https://www.resetera.com/threads/frontpage-of-msnbc-how-gamers-are-facilitating-the-rise-of-the-alt-right.2422/page-7#post-278154"
So I noticed this post in the Alt Right thread.
in response to this guy: "I do legitimately believe people overestimate the cross-section between alt-right and Trump voters though."
He posts an article from The Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/basket-of-deplorables/499493/I will just make one point first.
A literal nazi coined the term for how to label himself. There's nothing unwarranted about it.
Richard Spencer doesn't actually consider himself a Nazi. That is not to say he doesn't have ugly views or that calling him a Nazi is wholly unfair, it's just that there is a good argument for why accurately representing a person's position is important. For the sake of this post though, it doesn't really matter. In the minds of some of the people that consider themselves progressive the alt-right literally means Nazis.
So what exactly is my problem? Well it's the insistence of some people on the Left to view complex issues in purely black and white terms. I don't only find it wrong, I also find it dangerous.
I'm just going to go through the data presented in this article.
60 percent of Trump’s supporters hold “unfavorable views” of Islam.
Now this isn't surprising considering Trump pretty much ran his campaign on attacking Islam. The thing is though, many people hold unfavourable views of Islam. The late Christopher Hitchens held unfavourable views of Islam. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for why someone might hold unfavourable views about Islam. Just to put this into perspective a poll in Germany found that only 7% of the German public said that they associate Islam at all with tolerance or respect for human rights. Forget simply 60% of Trump supporters, we're talking 93% of Germans think a similar thing. 73% of the French public in 2013 said they viewed the religion very negatively
76 percent support a ban on Muslims entering the United States
Actually this is 76 percent of Republicans not just Trump Supporters, but regardless, this is of course quite a bit more harsh than simply having unfavourable views on Islam. Lets put this one into perspective. Chatham House in the UK conducted a poll in 10 European countries asking whether they agreed that musim immigration into Europe should be stopped. In 8 out 10 countries the majority opinion was yes. So what is simply 76% of Republicans in America is actually mainstream opinion throughout Europe.
So what is going on? Is the majority of Europe comprised of Nazis then, or is it people's perception of Islam has changed due to the levels of Islamic terrorism and waves of sexual assault, etc? It is more likely to be the latter right? The point being, you may think it is a perception problem, but what we're talking about here are people's genuine fears and concern over Muslim immigration into their countries. Calling them all fucking Nazis is an extremely dangerous thing to do because the far-right will fill the void the Left has created and you give them nowhere else to turn.
We know that some 40 percent of Trump’s supporters believe blacks are more violent, more criminal, lazier, and ruder than whites.
Now this is a really interesting poll. I will say that some of these questions are really loaded for obvious reasons. Any answer other than 'no' will get you branded as a racist. The problem is statistically speaking blacks are more violent and criminal. Now if you were to ask, for instance, are blacks
naturally more violent or criminal than whites? Now that's a different question.
So about half of Trump supporters believed blacks were more violent and criminal. The interesting thing about this poll was that actually one third of Clinton supporters thought the same thing. That's not half, but one third is nothing to be sniffed at.
Another interesting bit of information:
32 percent of Trump supporters placed whites closer to the top level of “intelligence” than they did blacks, compared with 22 percent of Clinton supporters who did the same.
I was never a fan of Trump, and I do think that racists were more likely to vote for Trump than they were Clinton, for obvious reasons, but to label everyone who voted for him a Nazi, is not only inaccurate, it is also dangerous. Even if the results of these polls were evidence of the cross-section between the Alt-Right and Trump voters, it is still no more than half.
