in how the ruling class presented their case.

I don't know about Reagan per se, but the end of the Cold War took away America's enemy and, for a short while, caused it to turn in on itself and create a division between 'USA1, USA1, USA1' and 'hey guys we're not exactly perfect ourselves..'. The political viewpoint of the end of history with western democracies' final victory led to the paleo-conservative agenda that culminated in the Iraq War.

With that crashing and burning you see the rise, again, of issues around race, gender and general equality.

Interesting also that the 'end of history'/'no alternative' mindset would, as you point out, solidify so soon before the complete meltdown of any real political alternative for the world in the collapse of the USSR. Probably caused a lot of the arrogance we see in the ruling class, Thatcher's words being now not only a statement of values but also a prophecy.

Also left them casting about for an enemy; Islamic extremism stepped into that role... I think though that the rise of terrorism meant perversely that that attitude was easier to keep up in the short term (amongst the USA1 types) but hard to keep up in the long term (steep decline in support for interventionism following Iraq 2 and general disillusionment with the ability of Western nations to exert power).

In any case by this point, despite the (well-meaning and sincere, I don't mean to denounce them) endless exhortations that the terrorists will not divide us following every terrorist attack, we have turned all this enmity in on our own society.

And quite frankly I think their vision of the "Good ending" of the West is pretty sad anyway. It'll just be quasi feudalism except the nobles now own all the labor instead of the land.

That's not essentially different from what we have now, it's a difference of severity at best.

[Thanatttynia]

I believe there will inevitably be a Neo Luddite style backlash against all this futurism. It's already slowly beginning to develop even today.

I agree we're going to see this, maybe sooner than we think. And whilst obviously we look back on the Luddites now and denigrate them, I can't denounce this type of thing; progress is after all only good insofar as it improves lives. A life without work isn't a fulfilling life.

[Thanatttynia]

Sorry, not a numbers person.

Sure. But people post the most abhorrent of stuff on social media a lot. Maybe that might not prove anything to you, but it sure does prove we got some radicals on social media.

Alrighty. Maybe you should hold off on blind assertions, then?

Social media is not an appropriate measure of what people actually think and feel. Aside from trolls, many of whom are a part of actual disinformation/unrest operations on behalf of foreign governments, a lot of the apparent radicalization is actually just your garden variety loud mouths popping off on an open platform. Others appear radical by virtue of expressing their opinions in very limited formats that tend to value caricatures over nuance.

You know what most normal folks do on social media? Post pictures of their cats, follow their favorite celebrities, talk about their day, and so on. They aren't frothing at the mouth over politics.

I agree to an extent but I think there's more to the role of social media in radicalising everyone. Not even in the sense that people start to become interested in actual politics or start to hate everyone that disagrees with them, but in something more integral and fundamental to the experience of social media.

It's not natural for humans to communicate in this way, it's not natural for the world to be this instant and interconnected, it's not natural for people to be able to upload everything they're doing and thinking. These things are radical. Ofc not everything unnatural is bad or harmful but what is natural is for unnatural things to take time to get to grips with, for unnatural things to present problems that don't instantly have solutions. We've skipped past getting to grips with this technology and it's suddenly gripped the world in a more complete and sudden way than any other technology ever has. Facebook has more than 2 billion active monthly users. It makes me uneasy.

As far as the actual experience of social media acting as a radicalising catalyst, I think one cause could be being able to upload everything you're doing and thinking - and, even worse, it being neurologically/psychologically pleasurable to do so. This bug/feature is touted by techbros and our reptilian overlords as being a mass democratisation of discourse and as allowing for the elimination of disabilities humans have always struggled with (like not being able to easily communicate with someone who is a long distance away from you) but it's always struck me as something more like shouting into the abyss. The chance to do it invites doing it, and if you don't get a response, you're going to start upping the ante: this is seen at its (current) most grotesque extreme with, for example, irony-poisoned 4chan dwellers becoming fascists but I think it affects everyone (even those people who just post pictures of their cats) in a less obvious way. Everyone now has an opinion on everything = everything is political.

I don't mean to be shouting get off my lawn lmao, I'm of that generation that cannot fully remember a time before social media. I just turned 18 and I'm getting Facebook Memories of things I posted a decade ago (an unrelated problem with all this.) I do recognise much of the good this technology has brought with it, I'm just not convinced it's been a net positive.

[Negarakita]

Bro even the center has radicalised.

[Bombadil]

I'm not talking about inequality, The problem with that factor is idle hands are dangerous hands.
Massive unemployment leads to massive number of people with nothing to do but drown themselves in vices and drag the quality of life of everyone else down around them. (If the government is lucky) Or, they naturally form resentment and criticism and as a side effect self radicalize.

Part of the reason behind the Libyan war when you get down to it was that there was large scale unemployment in Libya, mostly in young men.

The people of the future are going to be bored out of their minds and realize that the value of a human being in the era of robots will be worthless, they will be worthless. And that will breed resentment, it will be very easy for a future Trump like person to appear and blame a new "Other" and they will blame the robots and their creators, and it will be easy to attack because unlike, minorities, gays, foreigners, or the like, robots aren't people with rights.

They are just machines after all.

I believe there will inevitably be a Neo Luddite style backlash against all this futurism. It's already slowly beginning to develop even today.

Just co-opt the security forces in the nominal name of a government to promote 'stability and order'.

To be honest I don't disagree with what you're saying, no future is determined. At best I'm pointing to a well-funded and focused drive to delegitimise the government given the idea that the future and democracy cannot co-exist. This attack is based on the very nature of equality itself, that equality is an unattainable myth and we all better look out for our own rather than pander to raising others.

Those attacks are well funded and driven through influential channels broadly divided into right wing, religious and libertarian media that create fear of attack by others (immigration, race, gender), atheists, sinners (attack on American values) and big government (arms, property, climate change) and supported by a mocking culture of anything that requires government intervention or pretence of equality.

One might argue t'was ever thus and ever thus shall be but I think much of society has also always been predicated on everyone having some access to jobs and thus an equal say if only in principle. In general the mass population was required to sustain the elite.

That may no longer be the case, so who gets to win and who gets to lose?

I read an interesting article that I wish I could find again talking about the new global war around data, China believes government owns data, the US believes corporations own the data and the EU believes the individual owns the data. This is reflective of where power lies in each region.

Easiest to break the EU first, then deal with China..

[Bombadil]

.As far as the actual experience of social media acting as a radicalising catalyst, I think one cause could be being able to upload everything you're doing and thinking - and, even worse, it being neurologically/psychologically pleasurable to do so. This bug/feature is touted by techbros and our reptilian overlords as being a mass democratisation of discourse and as allowing for the elimination of disabilities humans have always struggled with (like not being able to easily communicate with someone who is a long distance away from you) but it's always struck me as something more like shouting into the abyss. The chance to do it invites doing it, and if you don't get a response, you're going to start upping the ante: this is seen at its (current) most grotesque extreme with, for example, irony-poisoned 4chan dwellers becoming fascists but I think it affects everyone (even those people who just post pictures of their cats) in a less obvious way. Everyone now has an opinion on everything = everything is political.\

Somewhat.. the main problem is that the truth is boring.

On Twitter false news stories are 70% more likely to be retweeted than true stories, and it takes true stories about six times as long to reach 1,500 people as it takes for false stories to reach the same number of people.

• Falsehoods are also retweeted more widely than true statements at every depth of a “cascade,” which is how the study refers to unbroken tweet chains. These chains travel 10 to 20 times more quickly than facts.

Our brains are attuned to the new and exciting, it catches our eye and causes response. We're like rats pressing for pleasure, which is fine when there's limited pleasure around but when it's on tap 24/7 then it's a problem.

Usually because they are more interesting than the truth, said [Sinan] Aral [MIT Professor]. “False news is more novel*, and people are more likely to share novel information,” he said. It also creates a false sense of expertise for some. “People who share novel information are seen as being in the know,” he added..

..Although fake news bots have gotten attention, the MIT study found humans are equally to blame: when researchers removed bots from their dataset, the rate at which false news spread compared to accurate news remained unchanged.

Link

*Novelty linked to pleasure is known, what's worse is that it's linked to learning as well.. which is fine from an evolutionary process when we're learning to deal with our environment but when it comes to novel news.. it means the novel news is grained into our memory better than boring truth and so creates a cycle whereby we seek substantiation for that novel news and thus further entrenches the lies.

[Page]

That we are living under late capitalism is why some people have embraced more radical ideals, because it is becoming more apparent that our governments and economies are rotting away, becoming ever more corrupt, impotent, and incompetent

[Jolthig]

Sorry, not a numbers person.

Sure. But people post the most abhorrent of stuff on social media a lot. Maybe that might not prove anything to you, but it sure does prove we got some radicals on social media.

Alrighty. Maybe you should hold off on blind assertions, then?

Social media is not an appropriate measure of what people actually think and feel. Aside from trolls, many of whom are a part of actual disinformation/unrest operations on behalf of foreign governments, a lot of the apparent radicalization is actually just your garden variety loud mouths popping off on an open platform. Others appear radical by virtue of expressing their opinions in very limited formats that tend to value caricatures over nuance.

You know what most normal folks do on social media? Post pictures of their cats, follow their favorite celebrities, talk about their day, and so on. They aren't frothing at the mouth over politics.

True. My argument wasn't valid, I'll admit. I'm just lazy tbh lol

Well, then, shouldn't these Russian trolls support my view that some people are getting radicalized? I agree that social media wouldn't be a completely good place for someone to actually demonstrate their views, and maybe some radicals are just trolls. But I base my views off of some encounters in real life. Maybe not violent, but just fundamentalist.

I agree with your last statement. Though I took down my FB xD

[Pax Nerdvana]

Yes. I blame the Internet.

[Sovaal]

There are radical elements in both wings, sure, however I’d bet my money that most people are moderates.

[Luziyca]

Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Fuck yes.

Take a look at social media, and you’ll see the ridiculous amount of hate being thrown around. It’s not just the traditionally political groups, but rather the youth that are being radicalized now, and the blame rests with a looot of people.

Agreed.

2016 has just proven that Hobbes was right when it comes to humanity: heck, if I feel that humanity is actually going to be a force for good, I just need to read the comments section of literally any article, and I am back down to earth again.

[Utceforp]

The right: Yes, definitely.

The left: Unfortunately, I don't think so. Moderate democrats "leftists" only look more "Radical" because the crypto-fascists on the right are dragging the Overton window leftward.

[Llalta]

I do agree to some extent, especially as both sides seem to be becoming increasingly hostile to each other. However, the internet has allowed those with an opinion to voice it and those who aren't as opinionated or loud just don't voice it if that makes any sense.

[Chestaan]

Trump, Brexit and 2016 in general were all caused by, not a cause of, shifting away from the neoliberal centre ground. It's a process that started around 2008 with the financial crash.

[Luziyca]

I do agree to some extent, especially as both sides seem to be becoming increasingly hostile to each other. However, the internet has allowed those with an opinion to voice it and those who aren't as opinionated or loud just don't voice it if that makes any sense.

Or they just get drowned out by the noise of the radicals.

[Crylante]

Brexit was probably the main issue that set me on the journey from being a standard social democrat to being more populist and rejecting capitalism in favour of worker ownership.

I suppose part of it came from trying to figure out why Brexit was a thing - and when I settled on the generalised answer of social disaffection and anger at the status quo, I started to drift further to the left from my centre-left positioning as I started to feel large sections of British society were sidelined politically, and eventually I ended up questioning my faith in capitalism and ended up roughly where I am now.

Although I feel in many nations, radicalisation and dissatisfaction with the status quo stems back further than just 2016 and the events of Brexit and Trump were merely just representations of that. In my home country, for example, UKIP surged in popularity among voters feeling left behind by the system throughout the 2010-15 Coalition government, and dissatisfaction with the centrist course the Labour Party had followed since 1994 led to the election of the openly left-wing Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in 2015.

And, of course, the alt-right didn't just appear overnight on the 1st January 2016; the movement had, from my understanding, been growing and developing for a fair few years before that.

[Bear Stearns]

The radicalization started much earlier but I guess most people first noticed it in 2016.

[Trollzyn the Infinite]

Centrist gang is running low on members.

We need a recruitment drive, clearly.

Bro even the center has radicalised.

Guilty as charged.

[Bombadil]

People either forget, were not aware of, were not born.. for the 'stolen' election of '00 or the Swift Boat election of '04.

I'm not sure partisan anger is too much different, the difference is rejection of the status quo, in principle. In practice it's been engineered to hand even greater power to those who want less government and interference for their own needs.

[Ostroeuropa]

People either forget, were not aware of, were not born.. for the 'stolen' election of '00 or the Swift Boat election of '04.

I'm not sure partisan anger is too much different, the difference is rejection of the status quo, in principle. In practice it's been engineered to hand even greater power to those who want less government and interference for their own needs.

You've also got to understand that gaslighting has become a political norm now and both sides of the spectrum have done it because they unflinchingly adopted and repeated their elites politics, and those elites have actively relied on gaslighting the opposition as a political tool.

Instead of calling them out for it people have engaged in it.

In a sense, we are right to hate each-other. The anger isn't merely partisanship and you can see that in cases like the UK where UKIP rose and fell. It's two political blocs divided by a culture war where neither side is being honest with the other.

That's why the rejection of the status quo hasn't resulted in the rise of some reasonable compromise movement determined to oust our current elites, but instead two different political uprisings from both camps.

[Trackeendy]

Yes.

[Negarakita]

Centrist gang is running low on members.

We need a recruitment drive, clearly.

Bro even the center has radicalised.

Guilty as charged.

Apparently "Do you not want to starve to death or get thrown in some variety of a prison camp" isn't a good enough sales pitch

[Bombadil]

People either forget, were not aware of, were not born.. for the 'stolen' election of '00 or the Swift Boat election of '04.

I'm not sure partisan anger is too much different, the difference is rejection of the status quo, in principle. In practice it's been engineered to hand even greater power to those who want less government and interference for their own needs.

You've also got to understand that gaslighting has become a political norm now and both sides of the spectrum have done it because they unflinchingly adopted and repeated their elites politics, and those elites have actively relied on gaslighting the opposition as a political tool.

Instead of calling them out for it people have engaged in it.

In a sense, we are right to hate each-other. The anger isn't merely partisanship and you can see that in cases like the UK where UKIP rose and fell. It's two political blocs divided by a culture war where neither side is being honest with the other.

That's why the rejection of the status quo hasn't resulted in the rise of some reasonable compromise movement determined to oust our current elites, but instead two different political uprisings from both camps.

Much as my father used to decry animal rights activists not as loving animals but as hating humans, the far left embrace equality because they dislike their own kind too much whereas the far right embrace hierarchy because they love their own kind too much.

Somewhat simplistic but throw in meagre opportunity and a clear sense of injustice brought about by the financial crisis and of course both sides will reject the status quo regardless of whether it hurts them or not while remaining bitterly opposed to each other.

I watched an interesting documentary that played this back to the Gary Hart campaign. It was the first time, really, that the private life of a primary contender, even, was played out in national media. This was reflected in the treatment of Princess Diana. What once held a degree of reverence and discretion exploded into scandal and soap opera and politics changed. Suddenly the media could truly make or break one's career rather than passively report. As Hart himself noted "I watched journalists become animals, literally."

Even this is the start of technology, that instead of relying on rumour and sources one could directly hack into phone calls.

When you turn politics into a literal soap opera, a 24/7 reality show then of course characters become outsized to shout over the top and overall we descend into petty bickering.

Social media amplifies this and, in addition, allows for huge distortion of the truth. Suddenly nothing is real and only those who make the most noise can be heard.

Which is fine if we're all eating our meat pies and paying our electricity bills and watching the show but the financial crisis made it real. In a sense it's amazing the only outcome was surprise results in elections.. so far..

[Torrocca]

Yes, for both better and for worse.

On the one hand, the working class (in America in particular) is really starting to become more class conscious, but on the other hand, reactionary politics are hitting an all-time high.