Alt-America
by David A. Neiwert · first published 2017
10mentions
2recommended by
2HN commenters
2018–2022first – last mentioned
100% recommend
456 pages ; 25 cm
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…self-radicalize. David Neiwart, who tracked various "patriot", white supremacist, and other fringe groups since the 90s, wrote a very readable book about how things have changed since then: https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-Right-Trump/... I definitely appreciate the early ethos of the Internet. It's a good founding myth, and I would like to work to keep things open by default. But if the worse 0.1% of humankind…
on “A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming” ↗…https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/14/the-pr... https://www.scientificamerican.com/report/the-black-lives-ma... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Radical-Right-Trump/dp/17... Really, dude. The Republican party shucked off all moral rights to Lincoln’s name after 1965, when it chose to sell out its principles in exchange for naked power. There’s…
on “Student loan forgiveness would be a bailout for elites” ↗…exist. They existed before the internet, and the internet has, to my great disappointment, only enabled their spread. There's a ton you could read, but maybe start with Neiwert's "God's Country" and "Alt-America", which document the pre- and post-Internet versions of America's white supremacist movement. > Abusive is a relative and in this context meaningless word. That is also embarrassingly ignorant. If you'd…
For those interested in the history and process of radicalization, I strongly recommend David Neiwart's book "Alt America". [1] He's a journalist who spent decades covering the "Patriot" fringe in the US, which often had elements of white supremacy, conspiracy thinking, anti-government paranoia, and other nuttery. It gives…
on “YouTube, the Great Radicalizer” ↗Your handwaving on the Rodney King riots is unpersuasive. I already pointed people at an expert: David Neiwert, and in particular his book Alt-America. And your logic is very poor. By it, we could also prove that vaccines don't do anything, because clearly we had diseases both before and after their invention. So as mentioned in my bio, I think you've…
on “Gab will become a Mastodon fork” ↗…justifiably obscure. But the rise of the Internet, which enabled all sorts of connection, also enabled our country's worst to more easily connect, network, and recruit. A good book on the topic is Neiwart's "Alt-America", written by a journalist who studied American white supremacists starting in the 1980s. As a counterpoint, just recently we saw Tommy Robinson, far right activist and repeat felon, get crushed in the…
on “Gab will become a Mastodon fork” ↗One interesting book in this context is Neiwart's "Alt America". [1] Neiwart is a journalist who spent decades tracking the armed US fringe, including the "patriot" militias, sovereign citizen movements, conspiracists, and white supremacist groups. It's his view…
on “The high modernism of social media companies” ↗…If extremism couldn't be effectively spread, extremists wouldn't bother trying. But they put quite a lot of effort into recruiting and propaganda. For those interested, I strongly recommend Neiwart's "Alt-America": https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MT2KCB2/ He's a journalist who in the 80s and 90s was covering extremists (e.g. violent white supremacists, "patriot" militias). He makes a very good case that the Internet…
on “Tech companies and governments sign up to Christchurch Call agreement” ↗…documents, though, many of the terrible people online today are intellectual descendants of the terrible people who were doing their social networking in person and via the mail: https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-Right-Trump/...
on “Social Media: An Apology” ↗…argue a wait-and-see approach, I think you have to justify the bodies that will stack up in the meantime. [1] https://twitter.com/jichikawa/status/1134323822096658433 [2] E.g., https://www.amazon.com/Alt-America-Rise-Radical-Right-Trump/... and the many resources it points to.
on “8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service” ↗