Good Breitbart article on the tactics of the political left

[Zinco]

www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/07/23/nolte-mens-health-wants-joe-rogan-blacklisted-for-vile-transphobia/

"We all know how this bullshit of “safetyism” works on the fascist left. You fascists accuse someone you disagree with of making you or POC’s or whoever feel “unsafe,” and suddenly expression that speech become “violence” and that physical act of violent speech must be blacklisted and canceled.

Meanwhile, according to the left, the terrorists in Black Lives Matter and Antifa who are burning, looting marauding, and toppling are not committing violence. Their actual violence is speech."

"When you accuse someone of “putting lives in danger” over a perfectly reasonable and science-based discussion about transitioning, especially when just a few years ago these arguments were treated as mainstream; when you accuse someone of “fanning the flames of hate” and being “dangerous,” that is way beyond a debate.

That is about silencing someone, about accusing them of being responsible in some way for a suicide or hate crime they had nothing to do with."

"You don't need to use Breitbart. It won't help. And I wonder about the good faith of people who start these threads - I strongly suspect that at least in some cases (don't know about this particular OP) they are agents provocateurs trying to get screenshots to "prove" that MN feminists are in fact far right nuts."

CORRECTION: But that's exactly what DID happen in America and why formerly independent thinkers changed their minds and thought Trump might be a good idea. Fox "News" slowly starting taking over and ultimately cancelled small town newspapers, local network TV stations. There's no better way to explain this 30-year phenomena than use the term "turn."

Sorry...I hit send too soon and I'm relatively new where and haven't figured out how to edit a past post from my phone.

No pisstaking at all TheyBrokeMe. My remark was a nod towards the fact that when we get involved in issues we feel passionately about, it's easy to overlook the basics such as "who is the audience?", "what's most likely to persuade them?", etc. Your post was a handy reminder in that regard.

@Delphinium20

Sorry...I hit send too soon and I'm relatively new where and haven't figured out how to edit a past post from my phone.

Nothing to figure out, you can't

Some voters will have had their opinions changed by exposure to only one kind of content, but I think it's a bit simplistic to say that's the only cause of Trump. America is far from the only country to have elected a populist leader.

@Delphinium20

"You don't need to use Breitbart. It won't help. And I wonder about the good faith of people who start these threads - I strongly suspect that at least in some cases (don't know about this particular OP) they are agents provocateurs trying to get screenshots to "prove" that MN feminists are in fact far right nuts."

CORRECTION: But that's exactly what DID happen in America and why formerly independent thinkers changed their minds and thought Trump might be a good idea. Fox "News" slowly starting taking over and ultimately cancelled small town newspapers, local network TV stations. There's no better way to explain this 30-year phenomena than use the term "turn."

I think there's a big difference between reading Breitbart in a "know your enemy" sort of way and endorsing an article from Breitbart. I do make a conscious effort to read across the political spectrum. My worry about Breitbart (and Russia Today) is not so much that I'll be "turned", more that you have to do a huge amount of fact-checking because so much of what they publish is completely fabricated (anyone remember "Turkish military coup supporters cut off Incirlik air base" from Russia Today? Totally made up but hard to fact-check because so little reliable info was coming out of Turkey at the time). I think engaging with political bias is a healthy exercise; reading made-up-crap not so much.

I also agree that the left wing purity spiral stuff is driving people to "cross the floor of the house" in large numbers, especially the Momentum-ite attacks on free speech. LIke or loathe what people (flawed people, some of whom have truly awful opinions) do with free speech, without it your democracy is stuffed.

I think though that Trump's victory was more complicated than a single issue "people were 'turned'" analysis. For one thing, Clinton won the popular vote. For another thing, Bernie Sanders (and to a lesser extent Jill Stein - though in her case crucially in some of the very marginal small states in the north east) split the left-wing vote. I also think race played a big part (and possibly deliberate disinformation campaigns or even justified but selective focussing on issues like Bill Clinton's Arkansas adverts - that I suspect reduced Black voter turnout by a possibly crucial amount). Another factor was the blue collar vote in states like Michigan and Illinois (and I see parallels with Labour under Corbyn - the Washington Democrats got so wrapped up in virtue-signalling to each other, they lost sight of the things that were worrying working class voters in the Mid West).

So I think the "It was Fox what won it" analysis (parallels with the Sun) is an oversimplification. Fox were able to do what they did because of pre-existing problems with the Democrat party and the way they ran their campaign.

This rant from Bill Maher is worth a watch

as is this even more magnificent rant from Jonathan Pie twitter.com/jonathanpienews/status/1277548211037708289?lang=en

I also think the "silo mentality" whereby people only read their own type of newspapers has another danger, that of being blind-sided by shifts in public opinion. I deliberately took out a subscription to the Telegraph after Trump's victory because I never wanted to be in the situation so much of liberal America was in, where Trump's victory came as a complete and utter surprise to them. (Ditto Brexit - I was very surprised, but perhaps shouldn't have been because the margins in the polls were smaller than the error bars, always a dangerous state of affairs for someone who wants to bet on the outcome of an election).

@WineIsMyCarb

I understand you feel strongly *@Delphinium20* but Brietbart and such show us a perspective of how other people think. You and I may disagree with all or most of what is written there, but with a view to the comment sections (which are the only bits I've read before, and not for a while as it happens) they are another person's POV and as such aren't any more or less credible than your opinion or mine, or a Guardian or Telegraph writer's. Not sure what the link is to flat earth belief. Could you explain that please? Are you saying that an article is factually incorrect or are you arguing that an opinion with which you disagree is incorrect and that means the person who holds that view should not rightly be included in debate?

It's the source that I object to...A Flat Earther may agree with scientists that a certain biome is contaminated and in an opinion argue we should prioritize cleaning it up to protect the water. But sharing the source from a ridiculous organization rather than arguing to clean up the biome using other means of persuasion will be more effective. I'm more interested in asking leftists and moderates why reputable news orgs aren't covering gender critical content. I'd rather start with some issues in girls sports and protection of women's spaces. Just because you @WineIsMyCarb think critically doesn't mean others won't get sucked into Breitbart's cesspool that is mostly garbage. My profession is media/journalism and I'm not scared of listening to alternative opinions- it's my job - but sources matter. It'd be more effective to show what non-leftist think by showing a poll or interviewing someone. I personally wouldn't want my opinion tainted by association with Breitbart.

@DianasLasso "
So I think the "It was Fox what won it" analysis (parallels with the Sun) is an oversimplification. Fox were able to do what they did because of pre-existing problems with the Democrat party and the way they ran their campaign."

The immediate issues you lay out as why Clinton lost are very accurate and yes, it wasn't just Fox. But Fox set the stage of deliberately exacerbating wedge issues and creating an us vs them mentality that keeps people from really understanding what is going on...trump capitalized on the fact that about 30% of Americans had been living on a steady diet of Fox News for decades. Intelligent, thoughtful conservatives didn't stand a chance against the entertainment news. The Democrats also lost because of our very skewed electoral system, which Fox also exploited by buying big in states that hold more electoral power.

Intelligent, thoughtful conservatives didn't stand a chance against the entertainment news.

That's very true. I have American friends on both sides of the political divide and I know of at least one who tore up her Republican membership over Trump getting the candidacy.

The other thing that Breitbart does, I think, is shifts the Overton window. By being so extreme, they enable outlets like Fox to move steadily further right. Yesterday's way-out-there tin-foil-hat right wing opinion becomes today's middle-of-the-road Republicanism.

This rant from Bill Maher is worth a watch
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtPQQjj01kM

He's great. So much common sense and truth packed into 7 minutes.

I think that Overton window point is fair, both ways.

The ideology the Guardian and Labour have adopted has shifted them towards the left, not me towards the right.

O.k!

So saying a " good Bretibart article" has caused some consternation; when perhaps it would have been better to say "a worthwhile article which appeared on Breitbart".

I reckon many who criticise various news outlets have not even bothered to read them, or investigate them for themselves,...because they have been told that certain news sources are inherently bad. So you just " know" that the Spectator is right wing, for example, and therefore you do just know not to bother with it at all; and you also know to raise your hackles as soon as someone merely mentions the name

That is what happened with JK Rowling just recently; most who were up in arms, and outraged, had clearly not even read, first hand, what she had written. Including my own MP ( Momentum/ Labour), who roundly castigated her on twitter, clearly without having read the full transcript.

The facts stated in the Breitbart article are true though, aren’t they?

Once you’ve read it, you can just state the facts. It isn’t a complicated opinion piece.

I find it demoralizing that fucking Breitbart is a voice of sanity on this issue

This!

When I first started thinking about this issue, I was uncomfortable with the fact that I was finding myself aligning with people that I wasn't aligned with on anything else at all.

I'm not uncomfortable any more. I'm fucking fuming that I find myself nodding along with a Breitbart article whilst potential leaders of the Labour Party publicly say that they think a male rapist should be allowed in a women prison if that's what he feels like he wants to do. Fuck them, and fuck their 'purity tests' as well, I'm so done.

The sad fact is that many of us just don’t trust the traditional media sources any more.

Take Portland as an example. On a recent thread someone linked to a Guardian YouTube video about why Trump had sent in federal forces. It actually didn’t give any information about why he had sent in federal law enforcement at all. The video should just have been titled “Orange Man Bad” and left it at that for all the ‘information’ it imparted.

Their vide of Ted Wheeler was carefully edited to block out all the protestors screaming “Fuck Ted Wheeler” in the background.

There is a general sense, whether it’s ‘women downloading indecent images of children’ or ‘peaceful protests’ or ‘parties in Cologne where women conveniently can’t recall what happened to them’ or ‘Sweden as the rape capital of the world’ where people feel the media is hiding the truth from them for fear of an inconvenient political unrest.

Left wing media needs to start discussing some inconvenient truths.

That Guardian YouTube video was a bit like this:

twitter.com/Denlesks/status/1283437306376884224

The sad fact is that many of us just don’t trust the traditional media sources any more

The Guardian, in recent times, has almost as many articles and opinion pieces penned by American based writers, as it does British ones. What's going on?

[quote nauticant]That Guardian YouTube video was a bit like this:

twitter.com/Denlesks/status/1283437306376884224[/quote]
Oh, that video is truly great. Fantastic commentary.

There is a reason that #Scummedia has been trending across social media platforms lately. Ordinary people no longer trust the MSM to tell the truth. In their pursuit to "reframe" incidents by leaving out pertinent facts the MSM has mostly shown itself to be biased and is easily dismissed by many as Fake News. This leaves a vacuum which is being filled by "Right wing" and "Citizen" journalists. For example framing the BLM protests as peaceful when anyone watching a livestream could see violence and buildings burning.

BLM protests in the UK were overwhelmingly peaceful, surely?

BLM protests in the UK were overwhelmingly peaceful, surely?

UK, yes. London, not so much. There was a core group of protestors intent on causing trouble at all of the London protests during the first couple of weeks. Whilst they were a minority, they were a significant, violent, aggressive and unpleasant minority.

Why do you think the Cenotaph was boarded up?

BLM protests in the UK were overwhelmingly peaceful, surely

A number of police officers were injured; one seriously...and a young left wing journalist even managed to make a joke out of it.

I do not endorse whoever made the video or its contents. I just did a YouTube search for some of the footage from the BLM London protests and this included some of the most notable clips.

It seems that Ms Dick made a strategic decision not to have the police in riot gear and the deficiencies in that are clear. Whether it worked as a ‘long game’ strategy is anyone’s guess.

In my opinion, the women shown at about 2:20 have way more guts, integrity and bravery than that woman spreading her legs in Portland.

What was it JKR said about it standing up to your friends?

You are right the girls were so brave. "Run pig run" no matter what your political view that is not alright. In the US someone was stabbed at the protests in Portland last night, bringing the total deaths to 15 or 16. During the London protests Australian reporters were attacked live on Camera. The failure of the Guardian/BBC to report this accurately is what pushes people to find alternatives. It also reduces trust in the media.
order-order.com/2020/07/22/53-of-voters-now-see-british-press-as-force-for-bad/
m.youtube.com/watch?v=0NDkPnyf-ag

In my opinion, the women shown at about 2:20 have way more guts, integrity and bravery than that woman spreading her legs in Portland

Oh absolutely.

It is depressing that simply reading something is "wrong" and counts as an "endorsement".