
What happened after my 13-year-old son joined the alt-right - earenndil
https://www.washingtonian.com/2019/05/05/what-happened-after-my-13-year-old-son-joined-the-alt-right/
======
klodolph
What resonated with me is how impossible it is, as a kid, to make sense of
being in the school system. The interaction with an administrator was school
discipline gone awry... but it could have easily been something else.
(Discipline is the most likely, there are _tons_ of misguided zero-tolerance
policies.) I'm lucky that my parents were advocates and organizers and that
they knew people in the school administration. When a teacher emotionally
abused me in class I was in a different class the next week. When I ran out of
math classes to take at high school, I took them at college.

Years afterwards I was tutoring a high school student in mathematics. They
asked me a question about school and I felt a moment of panic, as I remembered
all of the shit that I went through.

By the time I finished college, it made sense to me. I could make it through
an awful class or cut through red tape and weird requirements. I knew that I
had survived a couple decades of bullshit, I was still here, and a little
extra bullshit wasn't going to kill me. But at age 14, I remember being angry
and upset _all the time_ about things that happened at school.

~~~
rayiner
What drove me crazy about K-12 is that all the bullshit zero tolerance
policies affected mainly the normal kids. The real problem kids didn’t care,
and continued to wreak havoc. It’s the main reason I send my kids to private
school, even though the public schools where I live are good.

~~~
patio11
A student whose situation I’m personally aware of was threatened with
expulsion during middle school after a history of being an undistinguished but
not particularly troublesome student for a) doodling a bobomb (character from
Mario) in their notebook during class and b) filling in a speech bubble saying
“Let’s blow up the school.” Zero tolerance policy; bomb threat.

It took substantial efforts by a parent to keep them in school, including
begging, pleading, and threatening a PR campaign along the lines of “I will
personally call every mother at this school and break down in their living
room about how you ruined my son’s life” to get him reinstated.

The school was, obviously, neither bobombed nor hit with a turtle shell nor
stomped on.

~~~
treis
>doodling a bobomb (character from Mario) in their notebook during class and
b) filling in a speech bubble saying “Let’s blow up the school.” Zero
tolerance policy; bomb threat.

My school forced us to show IDs to get on the bus home. I got in school
suspension* for saying something to the effect of if I were going to bring a
bomb I wouldn't forget my ID. This was almost 20 years ago so I guess I got
off light. I still remember how ridiculous it all was and more ridiculous that
my parents sided with the school.

*Essentially all day long detention. Sit in a room, no talking, do work

------
gatherhunterer
> Sam’s guidance counselor pulled him out of his next class and accused him of
> “breaking the law.” Before long, he was in the office of a male
> administrator who informed him that the exchange was “illegal,” hinted that
> the police were coming, and delivered him into the custody of the school’s
> resource officer. At the administrator’s instruction, that man ushered Sam
> into an empty room, handed him a blank sheet of paper, and instructed him to
> write a “statement of guilt.”

It is not surprising that it started with someone whose lack of ability to
respond caused them to resort to the most extreme measures, thinking that
nothing could be worse than doing too little. They have a lot in common with
the disillusioned youth whose hateful ideology they were stoking.

These adults saw a child as an easy adversary and jumped at the opportunity to
get a win and sing their own praises. Bureaucrats make poor educators and
poorer law enforcers.

~~~
vzcx
Yes! This is an anti-public school administration article masquerading as an
anti-alt-right article.

~~~
oh_sigh
No, it is both of the antis- you specified. Specifically, it is a story about
how the author believes the bad behavior of school administration pushed their
sun into the bad world of the alt-right.

~~~
vzcx
Oh, I don't mean to say that it is secretly uncritical of the alt-right. It's
clear that the alt-right runs counter to the mother's morals, just that these
morals are taken as given and assumed in the audience as well. It is not a
direct critique of the alt-right.

There are tons of strange subcultures and radical groups out there looking to
eat your mind and the minds of your children. "My child joined the alt-right"
is far more of a catchy title than "my child joined a neoreactionary reading
group" or "my child joined some communist revolutionaries." Those groups are
either things no one has heard of or are has beens. The alt-right still have
some energy as today's "evildoers." It's our modern "my child became a
satanist," or, hell, "my child became a protestant."

All this is reminiscent of that old "Is Your Child A Hacker." Where is our "Is
Your Child A Shitlord?" Of course, the entire story could be a fabrication,
for all we know.

Since it's the evil of today and will surely grab some eyeballs... why not
stick in some valuable reminders of how absolutely terrible being a child in
the school system is?

If that was the intention in this piece, I salute the author!

------
hinkley
> Sam prides himself on questioning conventional wisdom and subjecting claims
> to intellectual scrutiny. For kids today, that means Googling stuff. One
> might think these searches would turn up a variety of perspectives,
> including at least a few compelling counterarguments. One would be wrong.
> The Google searches flooded his developing brain with endless bias-
> confirming “proof” to back up whichever specious alt-right standard was
> being hoisted that week. Each set of results acted like fertilizer sprinkled
> on weeds: A forest of distortion flourished.

I would like to nominate “Sam” as poster child for why the feedback systems in
Google Search and Facebook are so damaging. It’s one thing to continuously
confirm the beliefs of old people, it’s quite another to funnel impressionable
children into one extreme or another based on a few semi-random data points.

~~~
eropple
Google-related, but I'd submit that YouTube is one of the prime culprits. Kids
like stuff like video games. Video game recommendations devolve into chud
territory in two hops - fascist in three or four.

~~~
opportune
I wonder how much of this is due to marketing. I know for example PragerU
heavily advertises on Youtube. Is there a way for an advertiser on youtube to
get better recommendation placements?

~~~
eropple
Dunno why you're downvoted; to me it's a reasonable question. What I don't
know--and why I am profoundly concerned about such recommendation algorithms--
is if there's any way for non-Googlers to ever _check_ that.

~~~
tropo
I didn't know either, until I saw educationdata's comment. It's subtle, but I
think opportune is implying that PragerU is fascist.

~~~
opportune
I'm not. I am implying that it is conservative and advertises a lot. If you
can get from videogames to PragerU in a couple clicks I wouldn't be surprised
if you could get from PragerU to facist stuff in a couple clicks.

And if it's possible to get from almost anywhere in youtube into conservative
propaganda territory in 1-2 clicks, then from there I think the recommendation
system can (without ads) probably get you to the fascist stuff, since the
recommendation system wants to give you more right wing politics and maybe
can't differentiate very well within that space

~~~
tropo
OK, but fascism also isn't conservative or right-wing.

Benito Mussolini: “If the 19th [century] was the century of the individual
(liberalism means individualism), you may consider that this is the
"collective" century, and therefore the century of the state.”

Benito Mussolini: “Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the
State ... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular
individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the
individual.”

Benito Mussolini: "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing
against the state."

Benito Mussolini: "It is the State which educates its citizens in civic
virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into
unity."

That sort of government-oriented thinking sure isn't conservative or right-
wing.

~~~
eropple
While deification of the _government_ is not conservative, deification of the
_state_ most definitely is conservative. We've been dealing with this for
decades. Have you noticed the way that conservatives drape themselves in the
flag to assert some kind of innate kinship with the state? Do you remember
conservatives' "America: love it or leave it", aimed at anti-war (i.e.,
generally left or left-leaning) Vietnam protestors?

Fascism arises from racial supremacism and a desire to _re-acquire_ a period
of purported historical greatness. This is definitionally "of the right wing"
and it is incidentally why it is in many ways very compatible with
conservatism; it uses their language. They have shellcodes into conservatives'
brains.

Frankly, assertions of "non-right-wing fascism" to the otherwise are mostly
seeded by bad actors to muddy the waters and to whatabout about leftists.
(EDIT: and this is really dumb--the left in the United States, the UK, etc.
are happy to give you _actual_ sticks to beat them about the head with, why is
there a need for these fake ones?)

------
GreaterFool
It's an interesting story. I find the conclusion not unsurprising. The author
seems to assume the existence of `alt-right` as a monolithic group with a
specific agenda. As far as I can tell that's not true. These groups may come
out together to protest because they've been lumped together by the media. If
they weren't all branded `alt-right`, would they connect? If you want to
disarm them, divide them! Don't label them as a single group.

A lot of these groups have internally inconsistent ideologies. These can be
overlooked for a while as one is drawn to the community. But eventually the
novelty wears off and cracks start to show and one realizes that a lot of the
personalities are one note and don't actually have anything interesting to
say.

This is true about the Left and the Right.

And then one moves on.

~~~
vzcx
People don't go to radical groups for the ideology: They come for the
emotional outlet and camaraderie. Some radicals will flip flop enormously
during their "career." They are activists. The guy with anarchist and nazi
symbols is not an unusual sight. He's a perpetual misfit without the
creativity to fashion his own ideology, someone looking for an edgy support
group, who wants to be both with people and distinct from society at large.

People actually interested in ideas might end up thinking radical (as in,
things other people find strange or upsetting) things, but they'll take a
different path and won't engage in activism. They are philosophers, and if
they write and are original enough, maybe the best of them will be remembered
and appreciated sometime after their deaths.

~~~
max76
This is too strong of a generalization. There are several people from the
woman's suffrage movement, the 1960s civil rights movement, and countless
others that both had radical (for the time) internally consistent ideology and
participated in activism.

Yes, there are people in radical groups just to be misfits. Yes, there are
people that think and write radical ideas without participating in activism.
There are also people that join radical groups because they believe in the
ideology, and there are original thinkers in radical groups that participate
in the activism side.

------
dTal
This is gripping, insightful and beautifully written. I especially like how it
leads with the request to go to the Mother of All Rallies, so that the reader
gets to experience the same knee-jerk reaction as the parents. I like how that
knee-jerk reaction is later proven wrong. It compellingly illustrates the
importance of open-mindedness, and that "sunlight is the best medicine".

Very thought provoking.

~~~
camelite
It's fiction imo

~~~
MrOwen
How did you arrive at this conclusion? At least for myself, no red flags or
gross inconsistencies were readily apparent so I took it as truth.

------
0-_-0
My favourite quote from the article:

'For the next ten minutes or so, the reporters filmed the Nazi. When they
finally turned away from each other, each side seemed happy, shaking hands,
nodding enthusiastically, and smiling their thanks. It was the most nakedly
symbiotic transaction I’d ever witnessed. The reporters and the Nazi needed
each other. There was no meaning—no job—for one without the other.'

------
crsv
It’s a very well written piece, but it just feels too well written, to the
point of feeling to precise, too calculated, too... contrived. Aside from the
opinions expressed, the ideological concerns, the relevance to the current
political landscape - these are all relevant and interesting explorations, but
the whole narrative is just too picture perfect and too close to a screenplay.
It just feels like good fiction.

~~~
brohoolio
It seems like good fiction until it’s your life and then it seems terrible.

I can assure you, as someone who has multiple family members get sucked up
into this ideology, this is how it happens.

~~~
vokep
As someone who also has watched people get sucked into dogma of both
sides...yes this is how it happens

but, the story does give a feeling of being too perfect. I doubt they would
just make things up, but it feels likely that a lot of liberty was taken with
making it all fit _really_ nicely.

Again all that said, the points within it, are true and valid, the story at
plot level is very realistic and is happening all the time.

------
alexandercrohde
I was totally onboard with this article until the last sentence.

I was enjoying this article as an exploration of emotional vulnerability, the
connection between beliefs and belonging, the mixed blessing of internet
anonimity.

But if the (suspiciously articulate) kid goes from alt-right to antifa, I
don't think that's any sort of progress to be applauded. I interpreted the
article's point to be that alt-right is just emotionally hurt people venting
online, and they do antics for attention and the media latches on to it to
sell clicks, even if it's all BS.

But if that's the case, the best way to handle it is _not_ to counter-protest,
but just to hear out the fears and insecurities.

~~~
ip26
Presumably the author & son are alluding to the middle-aged man holding the
poster, which I should hope is obviously nowhere near the same as antifa.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Well, I don't know if I think a middle-aged man who goes to a rally to hold up
a sign saying "NO TRUMP. NO KKK. NO FASCIST USA," is progress over the alt-
right. To me it's the exact same thing -- an overly zealous person who takes
politics as a tribal game and has no sincere intention of changing anybody's
mind.

~~~
esoterica
The exact same thing? That’s one hell of a false equivalence. The alt right
aren’t bad people because they are “overzealous”, they are bad people because
of their bigotry on the basis of race, religion and national origin.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Not really.... these aren't real nazis committing atrocities....

Going to 4chan and saying a bunch of trolly triggering stuff at your friends
to get out your anger isn't really a bad thing. It's immature, but it's not
really immoral, nor is it illegal, nor does it make you a "bad person." It's
venting, tribalism, and immaturity. (case-in-point, the moderator was a
13-year-old jewish boy)

This is what the article describes when it shows the man with the nazi flag
posing for the reporters-- a symbiotic relationship that is entirely for show.

------
mirimir
> Sam pledged fealty to the idea of men’s rights because, as he said, his
> former administrator had privileged girls’ words and experiences over boys’,
> and that’s how all of his troubles had started in the first place.

I wonder how common this dynamic is now.

~~~
mensetmanusman
Father of boys and girls here. Both sexes are just as violent, boys more so on
the body, and girls more so on the mind.

It was fascinating to hear my 7 year old daughter grasp for words to make me
angry: ‘when you and mom divorce, I’m going with mom.’ I just raised an
eyebrow and ignored. Boy’s will just throw things.

~~~
nailer
That's such an awful thing for your child to say. How do you ensure they won't
do it again?

~~~
chmod775
She'll feel bad about it on her own once she's not angry anymore. Especially
when she learns it didn't even further her goals.

The second worst thing you can do is to also get angry or punish her, which
will only make her feel justified and not question herself.

The worst would be giving her what she wanted. That's not the lesson you want
to teach at all.

So basically follow this father's lead and do nothing. Maybe talk about how it
makes you feel once things calmed down.

~~~
mirimir
It's good that I never had kids. I have a short but largely deadpan temper. I
would probably have "keep at it, and you'll get what you want, and good
riddance" ... and maybe how her college fund is buying bpme a newmachine"

------
Joking_Phantom
I have no answer for the rest of the article, but I've been poking around
school administrations for quite a while now.

One of the problems with public school administrators and teachers is that
staff are relatively difficult to adjust. Whether it be firing, transferring,
rotations, etc. The article makes no mention of any of the complicit faculty
suffering consequences. No, I don't think anyone has to be immediately fired.
But mistakes happen, and staff that interact with kids on a constant scale
like this need to maintain trust. Faculty that mess up like this need to be
transferred away at the minimum. Making the victims take corrective action is
completely wrong.

Teachers and administrators alike need more accountability, and more mobility
within positions. Witch hunts like this need to be stopped before they
traumatize kids. Employees should be shuffled around when inevitable
interpersonal conflicts poison the relationship between school and community.
Give adults and kids alike a break, a chance at a fresh start, an opportunity
where their past mistakes don't destroy their future prospects.

------
ukulele
> He would be offline for a month and would need other mods to cover for him.
> To ask for help, he had to out himself as a kid.

I wonder to what extent the alt-right actually is a young teen movement, with
adults mixed in (being the ones who show in person). Is there any at least
semi-reliable data on this?

~~~
mirimir
I've watched the so-called alt-right develop online over the past 2-3 decades.
Usenet, Live Journal, Encyclopedia Dramatica, the chans, etc. At least at the
start, it was mostly about trolling and lulz. The anger of TFWNG.

But somehow it's been captured by the actual right wing. That's frightening.
There's a lotta young male angst out there.

~~~
will4274
> young male angst

Tbh, it's this sort of thing that fuels the alt right. I'm a young male and I
have some political concerns. I don't consider myself alt-right. But, when you
dismiss my concerns as "angst" \- I'm far more likely to continue talking to
them than to you.

~~~
mmierz
I see people trot it out in online arguments as an excuse, or in think-pieces
as a justification. But if white male identity politics is very important to
someone, important enough to find common cause with literal neo-nazis, I think
their conversion already happened.

~~~
mirimir
Maybe. However, as TFA shows, "conversion" isn't irreversible.

------
bytematic
That was a great article, I think this is a big problem right now. I'm not
sure how I would handle it as a parent.

Two things that stood out to me were the principal/officers at the public
school and how they dealed with that situation, or even the girl that reported
Sam. I wonder if they know what they created.

Also this part: "I liked them because they were adults and they thought I was
an adult. I was one of them,” he said. “I was participating in a conversation.
They took me seriously. No one ever took me seriously—not you, not my
teachers, no one. If I expressed an opinion, you thought I was just a dumbass
kid trying to find my voice. I already had my voice.”

Does every kid just go through this phase, whether it is happening or not, how
best to navigate it?

~~~
chii
Every kid goes thru the phase where they want to be acknowledged, and their
views verified by others (despite that they don't actually know their own
views, and is still absorbing).

Those who would want to prey on this can take advantage. It's the role of the
parents and public institutions like schools, to teach right from wrong.

In this story, the school failed, but the parents tried and got lucky. But you
can imagine the story could have easily gone the other way.

~~~
stevenwoo
No need to imagine, here's a headline from late 2017:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/teen-
char...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/teen-charged-with-
killing-girlfriends-parents-they-had-worried-he-was-a-neo-
nazi/2017/12/23/e2102894-e761-11e7-833f-155031558ff4_story.html)

------
lancefisher
When my brother and I were in high school, he got into a discussion with the
English teacher. At one point of disagreement, he asked her heatedly, “what
are you on about?” We’d been watching a lot of Monty Python. She
misinterpreted it as, “are you on the rag?” and proceeded to flip out.

She went to the principal, and they began some Title IX paperwork along with
extreme disciplinary action.

This was a small rural school. My class had less than 70 students. My parents
didn’t have a lot of resources, but they showed up the next day with a lawyer
in a suit carrying a briefcase. The school was completely unprepared for that
type of response and immediately backed off. They were able to clear up the
misunderstanding.

It means so much for parents to listen to their kids with respect, and stick
up for them. I’ve never forgotten it.

~~~
bigred100
I wonder why teachers and school administrators don’t simply interact
respectfully with their students instead of engaging in such extraordinarily
bad behavior. Is mental illness or social disability common in their
profession?

~~~
Aromasin
I do extracurricular lessons with schools - teaching engineering through fun
experiments and the like. I'm not very deep into the teaching sphere as such,
but I think close enough to make some anecdotal observations. Frankly, I have
seen some pretty disgusting practices from teachers I've worked with. Not to
say that is the majority, but it only takes a handful of poor teachers to
muddy the water. Three theories as to why that is happens:

Firstly, many teachers subconsciously have a tendency to see their classes as
a group entity, not as a selection of individuals. As such, when a couple of
kids behave badly in class they abstract that feeling of "getting attacked" to
the whole group, and lash out defensively against everyone in said group. The
amount of times I've seen a teacher unfairly punish a kid because a different
one has irritated them over the course of the lesson is astonishing.

Secondly, from my experience it seems that the type of people that go into the
profession (thinking more pre/middle school ages, not high school/university)
often have a propensity towards narcissism. I don't know why, but this is just
what I've observed. They have little power outside of the classroom, had
little power growing up, and were never really especially gifted academically;
but now they've been given power over large group of kids with little to no
means to respond. I see a lot of teachers projecting the problems they
have/had at home or with the school bureaucracy onto their classes, and use
them as a metaphorical punching bag for their internal struggles.

Thirdly, teaching work at lower ages has sunk from a middle class job to a
middle-lower class job. The stagnant wages has meant that a lot of talent has
been put off teaching where we need it the most, and with that has gone some
of the better educated. Some of the children I work with are honestly better
at some subjects than their teachers are (thank Khan Academy, YouTube
educators, et al for that!) and some teachers do not appreciate it. Just last
month I saw a teacher shoot down a child for correcting him, even though he
was not only right, but polite about it. I was sure to let the administration
know what I thought of this behaviour...

Note; please don't take this commentary as me condemning teachers. The
overwhelmingly vast majority of them are incredible people that in my eyes are
poorly compensated for the service they do - but like I said earlier, it only
takes a couple of bad eggs to put some kids off of education for life, and
that dissolution translates to the class rooms of teachers who are truly
amazing at what they do, which ruins their experience with teaching too.

------
pard68
When I was in 3rd grade a girl accused me and my best friend of purposefully
stepping on her. We were forced to sit in a room, no parents, no lunch, until
we confessed. Eventually I was told I could go to violin lessons if I admitted
to my wrong. So I lied to get out of the room I had been left in for 5 hours.

My friend never lied. He got in a lot of trouble because I did lie. He left
school the next year after being dogged by the administration for every wrong
that could be piled on him. Last I heard he was in jail.

I am utterly ashamed of that lie. Probably the worst lie I ever told.

~~~
dondawest
Damn. That’s tough. I’m sorry that happened, but almost no third graders would
be able to successfully deal with such a classic “prisoner’s dilemma.”

All I’m saying is, try not to blame yourself, anyone would have acted the same
in that situation. The system is to blame, not you. :/

------
ve55
The ending of this article is a little hard to believe. It seems to end the
exact way that the author would have wanted it to, something that is very
uncommon behavior in teenagers in these situations.

~~~
marshray
I assure you it's quite common for teens who exhibit shocking behavior to grow
into well-adjusted adults.

------
apo
Very well written piece. The most thought-provoking part is how the author
links the ham-fisted behavior of the school administrator with the path her
son followed.

The truth of the charge isn't the problem. The problem is how due process
flies out the window when the charge is leveled.

Both accusers and accusees suffer from the same lack of due process. Its very
tempting for other party to seek revenge that can lead to truly awful
consequences.

Still, I can't help but wonder if the author isn't ascribing too much
significance to the episode. The lives of teens are very full and extremely
complex. They rarely reveal to parents everything that's happening to them.

------
moosey
> When we did confront Sam—say, if we caught a glimpse of a vile meme on his
> phone—he assured us that it was meant to be funny and that we didn’t get it.
> It was either “post-ironic” or referenced multiple other events that created
> a maze-like series of in-jokes impossible for us to follow.

I have made it clear to people I know that parroting vile positions online
"because of humor" isn't really a clarification that you can make, and even
when fine in person it still offers safety to those that hold and speak then
with fervor. Giving white supremacist positions as a joke cannot be
effectively separated from being a white supremacist (most aren't violent),
and satire in this era is nearly impossible.

Perhaps having been on the receiving end of racism and it's associated
violence has made me bitter. I got increasingly angry at the authors
apparently laissez faire attitude about everything and trying externalize so
much blame for what happened. The parents have given up on responsibility and
this is the obvious result. If you don't shape the culture and ethics of your
children then someone else will.

~~~
liquidise
But laissez faire IS a cultural and ethical stance. “Live and let live” was a
powerful cultural standard I remember from my childhood.

Deciding that these parents have “given up on responsibility” is a loaded
accusation to make because their child has adopted political ideals you
disagree with. Given the thoughtfulness of the piece i’d characterize it as
unfair.

~~~
anigbrowl
It seems like there might be a little bit of inconsistency between 'live and
let live' and 'political ideals' that involve killing lots of people.

------
01100011
Reminds me of my soon to be little brother. When I met him he was 14 year old
Vietnamese-American kid, immersed in meme culture, spouting white supremecist
ideas under his breath and making Holocaust jokes. Fortunately he seems to
have grown out of it now.

The whole 4chan culture is so appealing to young boys. Inside jokes, porn,
violence, conspiracy, and you can participate. Frankly I'd probably have been
sucked in if it was around when I was a kid(I still had a 4chan phase a few
years ago but wasn't stupid enough to go alt right).

------
GreaterFool
Why are Americans so obsessed with Nazis? I mean, I'm from Europe and I don't
recall growing up worrying about everyone being a secret (or overt) Nazi,
which, unless promptly punched in the face, would somehow take over.

WWII and Nazis destroyed Europe. Are Europeans worried about Nazis? Not as far
as I can tell.

Yet all I see from American news is Nazis this Nazis that. Can someone
explain?

~~~
GreaterFool
What does flagged mean on HN? Not sure why my comment got down-voted so fast.
It's a genuine question.

If people can't agree on what Nazi means we should ban the word altogether
since it has loaded political context and doesn't foster proper discussion.

It appears to me that:

1) Some use Nazi to mean Nazi Party with proper historical context 2) Some use
Nazi as tool to bludgeon anyone they don't like 3) Some use Nazi to be an
umbrella term for anything related to fascism, racism, right-leaning ideology,
all kinds of other stuff.

If a single word means all kinds of things to all kinds of people, it's a
useless word.

~~~
dang
Flagged on HN means that some users thought your comment broke the site
guidelines and shouldn't have been posted here. (See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.))
After that, your comment got enough upvotes to override the flags, which is
why the [flagged] marker disappeared.

I think your comment was fine, but I had to read it pretty closely to be sure.
Most likely it was worded in a way that it made it seem more provocative than
it actually is. Unfortunately, seeming provocative and being provocative are
pretty much the same thing on the internet. The word "Nazi" itself contains a
provocative charge for many readers, so in a way your comment was affected by
the phenomenon it describes.

~~~
GreaterFool
> The word "Nazi" itself contains a provocative charge

I find this a bit confusing. Provocative to whom? There are 1) people calling
other people Nazis and there are 2) people being called Nazis.

1) Can't claim they're being provoked because they're the ones using the word
in the first place. I don't think 2) would be offended _by the word itself_.
They don't like being called Nazis, which is different.

When someone says "Nazi" I'm thinking "The Final Solution to the Jewish
Question" and the "superiority of the Aryan master race". These are _very bad
things_ and practically everyone agrees!

Side note: perhaps when people say Nazis they mean ethno-nationalists?

Nazis killed millions of people in Europe and took my country apart. What was
left behind is a deeply damaged society. I don't know how many generations it
will take to fix it. So it annoys me when the word is thrown so casually at
any random person on the internet. A dude going to a Mall with a swastika flag
is probably just an ass that wants to "trigger lefties". And they take the
bait. And media takes the bait too.

~~~
c22
There are also 3) people like yourself and myself who are neither calling
anyone a Nazi, nor purporting to be Nazi's, but who are nonetheless provoked
by the usage of the word.

I'd argue this category actually represents the majority demographic. Heck,
I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've typed the word "Nazi" on the
internet.

------
CriticalCathed
I'm always skeptical of the veracity of these articles. This one doesn't pass
the sniff test. It has a narrative arc that doesn't recall reality. Seems
contrived.

The thing that rang truest was the school interaction. That's where my trouble
with authority started -- overzealous, bored, administrators.

~~~
bdhe
What about the narrative arc seems contrived to you? Is it the ending? Because
I agree with that. Everything else seems plausible does it not?

And where does your trouble with authority take you now?

------
pard68
Chuckled at the list of things considered 'alt right'. The window is moving so
quickly. Some of these things a good half of the US or so would agree with.

------
PaulBGD_
This happened to myself in middleschool, almost 10 years ago now. Was pulled
into an office, told the police would be called, and was told I needed to
confess for hours to something that was unrelated to me. The school never had
any retaliation from my family who didn't see it very serious at the time.

------
packetpirate
I can definitely relate to his feelings of not being taken seriously in school
and being put in the spotlight without oversight. I frequently did dumb things
when I was in middle school, and it became a self-actualizing thing as I
became increasingly frustrated that I had been pegged as some kind of criminal
for doing mostly average rebellious teenage things. But what really got me was
when I was increasingly blamed for things I DIDN'T do, and the frustration of
it all led me to lash out because I had a difficult time refuting baseless
claims against me.

School administrators don't give a damn about the majority of their students.
They mostly care about their image and the top 5% of students who make them
look good. If you're even remotely troubled, the school system chews you up
and spits you out.

I think the worst example of this from my own experiences is during High
School when I was put in "alternative education" because they just didn't want
to deal with me anymore. Nobody thought "maybe it isn't that he can't do the
work, maybe there's problems he's dealing with that nobody cares to ask about"
or that the increasing frustration of being a social pariah and someone who
can't find the words to express his issues was the problem; they just didn't
care, so they just threw me out.

Fortunately, I did finally get my act together and get through college... but
I sincerely hope that what I experienced doesn't become common-place just
because school administrators would rather "throw out the trash" than deal
with the root of the problem.

------
protomyth
Tim Pool (self described as left of center) has his take on the article
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOyb8cN_A_8&t=946s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOyb8cN_A_8&t=946s)

------
schoolthrowaway
Just to add to the pile. I was once accused of kicking a teacher during a
class. I was at the back of the class when it happened. What followed was 2
days of "guilty until proven innocent" karangaroo court, the teacher vowing to
get me put in the remedial class (he knew I was striving for valedictorian, he
was trying his best to inflict whatever pain he could on me). I was terrified,
beyond upset and I don't think I ever truly got over the injustice. Luckily I
had pigheaded parents who point blanked refused to accept the idea I could
have done something so stupid. I will always remember how my life could have
changed for the worse due to the pettiness of one man who was suppose to be
looking out for the future of kids. One of many, many injustices I witnessed.
No wonder kids are getting angrier and more stressed.

------
lpernille
This is why I homeschool my kids. I think as geeks we've solved the problem of
learning, look at all the stuff we've built by figuring out how to learn by
ourselves. We don't really need schools for this function anymore.

~~~
kristofferR
You can't homeschool social skills though.

~~~
elevation
Humanity was socializing long before public schools existed, and by no means
does the present public school system have a monopoly on teaching social
skills.

Statistically, home schools produce outstanding educational outcomes compared
to public schools on standardized tests, so public education proponents insist
that they compensate for this by providing better "socialization". This claim
is conveniently difficult to refute with hard data since "socialization" is
harder to quantify, but it doesn't prove public schooling produces better
socialization outcomes.

To the contrary, homeschooling is so effective at education because it's
taylored to a particular student's developmental level in each area, including
socialization. Home educators have tremendous schedule flexibility, and in
many areas, large co-op resources, presenting endless opportunities for
friendship, teamwork, conflict, community service, and time to develop their
own interests (programming? theater?) with other like minded students. For
instance, while day-school students are stuck in a room not interacting with
one another, a nine year old home schooled student may attend day rehearsals
for a play at the local university, volunteer at a local food bank, or build
robots with their FRC team, all before playing little league baseball after
the day school students become available. These opportunities don't just lock
students into same age groups all day for 10 years, but allow time for them to
participate in the real world community outside with a broad range of both
peers and adults.

The diversity of opportunities for homeschool students often results in a
student whose social experience and civic responsibility is as outstanding as
their standardized test scores. You can absolutely homeschool social skills.

~~~
kristofferR
English isn't my first language, so I naturally thought of homeschooling as
keeping kids at home during the day while others are at school. If kids do
social activities outside the home during "homeschooling" then that's
obviously different than the type of homeschooling where the kids only
interact with their guardian(s)/teacher(s).

------
jl2718
I’m not an expert, but maybe institutionalizing children like prisoners is bad
for their emotional development.

------
Simulacra
My favorite was when the administrators and teachers would tell me to “move
away“ from bullies. That’s nice, how do you move away from a bully in a packed
classroom of 30 kids?

------
garfieldnate
A few thoughts after reading this (very compelling) article:

* It's strange to see a patriarchal over-protection of girls being called liberal. I think we've come full circle on this one.

* Why does this thirteen-year-old have full, unfettered access to the entire internet? That seems like a recipe for disaster. My kids will have dumbphones and access to the desktop computer in the living room, with age-restricted filters and probably internet activity logs. I would not invite random strangers into my home to teach whatever they wanted when I wasn't around.

* I love parenting articles that teach me what I have to teach my children. The parents here loved the trusting aspect of their son, but this really burned him. First he overtrusted the adults at his school, then he overtrusted google search results. I can relate to this! My parents admired my trusting, sweet nature as a kid, too; looking back, I think I was trustful to a fault, especially of adults. "Naive" would be a better description. For example, when an adult said something really unacceptable, I would always try to justify their words and try to learn from them. This led to confusing lessons and some self-esteem issues that needed to be corrected when I had grown out of my naive adult trust.

~~~
mango7283
I'd be curious to hear how you plan to teach your children to not be overly
trusting/naive of adults/authority figures while simultaneously ensuring
adhere to your oversight and regulation. It sounds like a fine line to thread.

~~~
garfieldnate
I think I said the wrong thing when I said not to "trust" adults; what I
really meant is that it's dangerous to teach kids that adults are infallible;
otherwise they can be taken advantage of by those in positions of power. I
think it's important to teach children proper behavior and to show by example
that adults are beholden to the same rules as they are, including their
parents.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
Whoa that line about the press and their symbiotic relationships is
interesting if ugly.

~~~
dTal
A big, unstated theme was how memetics goes for the most radical, extreme,
offensive viewpoint. The same phenomenology that causes the press to seek out
Nazis to talk to, causes search engines to return only radical viewpoints.
It's what people want, but it's not good for us.

------
fzeroracer
There are bits of this story which simply don't add up or end up feeling quite
embellished. The reaction from the principle seems quite far-fetched and the
ending feels like it was meant as a call back to the beginning rather than
something that actually happened.

Regardless though, this story is generally correct in how the alt-right
appeals to younger and more vulnerable individuals. They tend to recruit
through avenues like video games, discord and so forth. A lot of memes can
also help drag people into the fold with not-so-subtle racism and xenophobia
which kids might not be able to fully grasp at their age.

It's one of those things I find strange because I grew up heavily addicted to
the internet as well and it's hard for me to think of many memes which were
weaponized to such an extent.

~~~
yasp
For all the talk about Russian social media meddling, I'm surprised no one
ever speculates about foreign meddling in media such as the chans. To what
extent has chan culture been influenced by foreign agitprop?

~~~
soulofmischief
Outsiders, maybe, but many within these kinds of boards understand the extent
of the psy ops going on more than anyone speculating from outside.

------
ohboyherewego
This article is not good. It has its good points but the rest of it is deeply
and completely flawed and it definitely has the feeling of ideological
propaganda.

If you don’t know why that is the case, I will explain.

Firstly, it causes me actual physical pain to read because I have a son and
society has become so default toxic towards men and assumes that they are
somehow evil and guilty for....wanting sex and not knowing how to get it, or
laughing at stupid jokes...

The reason this article is bad is that it is that it does exactly the things
which cause the alt-right movement to get stronger and stronger, while knowing
that it is doing them. It is hard for me to look at this other than a form of
propaganda.

Here are the real, severe problems:

1\. Categorize everyone who disagrees with you as a Nazi or alt-right. 43% of
the population leans republican, call them all Nazis and you get the alt
right. 2\. Ignore or dismiss 100% of the counter arguments without naming what
they are, just that they “must be wrong” 3\. dismissing the entire validity of
the alt-right by saying “there was one Nazi there”

There was a Nazi in Seattle once, he got punched in the face after ten minutes
by a mob from the Internet. It doesn’t mean that everyone in Seattle is a
Nazi.

What Liberals are going to have to do in order to get people like me to ever
vote for them again is the following:

\- admit There are extreme views on both sides and we can see how certain
aspects of the Democratic Party are out of control, but that doesn’t excuse
allowing Nazis, get rid of them and we will get rid of our nutcases also \- If
you don’t agree with 100% of what we are saying you still are welcome. We are
not going to destroy your career and reputation if you want to argue over
specifics \- We are not going to use the words “whiteness” and “privilege” as
a derogatory insult implicating all white people as being bad.

I work in tech, my twitter stream is filled with anti male and anti white
rhetoric. I have blocked dozens of people for this reason.

\- We are going to proactively eliminate bad actors with extremely racist and
negative, toxic views from our own side

Until the Democratic Party and liberals admit to these things, moderate their
tone, I am never, never, never coming back, and I voted for Obama twice.

It is time to stop pretending that there is only a single right answer, this
article is exactly the propaganda that is driving the alt right and if it
continues you are going to see it grow and I will be joining it, at this rate,
I’d this continues.

~~~
unabridged
>Until the Democratic Party and liberals admit to these things, moderate their
tone, I am never, never, never coming back, and I voted for Obama twice.

I always find this argument fascinating. "Some people made fun of white males,
therefore low income people shouldn't get healthcare/college".

I dislike identity politics too, but I don't let it change my values.

------
ponyous
Excuse my ignorance, but what makes all of this alt-right? This left/right
labels always confused me as I can't clearly see the difference.

------
cyphunk
The comments in this thread indicate clearly, I think, why we should never
listen to engineers on social topics and questions.

------
Pxtl
Now I'm wondering which subreddit it was.

~~~
CydeWeys
/r/MemeEconomy most likely

------
lone_haxx0r
The "alt-right" is the natural reaction to the bombardment of progressive
leftism (for lack of a better concept) perpetrated initially by the media and
now by mainstream society in general, including silicon valley.

Most of these alt-righters aren't educated enough to articulate a good
ideological response to this bombardment, but they know that people are being
manipulated, and the best thing they can do is state the complete opposite (or
what they see as the complete opposite) to what progressive media says, which
makes them be this way.

Another thing to consider is the hypocrisy with which most people criticize
the "alt-right", but don't even bat an eye when the 'progressives' act the
same way.

When mainstream society becomes reasonable again, alt-righters and similar
movements will disappear.

------
NotSammyHagar
That's a good read, as the parent of a teenager I probably am not supervising
him as much as I wish I did, but fortunately he hasn't fallen into that world.

------
wozer
America is going crazy, and it's spreading its madness around the world.

Sorry for the blanket statement, but from an European perspective, the US
really seems to go crazy.

~~~
sterlind
There's a resurgence of alt-right parties in Europe; this isn't just a US
thing. I bet there are European Kekistanis just like this boy, but that just
proves politics doesn't care about borders now that everything's online.

------
megaremote
So, does this chap just take the word of his kid for truth?

------
wtdata
I keep trying to tell all of my social circle that the normal (although not
proper response) to an extremist point of view, is to either embrace it or to
vouch for the oposite one. Very few people seem interested to even give it a
thought about that and happily continue expousing their extremist points of
view (when it's an extremist left point of view of course, since they are told
by all the media and social networks that's the moral point of view to have).

When stuff like this has become the norm, exactly what reaction would you
expect?

"One morning during first period, a male friend of Sam’s mentioned a meme
whose suggestive name was an inside joke between the two of them. Sam laughed.
A girl at the table overheard their private conversation, misconstrued it as a
sexual reference, and reported it as sexual harassment. Sam’s guidance
counselor pulled him out of his next class and accused him of “breaking the
law.” Before long, he was in the office of a male administrator who informed
him that the exchange was “illegal,” hinted that the police were coming, and
delivered him into the custody of the school’s resource officer. At the
administrator’s instruction, that man ushered Sam into an empty room, handed
him a blank sheet of paper, and instructed him to write a “statement of
guilt.”"

------
faissaloo
>Ergo, clueless normies who put their own spin on your brilliant memes deserve
to die.

The term 'normie' means alot more than just 'someone who ruins memes'. Normies
are primarily hated because they often treat 'autists' as other or less than.

>“I liked them because they were adults and they thought I was an adult. They
took me seriously.”

I totally agree with this, growing up it would anger me to no end that people
wouldn't take me seriously because of my age, Aaron Swartz used to say 'I hate
when you don't take me seriously'.

------
boapnuaput
Fascism is seductive. It has little idological substance aside from that
needed to apologize for promoting the ethnostate, and instead operates on
style and spectacle.

We let our teenagers become broadcasters, influencers, reviewers, and players,
but failed to teach them how to avoid being parasocially suckered, influenced,
gaslit, and used as pawns.

Perhaps we need to craft an educational system which is more substantial. Or
perhaps we need to teach early grade-school civics and ethics, so that
teenagers will have had a round of memetic inoculation before being introduced
to modern cryptofascists. I certainly think that my scant lessons in high
school were crucial in helping to rebut some of the stupider strains of online
thought today, like sovereign citizenship, flat-Earth astronomy, or (the
modern flavor of) the Lost Cause.

~~~
i_am_proteus
Fewer members of this generation are learning ethics through religion. I'm not
religious and I don't believe that religion is necessary for ethics, but I do
recognize that religion was a traditional vehicle for introducing young people
to an ethical system.

Grade-school civics is one solution, but I think there are some other family-
and community-based ways (religious or otherwise) we can raise the next
generation with a strong ethical code.

~~~
opportune
There can also be secular ethics classes in early high school. I had one in my
private school. We covered virtue ethics, deontological ethics, utilitarianism
and briefly outline some modern material. Won't give people a great
understanding but should at least introduce them to the concept and give them
a foundation they can use to learn more

~~~
meddlepal
Teaching a particular brand of ethics (religion) over 18 years while a child
is growing up as a member of their community is very different from teaching a
survey about different ethical systems at a high school level crammed into a
semester. The outcome of the latter is "there's a lot of different ways to
look at things." No moral compass has been installed.

I say this as a Philosophy degree holder. Arguably I have a lot of ethical
training and it shapes some very abstract thinking, but learning all these
systems and poking at them does not make me an ethical person.

Personally I got lucky that my parents instilled some decent values in me and
taught me to value critical thinking skills. I'm not really sure what the
solution is, an awful lot people are not getting that today.

------
h2odragon
I got removed from a different forum the other day for posting this link along
with "people worked up over Nazis vs Commies just need to get outside, meet
each other, and see that we're all just folks."

~~~
ergothus
Not my takeaway at all...if the teen in the article didnt have an unusually
high amount of critical thinking, meeting in person would have not have
changed much.

~~~
deogeo
Critical thinking? As the story presents it, his conversions to and from alt-
right were entirely emotion based.

~~~
Rebelgecko
That was not my interpretation at all, especially in the part where he
interviews marchers and finds that some of their beliefs are "internally
inconsistent"

~~~
deogeo
What do their beliefs matter, if his own are consistent? That's just
association fallacy.

~~~
ergothus
We're literally talking about how this teen decided who is trustworthy. As
pointed out in the article, googling around to confirm GAVE HIM
"confirmation". Recognizing that their views fell apart under inspection
despite the previous confirmation required (as written, at least) above-
average critical thinking.

------
austincheney
This article sounds like a mother immersed in social media not parenting her
child’s social media access. There is probably some level of gullibility and
influence from each of their online habits.

I don’t have any sympathy for the problems here, and I can say that as a
parent of two teenagers. Parent your damn children and stop relying on media
to form your opinions for you. The cliche some of friends use to explain this
failure is: _You’ve made your bed, now sleep in it._

------
RickJWagner
It's going to be such a long slog until the election.

Already, there is an increase in the number of articles meant to subtly smear
people. Call them racists, neo Nazis, extremists, etc. On the other side,
photos of Antifa, anarchists and other extremists will be shown.

Please do your best to look for the truth. The vast, vast majority of people
are good. (To be sure, there are some bad ones. But they do not dramatically
increase in number as an election draws near!)

It is completely evil to sow the seeds of fear, doubt and hatred in this
manner. Please look to the good in people. Turn away from the hatred.

Edit: I am in no way excusing neo Nazis, alt-right, alt-left, Antifa, etc. I
am saying that these nutballs are few and far in between. Almost everybody you
meet out on the street today is going to be a decent person.

