(((Joel Stein))) attacks the Alt-Right in Time:
Trolling is, overtly, a political fight. Liberals do indeed troll–sex-advice columnist Dan Savage used his followers to make Googling former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum’s last name a blunt lesson in the hygienic challenges of anal sex; the hunter who killed Cecil the lion got it really bad.
But trolling has become the main tool of the alt-right, an Internet-grown reactionary movement that works for men’s rights and against immigration and may have used the computer from Weird Science to fabricate Donald Trump. Not only does Trump share their attitudes, but he’s got mad trolling skills: he doxxed Republican primary opponent Senator Lindsey Graham by giving out his cell-phone number on TV and indirectly got his Twitter followers to attack GOP political strategist Cheri Jacobus so severely that her lawyers sent him a cease-and-desist order.
The alt-right’s favorite insult is to call men who don’t hate feminism “cucks,” as in “cuckold.” Republicans who don’t like Trump are “cuckservatives.” Men who don’t see how feminists are secretly controlling them haven’t “taken the red pill,” a reference to the truth-revealing drug in The Matrix. They derisively call their adversaries “social-justice warriors” and believe that liberal interest groups purposely exploit their weakness to gain pity, which allows them to control the levers of power. Trolling is the alt-right’s version of political activism, and its ranks view any attempt to take it away as a denial of democracy.
It’s always educational to see how the media inevitably attempts to push its Narrative by redefining terms. They’re actually attempting to ban self-expression in the name of self-expression, in much the same way the EU tries to bar democracy in the name of democracy.
The alt-right argues that if you can’t handle opprobrium, you should just turn off your computer. But that’s arguing against self-expression, something antithetical to the original values of the Internet.
No, that’s not arguing against self-expression, that IS self-expression. Moreover, it is using the media’s own argument against it: “if you don’t like it, turn off the TV”. It’s amazing to see them resorting to the Moral Majority’s position they used to oppose. They’re going to pine for the good old days when they were dealing with the terrible, no-good Religious Right they hated so much, as the Alt-Right is considerably less tolerant and merciful.
And, of course, the conservative media loves this stuff; they hate the Alt-Right worse than they ever hated communism, leftists, or Democrats.
Dana Perino @DanaPerino
How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet – article in TIME – we are doing this subject on @TheFiveFNC. Mostly AGREE!
First the New York Times, then Time magazine, and now Fox News are attacking the Alt Right. Looks like we got ourselves a new media offensive on our hands. This is a good sign. They used to ignore us. Then they mocked us. Now, they’re fighting us. You know what comes next. We win.