To think MN is suddenly full of hard right extremists?

[Manumission]

I can't believe what I'm reading today.

Some of the comments of the bacon/mosque attack sentencing thread and also on the Jack Monroe/ sanction petition thread are just breathtakingly nasty. Other threads too.

What's happened? They aren't all new names. Some are. Is it an influx altering the mood here? Or does it reflect the national shift?

Pfft. The only nastiness I have ever experienced on MN is from left wing posters. I have been called stupid, ignorant, scum etc for daring to express mildly right-of-centre views. By which I mean more Disraeli than Genghis Khan.

Hilariously, aforementioned LW posters have also described me as Islamophobic over some comments I made on a hijab thread. I am Muslim.

I think it is symptomatic of the search for easy, short, simple, sound bite solutions to complex problems. This is something we saw around the Brexit debate and which we are currently seeing in the US and French Presidential races.
The bacon/mosque thread raises a number of complex issues which people have been debating for years - eg the differences between race and religion, the protections (if any) which should be afforded to religious belief systems, the protection (if any) which should be afforded to national symbols like the flag, the right to protection v the right to free speech etc.
But it is much easier to say "the judge got it wrong" or "its not fair" or " they have more rights than us" - so that's what people do. Lazy thought processes.

To an extent.

And then there are posts like "Why didn't Allah deflect the hail of bacon?"

(That's a real one, maybe slightly paraphrased, go and look)

I can't find either of the threads you speak of so cannot answer. In general I would say no, but from the looks of the replies on here...it seems maybe

One is currently near the top of AIBU, the other is in 'Petitions'.

I don;t know whether to cite more example threads or not

Ive not read either of the posts you mention, but I thinks it's the opposite views that are held by MN, in my eyes they are very liberal, middle class and left wing. If you dare to go against the grain and not agree with their way of thinking, the insults come fast and furious.

I always stay away from certain thread topics because I find some of the comments very disrespectful and upsetting and in all honesty I did not know anyone actually felt this way until I joined MN.

People can be nasty, racist, homophobic, Islamophobic etc etc etc etc regardless of their political stance. Tbh it says more about those specific people than their chosen party imo

I've just looked at the bacon thread. I can't see any breathtakingly nasty posts, I see different views which if anything appear to be more strongly expressed by those who think it was a hate crime and the sentence was deserved/should have been longer. I think there is a strong possibility that anyone who expresses views which are insufficiently left wing or 'right on' will be ridiculed or shouted down on here.

Hilariously, aforementioned LW posters have also described me as Islamophobic over some comments I made on a hijab thread. I am Muslim
I think this says it all. If comments offend you then report them. MN users have no obligation to be anything. TBH threads like this make me want to post very right wing views for the hell of it. Apparently MN has gone to hell in a handcart. Boohoo!!!!!

There are one or two very aggressive types supporting Trump at every opportunity

The very worst posts on that thread have been deleted now Charlie.

TBH threads like this make me want to post very right wing views for the hell of it.

But would you do it calmly and dispassionately? Or nastily and spitefully?

Because the tone is a big part of this.

I've been on MN for years. I post less & less simply because it's so nasty on here nowadays.

political bots?
some, esp on brexit treads sound more 'hired and following a script' than 'real people'

There are certainly one or two. Either that or sad individuals who just have extreme opinions and think they can sway opinion in the same way.

There was certainly something resembling astroturfing going on in the lead up to the referendum.

Derxa I totally agree! Even the more nuanced posts like Eleanor's above basically conform - albeit in a more polite way - to the prevailing MN view that anyone who doesn't think like (say) Diane Abbott is a luddite nazi. No, I am not "lazy" or "simple", I just disagree with you.

I think in current national and global conditions it is very easier to shift right. Not right but tempting. I did it myself for a while and it took Brexit and Trump to make me see sense.

Nick Cohen said something interesting on twitter, something about the Left's abnegation of moral responsibility on Islamism has given free rein to the Right to claim anti Islamism as its own. I think that's basically true: my disillusionment with the left started with the abysmal apologism around Charlie Hebdo and then Jeremy Corbyn finished it off.

But what I see is a kind of convergence between hard left and hard right now. A good example is the current indulgence of Putin and wiki leaks. The latter is particularly interesting because it's a classic case of the devil biting us in our own backyard. They were the left's darlings at one time and now are actively pushing a psychopath for POTUS.

I looked at the front page of the DM website for the first time in forever yesterday. Choose the 'only news' option and 3 or the stories were lifted from mumsnet (lazy) could be that we are getting more traffic from DM readers

I agree. I skimmed the bacon thread.

I haven't read some of the threads mentioned but I have been deeply disgusted by some threads. Most recent was the 'sups' thread - Nasty and bullying over something non-offensive. At least with the bacon thread there was a debate to be had RE: sentencing, hate crime definitions, etc.

I wonder if they would tell schoolyard bully victims to 'lighten up' or they can't take a joke.

Apparently as some had deemed OP to be a troll - she was fair game. Even though MN hasn't as the thread is still standing and they have deleted things and posted on it.

YANBU. But it isn't just MN. I think we are witnessing a global trend toward extremist views: racism, sexism, xenophobia. I just read a terrifying article about the far-right German party Alternative fur Deutschland. Similarly, Russia has been traipsing down the same path for years. And of course, the appalling Republican candidate for president in the US has been exploiting these ugly and dangerous tendencies (and winning supporters by doing so, God help us all).

Nick Cohen said something interesting on twitter, something about the Left's abnegation of moral responsibility on Islamism has given free rein to the Right to claim anti Islamism as its own. I think that's basically true: my disillusionment with the left started with the abysmal apologism around Charlie Hebdo and then Jeremy Corbyn finished it off.

I agree.

I haven't read the bacon thread, but have been very dismayed at the vitriol and lack of compassion displayed by some posters on the sanctions/Jack Monroe thread. It seems these posters have swallowed whole the rhetoric that all benefit claimants must be scroungers, and have lost any sense of 'there but for the grace of God'. The envy and vitriol aimed at recipients of - frankly quite miserly- disability benefits does the posters no credit. I find it off-putting, and it does seem to represent a shift in public mood, which has snowballed since Brexit.

I think it's too simplistic to attribute any move towards the right to global trends towards greater sexism and racism. They don't always belong in the same bucket. One of things that caused me to become disillusioned with centre-left politics is the way that women's rights are thrown under a bus (including by the Labour party) in order to appease the more extreme tenets of Islam. (I am thinking specifically of the party meeting where men and women were separated, but no doubt other examples exist).

The fact that this kind of segregation is grist to the Daily Mail's right wing mill is not what worries me. It's the fact that that type of separation exists at all in a modern secular democracy. I am a feminist first and foremost and feel that future generations of women are going to have a tougher time than I did when it comes to equality with men, if this type of "liberal" thinking continues.

It can't be Full they still let me in

It's isn't mnet it's society in general.

There is a dangerous trend, getting worse too, for hiding far right rhetoric in day to day life the media have desensitised us.

I agree with you OldFarticus.

Exactly Estelle; very well described.